ILO response to the earthquakes in Türkiye and Syria

Described as “one of the biggest natural disasters of our times” the multiple earthquakes which struck Türkiye and northern Syria on 6 February 2023 have resulted in the death and injury of tens of thousands of people, and have caused extensive damage to buildings and infrastructure across both countries.

Disasters such as the earthquake have severe implications on the world of work. Jobs and livelihoods are destroyed, businesses interrupted and workplaces damaged. This can also lead to an exacerbation of other decent work deficits. In addition, debris and rubble removal works without proper safety measures also subject workers to a number of Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) risk factors, such as exposure to hazardous objects, unsafe working conditions and work-related accidents.

In such a humanitarian context that requires a viable solution, one of the suitable instruments that the ILO can apply is the employment intensive approach. The approach aims to combine efforts to rehabilitate destroyed infrastructures with an immediate decent job creation scheme, and a longer-term objective of skills development and employability enhancement as well as improvement of working conditions. As such, the ILO interventions in the aftermath of the earthquake aim to ensure human security from an early recovery angle.

Latest

  1. Rehabilitation works and decent jobs for community resilience in earthquake-damaged Aleppo

    02 June 2023

    ILO Regional Director for Arab States Ruba Jaradat visited earthquake-damaged areas in the Syrian city of Aleppo, where the ILO is implementing community infrastructure rehabilitation works, set to create hundreds of jobs.

  2. ILO promotes early recovery through community resilience in earthquake-damaged Aleppo

    01 June 2023

    The ILO Regional Director for Arab States Ruba Jaradat visits the Syrian city of Aleppo to inaugurate the project “Early Recovery through Community Resilience in Aleppo’s Earthquake-hit Neighbourhoods” and hand over earthquake structural damage assessment equipment to local engineers.

  3. ILO creates infrastructure jobs in earthquake-hit Syrian city

    12 May 2023

    An employment-intensive project creates decent jobs for community members affected by the earthquakes in the Syrian city of Aleppo, while rehabilitating infrastructure in damaged neighbourhoods.