MOSCOW (ILO News) – Director-General of the International Labour Organization (ILO), Guy Ryder, and Vagit Alekperov, President of the Russian oil company LUKOIL, have signed an agreement here to continue cooperation on youth employment initiatives from 2018 to 2022. The document was signed at the Government House in the presence of the Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian Federation, Olga Golodets, the Deputy Minister of Labour and Social Protection of the Russian Federation, Lubov Eltsova, President of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, Alexander Shokhin, and Chairman of the Federation of Independent Trade Unions of Russia, Mikhail Shmakov.

The main objective of the second phase of the project "Partnerships for youth employment in the CIS" is to further improve the effectiveness of policies and programmes promoting decent jobs for young people, based on broad and sustainable partnerships, and informed and integral policy frameworks.

Project is coordinated by ILO Decent Work Team and Country Office for Eastern Europe and Central Asia, serving Russia and 9 countries (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan). The project is implemented in Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, the Russian Federation and Uzbekistan. In the Russian Federation, six pilot regions have been selected: Astrakhan Region, Kaliningrad Region, the Republic of Komi, Republic of Kalmykia, Perm Territory, and Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Region.

At the strategic level, the project activities addressing youth unemployment will feed directly into the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals 2030 Agenda. The project will correlate with the implementation of the UN Global Initiative on Decent Jobs for Youth, adopted by the UN in 2016, through integrating the Initiative’s key elements into the youth employment promotion policies in the Commonwealth of Independent States.

Speaking at the signing ceremony, Guy Ryder said: “The youth employment crisis reflects a huge decent work deficit in societies worldwide and one of the main challenges of our time. We have the unique opportunity to partner in order to scale-up action on youth employment and tackle this crisis head on.”