Development Cooperation

With over 50 years of experience in development cooperation on all continents and at all stages of development, the ILO today has a bigger portfolio than ever with 700 programmes and projects in more than 100 countries – with the support of 120 development partners.

Development cooperation builds bridges between the ILO’s standard-setting role and women and men everywhere. It is essential to give people decent work opportunities and an important means of assisting our constituents – workers, employers and governments – in making the Decent Work Agenda a reality. Simply put, development cooperation supports the technical, organizational and institutional capacities of ILO constituents for them to put in place meaningful and coherent social policy and ensure sustainable development.

The ILO's Development Cooperation Strategy 2015-17 provides both strategic and operational guidance on development cooperation priorities and principles to maximize results.

Highlights of the ILO's work

  1. Better Work

    Better Work – an ILO/IFC programme set up in 2009 – has improved conditions in factories employing more than 3 million workers by engaging with more than 60 global garment brands and 1,500 factories

  2. Child labour

    Over the past decade, and with ILO assistance, more than 60 countries implementing almost 200 laws have adapted their legal frameworks to conform to the ILO’s child labour Conventions. Since 2004, in its regular review of the application of Conventions No. 138 and No. 182, the ILO’s Committee of Experts has seen a seven-fold increase in the number of comments noting progress.

  3. Employment intensive investment

    Employment-intensive investments link infrastructure development with employment creation, poverty reduction and local economic and social development.

  4. Safety + Health for All

    The Programme aims to improve the safety and health of workers worldwide, giving priority to low and middle-income countries, high-risk sectors, recurrent and new OSH challenges, and workers in vulnerable conditions. Since 2016, 138 million workers in 19 participating countries have benefitted directly or indirectly from Programme interventions. 

  5. Social protection

    The ILO works with countries to extend social protection in two ways: by pushing for the rapid implementation of national social protection floors of basic social security guarantees that ensure universal access to essential health care and income security while also improving existing social protection schemes to provide higher levels of benefits, progressively, to as many people as possible.