XIX World Congress on Safety and Health at Work - ILO Introductory Report: Global Trends and Challenges on Occupational Safety and Health

This Introductory Report concerns some of the achievements and challenges of the last three years since the adoption of the Seoul Declaration on Safety and Health at Work at the XVIII World Congress on Safety and Health at Work for building a preventative safety and health culture. How to meet these challenges will be the subject of much discussion and debate at the Congress itself, which it is hoped will be another significant landmark in the history of promoting a preventative safety and health culture across the world.

Over the past decades significant advances have been made in occupational safety and health (OSH) as many more countries have realised its importance and the need to give higher priority to preventing accidents and ill-health at work. Thus an unprecedented amount of information about occupational risks and how to manage them is now available, much of it on-line, and OSH appears to be better managed in many enterprises. Consequently, numbers of serious accidents appear to be declining globally although the picture for occupational ill-health is less encouraging.

The XIX World Congress aims at strengthening global commitment in promoting a preventative safety and health culture. A task that has become vital in the light of the global economic recession. The ILO acknowledges the importance of social dialogue among stakeholders working together promoting OSH and raising awareness throughout society.

This report was prepared with the contribution of the ILO project funded by SIDA: “Linking safety and health at work to sustainable economic development: from theory and platitudes to conviction and action”.