Strengthening cooperatives in Jordan to improve livelihoods and advance decent work for Jordanian workers and Syrian refugees

Since 2016, the ILO has been supporting Jordanian workers and Syrian refugees to access jobs and improve working conditions in the agriculture sector. Cooperatives have been one of the key partners in the implementation of different activities, given their capacity to reach Jordanian, refugee and migrant agricultural workers and their credibility in the rural communities toward advancing decent work. One of the main activities undertaken by these cooperatives to date includes the facilitation of work permits for Syrian refugees in Irbid and Mafraq.

At the end of 2018, the ILO received support from the government of Netherlands to implement the project “Advancing decent work in Jordan's agriculture sector: A compliance model". The activities under this project will draw on good practices from the earlier work and pilot interventions of the ILO at the farm and cooperative levels.

In order to develop a work plan of activities with cooperatives, the project team and an official from ILO COOP held initial meetings with key stakeholders and partners in Amman, Irbid and Mafraq. They visited the Jordanian Cooperative Corporation (JCC), the Jordanian National Commission for Women (JNCW) and the Teacher’s Cooperative Union in Amman; and four agricultural and multipurpose cooperatives, two employment centres established by the ILO and the governorate sections of the JCC in Irbid and Mafraq.

The activities that will be undertaken with cooperatives under the project will focus on the training of trainers (ToT) targeting both public and private service providers (such as JCC) and direct beneficiaries (farmers and cooperatives), using Think.Coop, Start.Coop, Manage.Coop, My.Coop and Cooperatives and Decent work (child labour and OSH modules) tools of the ILO. The project will also support individual farmers to organize so they could benefit from collective action to improve their businesses.