Youth employment in the CIS discussed in St Petersburg

During the event representatives of the two countries that have successfully pioneered the Peer Review exercise – Armenia and Kyrgyzstan - analyzed each other’s youth employment policies and identified best practices.

The CIS countries are facing similar youth employment challenges as a result of continuing economic hardships. ILO’s Youth Employment Project aims to support the Governments and social partners in the CIS in their search for good practices and models promoting job creation and youth employment. The ILO Moscow Office is promoting Peer Reviews on youth employment in nine countries of Eastern Europe and Central Asia.

High level experts from the Ministries of Labour as well as representatives of social partners from eight countries of the CIS, Georgia, and two Russian regions (Republic of Kalmykia and Perm Region) took part in the Conference. The event was opened by Mr Yuriy Pikhtovnikov, Head of Corporate Structure Development and Career Management Department at LUKOIL, and Ms Dimitrina Dimitrova, Director of the ILO Decent Work Technical Support Team and Country Office for Eastern Europe and Central Asia.

“The youth is our future, and thanks to this project we are able to unite our efforts under a global umbrella to share practices that are of benefit for all participating countries”, said Mr Pikhtovnikov. He was supported by Ms Dimitrova, who stressed crucial role of tripartite cooperation in ensuring decent employment for young people. The Peer Review mechanism is one innovative example of how this can be achieved, she said.

Technical sessions were lead by ILO senior employment specialists from Geneva and the ILO Moscow Office, as well as by representatives of the ILO Development for Partnership Department (PARDEV), and the ILO Training Centre in Turin.

Youth employment challenges are of a global character and experiences of rapidly growing emerging economies is particularly valuable for the sub-region. Therefore, representatives of BRICS countries were invited to attend the meeting and present their policies and practices on youth employment. Mr Juan Hunt, Deputy Director of PARDEV, emphasized the BRICS cooperation as a major platform to boost dialogue on decent work, as ILO and BRICS have joint priorities and share common values.

The participants discussed valuable experience of Kyrgyzstan in the field of youth employment, analyzed in depth by their peers from Armenia. During lively deliberations useful recommendations on how to strengthen youth employment policies were put forward. Some particularly interesting suggestions came from the BRICS representatives, giving the audience a new angle on the examined issues. As Mr Flávio José da Silva Costa, representative from the Ministry of Labour and employment in Brazil put it, “the Conference has set the Peer Review exercise into the global perspective, thus opening up new horizons”.

The Conference programme included visits to the LUKOIL site in Vysotsk, the terminal for oil transit from land to sea, to a unique gas station located both on land and on the water, and to LUKOIL Severozapadnefteprodukt. The company demonstrated technologies which allows it to conduct industrial activities at highest level of environmental protection, and presented measures undertaken by the company to recruit, educate and keep young workers from the nearby districts.

The participants expressed appreciation to the ILO and LUKOIL for organizing the Conference and for the opportunity to exchange experience on such an important issue as youth employment. The main findings of this Conference will feed into the next round of Peer Review planned for the first part of 2015 and encourage the countries of the sub-region to introduce innovative policy approaches.