History of the ILO in the Philippines

The Philippines became a member of the International Labour Organization (ILO) on 15 June 1948. An ILO area office was established in Manila in 1970, specifically mandated to deal with programmes in the Philippines and act as a liaison office to the Asian Development Bank (ADB).

The ILO's South-East Asia and Pacific Multidisciplinary Advisory Team (SEAPAT) and the ILO Area Office in the Philippines, which had been in operation since 1970, merged to become the ILO Subregional Office for South-East Asia and the Pacific. The subregional office, which opened in 2000, was located in Manila, Philippines.

As a subregional office, it provided advisory services and technical assistance to countries in the subregion with the support of ILO area offices in Indonesia and Fiji. The subregional office covered Australia, Fiji, Indonesia, Kiribati, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Timor-Leste and Vanuatu.

The framework, composition and geographical location of ILO offices were restructured to facilitate new ways of working across the organization. Following the Field Operations and Technical Cooperation Review, the subregional office was restructured to the ILO Country Office for the Philippines (CO-Manila) on 24 December 2015. As a country office, ILO CO-Manila has frontline responsibility to support constituents - government, workers' and employers' organizations in developing and implementing programmes in the context of the Decent Work Agenda.