Employers' Handbook on ILO Standards-related Activities

2
EMPLOYERS’ HANDBOOK ON ILO STANDARDS-RELATED ACTIVITIES
A total of 184 Conventions and 192 Recommendations have been adopted to date,
covering numerous aspects of labour and social policy. In order to allow an overview,
the ILO Secretariat has put them into the following twelve categories (note that a new
categorization is presently in preparation which will take into account the new four
strategic objectives of the ILO and which will be based on the concept of “families of
ILS”; see also Chapter IX):
l Basic human rights;
l Employment;
l Social policy;
l Labour administration;
l Industrial relations;
l Conditions of work;
l Social security;
l Employment of women;
l Employment of children and young persons;
l Migrant workers;
l Indigenous and tribal peoples;
l Others (such as seafarers, plantation workers etc.).
It is obvious that not all ILO Conventions and Recommendations adopted in the
past 81 years are considered equally useful today. The ILO Governing Body has repeatedly
examined existing ILS and classified them according to their current relevance
(see Appendix 2: Summary table on decisions taken regarding International
Labour Conventions and Recommendations, from GB.820/LILS/WP/PRS/1/2).
Eight Conventions in the category “basic human rights”, which are called “ILO
fundamental Conventions (see box below), are considered particularly important for
social and economic development. This is because the recognition of the fundamental
labour principles and rights they contain is seen as a precondition and a catalyst for the
application of other ILS. In recent years, consensus on the need to promote respect of
these fundamental Conventions has grown within and outside the ILO. The following
major developments are to be mentioned in this regard:
l A ratification campaign regarding the fundamental Conventions, which started in
1995, has yielded significant results (these instruments have the largest number of
ratifications of ILO Conventions).
l The ILO Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work and its Follow-up,
which reflects and seeks to promote the principles contained in the fundamental
Conventions, was adopted in 1998.
l The Global Compact, which was launched in 1999 by the UN Secretary General as
a joint initiative of the UN and business to strengthen the human dimension of the
global economy, focuses in its labour chapter on the principles of fundamental
Conventions.
l Other international organizations, such as OECD, WTO and the World Bank, in
their own activities, have taken an increasing interest in the ILO fundamental Conventions
and their operational implications.