The International Labour Organisation (ILO) has called on countries to support the United Nations’ Global Accelerator for Jobs and Social Protection initiative in order to ensure a human-centred recovery from the pandemic and empower people to navigate the challenges of a rapidly changing world of work.
ILO Director-General, Guy Ryder, who gave the charge in a statement to the IMF and World Bank Group’s ongoing annual meetings, recalled how the pandemic had been particularly devastating for the most vulnerable, especially women, workers in the informal economy and children, and underlined that they face a very different future depending on where they live.
The Global Accelerator for Jobs and Social was launched by the UN Secretary-General, jointly with the ILO, during the UN’s General Assembly last month to increase investments in universal social protection, decent work and a green and just transition.
Ryder said: “The recovery is deeply uneven, spurred by vast differences between advanced and developing economies in access to vaccines, the fiscal capacity and ability of governments to respond, a growing digital divide and the threat of a looming debt crisis.
“This is creating a great divergence, which puts the recovery itself at risk and undermines trust and solidarity”, the ILO chief added.
According to him, currently an estimated 8.8 percent of total working hours were lost globally in 2020, equivalent to the hours worked in one year by 255 million full-time workers.
The ILO boss noted that governments across the world had implemented an unprecedented employment and social protection response to protect people’s health, employment and incomes, but these measures remained insufficient to mitigate the full impact of the crisis and have left 53.1 per cent of the global population unprotected – some 4.14 billion people, declared Ryder.
He stressed: “It is time to show solidarity and to increase investments in universal social protection, decent work and gender equal societies.”
The ILO Director-General encouraged countries to take a “high road” to social protection by investing in universal, comprehensive, adequate and sustainable social protection systems, in line with human rights principles and international social security standards, pointing out that without adequate financing and political will, governments could fall back on a “low road” turn, marked by minimal benefits and wide coverage gaps.
Ryder said: “It is time to show solidarity and to increase investments in universal social protection, decent work and gender equal societies.”
According to him, the advances made through the Financing for Development Initiative needed to be taken forward and to scale not just to address the imminent debt crisis, but to unleash investment in an inclusive, sustainable and resilient recovery, re-channelling the IMF’s unprecedented allocation of Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) of US$650 billion to those countries and purposes that need it most.
The ILO chief also talked about fighting climate change by creating decent work, stressing that “a green and just transition holds massive potential for all countries, particularly by investing in more sustainable and diversified economies, as well as in the creation of new productive employment opportunities.”
Ryder recalled the key initiatives the ILO had taken to lead a recovery that leaves no one behind as including, the adoption by the ILO’s 187 member-states’ representatives of a Global Call to Action for a human-centred recovery from the COVID-19 Crisis at the 109th International Labour Conference in June 2021; and the joint launching with the UN Secretary General of the Global Accelerator for Jobs and Social Protection.
Ryder hinted that in the first half of 2022, the ILO would be convening a multilateral forum with a view to reviewing progress and to scaling up commitments in support of member states’ human-centred recovery strategies, including through joint initiatives and enhanced institutional arrangements among international and regional institutions.
