ILO Director-General Guy Ryder

The annual conference of the International Labor Organization (ILO) opened on Monday, June 10 in Geneva. On this occasion, the ILO has placed at the center of its work the fight against harassment and a declaration on the future of work considering the new challenges such as climate change and new technologies. This annual conference is an opportunity to celebrate the 100th anniversary of this tripartite United Nations, bringing together governments, employers and unions. Until June 21, closing day of the conference that will see the intervention of the Portuguese UN Secretary General Antonio Guiterres, 5,700 delegates from 187 member states must jointly develop a long-awaited “Centennial Declaration.” “

ILO: “No sustainable universal peace without social justice”

The ILO was born on April 11, 1919. Its founding, driven by the signatory states of the Treaty of Versailles, has several objectives: security, humanitarian, political and economic. In its preamble, the ILO states, inter alia, that “universal and lasting peace can be founded only on the basis of social justice”. The preamble also affirms the need to defend freedom of association and the right to collective bargaining. From its inception, the ILO has placed among its central objectives the fight against forced labor and exploitation of children, equal pay for equal work, the prevention of unemployment and the right to social protection for workers and their families.

Its first director is the French Albert Thomas, former militant unionist and cooperator, leader of the SFIO. Under his leadership, the ILO adopted in its first two years of existence nine international conventions and ten very ambitious directives on labor regulation. In the aftermath of the Great Depression, the United States joins the ILO, while remaining outside the League of Nations. In May 1944, the Annual Conference of the ILO adopts the Declaration of Philadelphia. This founding text, asserting in its first article that “work is not a commodity” intends to secure international recognition to the importance of economic and social issues. The declaration stresses the importance of upholding the dignity of workers “regardless of race, creed or gender”.

As a UN specialized agency in 1946, the ILO is the only institution of the League of Nations to survive the Second World War. In 1969, the institution received the Nobel Peace Prize for its fiftieth anniversary. Since then, her work has been regularly recognized, particularly for her global program to combat child labor. Its annual report is a first-rate source for measuring the reality of global work, informal and without rights to social protection or freedom of association for 60% of the world’s population

Since 2012, the Director General of the ILO is the British Guy Ryder, former Secretary General of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU). He was reappointed for 5 years in November 2016.