Child Labour Stories

Three stories of child labor presented by the International Labour Organization (ILO)

Child Labour in Latin America

Fact sheet on child labor in Latin America, compiled by the International Labour Organization (ILO) in 2005

Doing Business in Addis Ababa: Case Studies of Women Entrepreneurs with Disabilities in Ethiopia

[From Preface] The ILO Technical Cooperation Project, Developing Entrepreneurship among Women with Disabilities , is being implemented in Ethiopia by the Ethiopian Federation of Persons with Disabilities (EFPD) and the Tigray Disabled Veterans Association (TDVA). The project represents a new approach to technical cooperation by the ILO in the field of disability, an approach that is innovative and flexible, based on partnership with local non-governmental organizations of persons with disabilities, and designed and implemented in close consultation with training providers, micro-finance institutions, and national and local government authorities. The ultimate goal is the development of an effective strategy by which women with disabilities can optimise their incomeearning potential and escape from poverty

First Synthesis Report on the Working Conditions Situation in Cambodia’s Garment Sector

As the first synthesis report of the project to improve working conditions in Cambodia, it provides initial findings for 30 factories. The project is the result of a combined effort, orchestrated by the ILO, between the Ministry of Social Affairs, Labour, Vocational Training and Youth Rehabilitation (MOSALVY), the Garment Manufacturers Association in Cambodia (GMAC), the Cambodian trade union movement, and the United States

InFocus Programme on Promoting the Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work: Freedom of Association Collective Bargaining: Questions and Answers

ILO\u27s questions and answers sheet on freedom of association and collective bargainin

Optimal Self-Organization

We present computational and analytical results indicating that systems of driven entities with repulsive interactions tend to reach an optimal state associated with minimal interaction and minimal dissipation. Using concepts from non-equilibrium thermodynamics and game theoretical ideas, we generalize this finding to an even wider class of self-organizing systems which have the ability to reach a state of maximal overall ``success''. This principle is expected to be relevant for driven systems in physics like sheared granular media, but it is also applicable to biological, social, and economic systems, for which only a limited number of quantitative principles are available yet.Comment: This is the detailled revised version of a preprint on ``Self-Organised Optimality'' (cond-mat/9903319). For related work see http://www.theo2.physik.uni-stuttgart.de/helbing.html and http://angel.elte.hu/~vicsek

Did the financial sector profit at the expense of the rest of the economy? Evidence from the United States

The crisis which originated in the US financial sector in 2007 and subsequently spread to the real economy caused severe economic and social damage around the world. Governments have responded by providing fiscal support to the economy, undertaking exceptional monetary policy measures and introducing programmes targeted to vulnerable groups. In addition, considerable efforts have been made to recapitalise banks. Important as they are, these measures do not tackle the deeper influence of financial markets and institutions in the operation of the real economy. The purpose of this paper is to highlight the need for reforms in this neglected area. The paper confirms the finding of the World of Work Report 2009 that the financial sector has grown beyond reasonable boundaries and its practices have spread to the nonfinancial economy. For example, in the last 20 years, financial sector’s share of total corporate profits doubled, reaching as high as 44 per cent in 2002. The study also demonstrates that in the United States, the growing influence of the financial sector has led to a reduction in the share of business investment as a percent of value added by as much as 2 percentage points in the last three decades. More research is needed to shed further light on the causal linkages and to identify the reforms that could help ensure that the financial sector encourages investment --thereby growth and employment-- rather than hurting it. However, the finding of this paper is suggestive and important for today’s debate on sustainable crisis responses

Modeling Virtual Organization Architecture with the Virtual Organization Breeding Methodology

While Enterprise Architecture Modeling (EAM) methodologies become more and more popular, an EAM methodology tailored to the needs of virtual organizations (VO) is still to be developed. Among the most popular EAM methodologies, TOGAF has been chosen as the basis for a new EAM methodology taking into account characteristics of VOs presented in this paper. In this new methodology, referred as Virtual Organization Breeding Methodology (VOBM), concepts developed within the ECOLEAD project, e.g. the concept of Virtual Breeding Environment (VBE) or the VO creation schema, serve as fundamental elements for development of VOBM. VOBM is a generic methodology that should be adapted to a given VBE. VOBM defines the structure of VBE and VO architectures in a service-oriented environment, as well as an architecture development method for virtual organizations (ADM4VO). Finally, a preliminary set of tools and methods for VOBM is given in this paper.Comment: 9 pages, 4 figure