Child Labour in Latin America

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

Demographic Ageing and Employment in India

[Excerpt] This study by Irudaya Rajan brings to light the current and emerging issues concerning the implications of demographic change on the labour market in India. While population ageing is a major achievement of our times it presents major challenges for the world of work that need to be addressed. With 90 million persons over 60 years of age, India has the second largest population of older people in the world. Furthermore, between now and 2050 the Indian population over 60 years of age will almost quadruple. The low level of benefits and their limited coverage push large numbers of older people (particularly older women) to continue working in the informal economy. The combination of old-age, lack of access to decent work, poverty and exclusion is therefore of great concern. This India study discusses the main economic and labour market issues and implications related to population ageing in India, and presents an overview of current policy responses. Section 1 of the study describes the main current and future demographic trends. Section 2 analyses overall employment and labour market situation of the older persons. Section 3 focuses on the poverty incidence in the old age in urban and rural areas. Section 4 deals with the main challenges of the social security system and provides an overview of the current pension reform. Section 5 presents the two main national policies targeting older people in India. The final section puts forward main policy suggestions towards ensuring a secure and decent old age for the Indian population

Child Labour in Europe

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

Global Employment Trends: January 2009

[Excerpt] The global financial crisis has triggered a serious slowdown in world economic growth including recession in the largest industrialized countries. Enterprises have stopped hiring and many are laying off workers in considerable numbers. This report examines what we know already about the impact of the crisis on jobs and what we could expect from several possible scenarios of the way it might evolve in the year ahead. In 2008, an estimated 6.0 per cent of the world’s workers were not working but looking for a job, up from 5.7 per cent in 2007. Experience shows that the longer people stay out of work the more their “employability” deteriorates, making it progressively harder to get back into work. This is especially worrying for young workers who may get trapped into a lifetime of weak attachment to the labour market alternating between low paid insecure work and outright unemployment. In many developing countries well over half of the workforce is employed in conditions that fall short of decent work, and breaking out of such situations is at the core of the global development challenge set out in the Millennium Declaration and its poverty-reducing goals. This report utilizes working poor and those in vulnerable employment (i.e. unpaid contributing family workers and own-account workers) which are workers most likely to be characterized by low and insecure employment, low earnings and productivity to help better understand labour market trends in developing economies. By the end of 2008 working poverty, vulnerable employment and unemployment were beginning to rise as the effects of the slowdown spread. If the recession deepens in 2009, as many forecasters expect, the global jobs crisis will worsen sharply. Furthermore, we can expect that for many of those who manage to keep a job, earnings and other conditions of employment will deteriorate. A central part of people’s lives is at work, and whether women and men have decent work has a significant impact on individual, family and community well-being. The absence of decent and productive work is the primary cause of poverty and social instability. The trends summarized in this report are therefore extremely worrying and serve to highlight the importance of an internationally coordinated effort to stop the slowdown and start the global economy on to a much more sustainable path. The assessment in this issue of Global Employment Trends is based on an analysis of labour market data that are available to date. This is still limited for the majority of countries and as more information becomes available it will be important to review the scale and pace of trends. Alternative scenarios for selected labour market indicators in 2008 and 2009 illustrate what might happen in labour markets if currently available economic forecasts are further revised downwards as seems likely. This report starts with an overview of economic events that are shaping labour market outcomes. Thereafter, an analysis of recent labour market developments is presented based on currently available information (see Annex 1 for tables referred to in this report; Annex 2 for scenarios; Annex 3 for regional figures and groupings of economies; and Annex 4 for a note on the methodology used to produce world and regional estimates). A separate section is dedicated to the projections of labour market indicators for 2008 and 2009 (see Annex 5 for methodological details). A final section concludes, and highlights a number of policy considerations

Child Labour Stories

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

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

The end of child labour: Within reach: Global Report under the Follow-up to the ILO Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work

The report focuses on the decline of child labor, and argues for its ultimate abolition with effective policy implementation and cooperative efforts

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

Girls in Mining: Research Findings from Ghana, Niger, Peru, and United Republic of Tanzania

[Excerpt] Research carried out by the International Labour Organization’s International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour (ILO–IPEC) between April and December 2006 has produced evidence that girls as well as boys are involved in hazardous work in the small-scale mining industry. Due to the fact that boys are statistically more likely to be involved in hazardous child labour than girls, 1 the appalling work of girls is often overlooked. In the small-scale mining industry especially, little is understood about the roles and activities of girls and the effect that this has on their lives and livelihoods. Not much is known of the dynamics that brought them into this type of employment and consequently what could lead them out of it. The issue of girl child labour in mining is largely unknown, it is often not fully recognized by the law, and missed by the intervention services and the media. New evidence presented in this paper challenges the general understanding of gender roles in small-scale mining communities. It forces us to acknowledge a more intricate reality for boys and girls as the evidence shows that the involvement of girl child labour in mining is much more frequent and far-reaching than was previously recognized. The assumption that girls are only involved in prostitution and domestic work is incorrect; girls are involved in tasks related to the extraction, transportation and processing stages of mining as well as in other mining-related jobs such as selling food and supplies to the miners. The gender balance appears to be shifting. Girls are involved in more and more hazardous occupations deeper into the interiors of the mine, but at the same time they are also upheld to their traditional female responsibilities in the home. The result is that girls in mining communities are forced to juggle their domestic tasks with other paid or non-paid work. Often, girls are performing just as hazardous tasks as boys, working longer hours, with a greater workload and often have a lesser chance of schooling, withdrawal or rehabilitation