Juan Somavia

Director-General, ILO

My presence here - accompanied by a tripartite delegation of government, worker and employer representatives - is an expression of the ILO’s institutional commitment to the needs of the Least Developed Countries.

This morning we have again confirmed the consensus that poverty eradication should be a primary goal worldwide for economic and social policy. My message to you today is that one of the best ways to achieve that objective is through employment. Employment is the main source of income. It is a route out of poverty for women and men and their families everywhere. Yet, astonishing though it may seem, employment is often forgotten in designing strategies to reduce poverty. But we all know that without access to productive work, poverty is insurmountable. With work, there is hope.

But it’s not just any employment. There are 500 million people who are working but not earning enough to bring their families above the most minimal poverty line. They are the world’s “working poor”. What is needed is not just work, but decent work. What does that mean? Well, let’s listen to what people living in poverty themselves say and think. The World Bank’s recent book Voices of the Poor: Can anyone hear us? Helps us to do just that:

A poor woman from Cambodia tells us:

“Poverty means working for more than 18 hours a day, but still not earning enough to feed myself, my husband, and two children”.

The world is full of people who are underemployed and overworked.

A voice from Georgia:

“Poverty is lack of freedom, enslaved by crushing daily burden, by depression and fear of what the future will bring”.

Uncertainty and insecurity undermine peoples’ lives. So moving towards basic social protection is essential to overcome poverty.

A poor woman from South Africa says:

“Everyone is allowed to voice his or her opinion. In many cases I am cut off while I am voicing my opinion”.

Poverty and exclusion are two sides of the same coin. Voice, representation and freedom of association are essential for poor people to defend their interests and form part of their community. And gender equality is at the heart of it.

Another voice from Niger sums it up:

“A happy person is an employed person”.

All of this together makes up the aspiration for decent work. It’s work which provides an adequate income and leaves time for other dimensions of life, offers security for you and your family, respects your rights, gives you a voice and provides a route to social integration. It’s a way of bringing together the economic and social goals in people’s lives. But instead, what we have is a global decent work deficit, expressed in huge gaps.

• The employment gap is enormous. Today there are 160 million people openly unemployed and some 1 billion underemployed. It’s tough for young people everywhere to get into decent jobs - 500 million new jobs are needed over the next decade. The challenge is particularly acute in Africa. But the paradox is that millions of children are at work rather than at school.

• The rights gap shows up in the fact that almost 2 countries out of 5 have serious or severe problems of freedom of association. Yet that freedom is essential if people are to be able to organize to demand their rights. There is widespread forced labour, and pervasive discrimination.

• The social protection gap is indicated by the fact that only some 20 per cent of the world’s workers have truly adequate social protection. Meanwhile over 3000 people die every day because of accidents or diseases connected with their work.

• The social dialogue gap reflects shortfalls in both organization and institutions, and often in attitudes. In the absence of sound social dialogue, it is hard to achieve shared commitment and even ownership of development policies.

For all these reasons, today, in the ILO we have defined our primary goal as the promotion of opportunities for women and men to obtain decent and productive work in conditions of freedom, equity, security and human dignity. It is as much a personal aspiration as a development goal. At the Special Session of the UN General Assembly “Copenhagen +5", the entire international community endorsed the Ilk’s Decent Work Agenda.

To reduce these deficits we need a relevant and practical policy agenda to promote decent work. It must be clear that solutions have to be tailor-made to national realities and economic possibilities. But decent work provides a powerful “road map”, a goal and a guide for the development process.

The Ilk’s policy agenda is a response to these problems and directly relevant for LDCs. Here are some of its key elements:

• Macroeconomic policies should promote employment-intensive growth, particularly in agriculture and the informal economy

• Employment strategies should aim to support entrepreneurship, self-employment and small firms as a way out of poverty

• Empowering people living in poverty and enhancing their skills is the best way to increase their productivity

• Time bound programmes are needed to eliminate the worst forms of child labour and get children into school. It is a moral imperative

• The fight against HIV/AIDS has to be taken to the workplace

• Equity and social justice are good for productivity; and those values must be built into the global economy too.

Development cooperation stemming from this Conference, based on special and differential measures for LDCs, should provide concrete, innovative and cost-effective solutions. The “deliverables” proposed by the ILO aim to do just that. We have chosen a small number of proposals with proven impact, which can meet the demands, we have heard. They will be discussed in the session on human resources development and employment on Friday.

Is all of this possible? I believe it is. It is what people right to development is all about. Can least developed countries do it on their own? Certainly not. That’s the reason for this Conference. The international community must support the LDCs efforts with the economic means for development. It must deliver on its promises. Everything but arms, debt cancellation and other initiatives are good beginnings. But we need to go beyond with sustained, untiring and truly practical commitment, as Presidents Obasanjo, Konaré and Mkapa said so clearly today. The ILO is there for you as a partner and a team player within the UN system, to work together according to your priorities, according to what you want to do.