Promoting the MDGs: the role of employment and decent work.

• Author: Somavia, Juan
• Position: Millennium Development Goals

The 2000 UN Millennium Declaration, from which the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) emerged, focuses on development and poverty eradication, through peace and security, human rights, democracy and good governance. It identifies the fundamental values of freedom, equality, solidarity, tolerance, respect for nature and shared responsibility. Through the Declaration, UN Member States pledge to ensure greater coherence in policies across the international system towards common development goals. The Declaration builds on earlier international commitments, such as productive and freely chosen employment, which were the outcome of the 1995 World Summit for Social Development, held in Copenhagen.

The Decent Work Agenda of the International Labour Organization (ILO), comprising employment creation, rights at work, social protection and social dialogue, is an integrated approach that embraces all these elements. Freely chosen and productive employment with a fair income is the principal way out of poverty and is fundamental to peace and security, and above all to human dignity. Rights at work help empower individuals to escape from poverty and guarantee a path of development that does not allow labour abuses. Social protection, both at work and in the absence of work, safeguards against falling back into poverty. And social dialogue is the basis for democracy and good governance, ensuring the participation of both employers' and workers' organizations in shaping government policies for poverty reduction.

The goal of decent work for all and the pledges in the Millennium Declaration go hand in hand. The ILO Constitution stresses that "poverty anywhere constitutes a danger to prosperity everywhere" and that "universal and lasting peace can be established only if it is based upon social justice". Together with other partners in development, the ILO efforts towards decent work for all aim at the "more peaceful, prosperous and just world" envisaged in the Declaration.

Decent work deficits. According to recent ILO estimates, more than half of the world's 3 billion labour force is either unemployed or live on less than $2 a day. Youth unemployment is around 80 million, almost 40 per cent of the total unemployed. Women in most parts of the world still remain an underpaid and overworked human resource and constitute 60 per cent of the working poor--a ratio that is unfortunately showing an increasing trend. The growing number of natural and man-made crises...