1.2 Situational analysis

1.2. SITUATIONAL ANALYSIS

Several factors shape the ILO’s institutional context. The period covered by this assessment (2017-20) was marked first by the ILO’s Centenary Initiatives, then by the Centenary Declaration for the Future of Work, and finally by its response to the COVID-19 crisis. Leadership remained stable, with the organisation’s Director-General, who began his first fiveyear term in October 2012, re-elected for a second five-year term starting in October 2017.

The ILO’s International Labour Conference adopted the Centenary Declaration for the Future of Work at its 108th (Centenary) Session on 21 June 2019 (ILO, n.d.-f). Until this date, the ILO focused heavily on seven centenary initiatives set out by the Director-General in 2013 in the report Towards the ILO centenary: Realities, renewal and tripartite commitment (ILO, 2013b). These included the Standards Initiative, the End to Poverty Initiative, the Women at Work Initiative, the Enterprises Initiative, the Green Initiative, the Governance Initiative and the Future of Work Initiative. The latter became central to the centenary activities (ILO, 2016b).

In the Strategic Plan for 2018-21, the ILO lists the Centenary Initiatives as among the main factors shaping its institutional context. Other internal contextual factors identified in the strategic plan included the 2008 ILO Declaration on Social Justice for a Fair Globalization (Social Justice Declaration), the 2016 Resolution on Advancing Social Justice through Decent Work, the 2030 Agenda and the ILO’s internal reform process (ILO, 2016b).

The Resolution and the Social Justice Declaration inform the actions of the ILO and its member states, including their role in the 2030 Agenda. The Resolution also signified the restatement of the ILO’s social justice mandate expressed as the strategic objectives of the Decent Work Agenda (see Section 1.1). In order to implement the resolution, the ILO was required to strengthen the existing RBM framework, the Decent Work Country Programmes, institutional capacity building, research, information collection and sharing, and partnerships and policy coherence for decent work (ILO, 2016b).

The Centenary Declaration is the result of the Future of Work initiative, which was implemented through a three-stage process between 2016 and 2019 (see Figure 5). From 2016 to 2017, some 113 countries participated in a broad-based national or supra-national tripartite dialogue on the future of work following an invitation from the Director-General to member states. These activities constituted the first stage of the process and involved governments and worker and employer organisations. In some countries, other stakeholders such as academia, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and youth also participated in the dialogue. The countries shared reports with the ILO on the results of the dialogue, and some provided additional surveys and studies. In December 2017, the ILO published the Synthesis Report of the National Dialogues on the Future of Work (ILO, 2017c), which was prepared based on these inputs.

The outcomes of the dialogue implemented in the countries informed the work of the independent Global Commission on the Future of Work, which carried out discussions and studies during the second stage of the initiative. The ILO established the Commission in 2017 with 27 members representing business, trade unions, think tanks, government and non-governmental organisations (ILO, 2019e). The Commission prepared the report Work for a Brighter Future, which included analysis and recommendations that fed into the development of the Centenary Declaration. The ILO launched the Commission’s report in January 2019 and submitted it to the centenary session of the International Labour Conference in June 2019 for third-stage discussions (ILO, 2019f). This step comprised several events, including seven thematic forums on the future of the world of work designed to stimulate debate among the conference participants and other stakeholders such as heads of international organisations, representatives of civil society and academia, and young people (ILO, n.d.-g).

The conference adopted the Centenary Declaration for the Future of Work on 21 June 2019. On 16 September 2019, the UN General Assembly endorsed the declaration.