ILO
International Labour Organization, ILO was founded in 1919 as part of the Treaty of Versailles. In 1946 it became a specialized agency of the UN. The ILO is headquartered in Geneva and has a system of field offices around the world.
Activities
The ILO is a labour organization with the goal of improving conditions for workers around the world. This is to be achieved by
- creating strategies to promote basic human rights
- improving labour standards in the workplace as well as living conditions
- increasing employment opportunities.
Structure
The ILO has a unique tripartite structure, where member states are represented not only by governments but include delegates of employee and employer associations.
The ILO consists of three main bodies:
- The International Labour Conference
- The Governing Body
- International Labour Office.
The International Labour Conference
The International Labour Conference is the supreme body of the ILU. Delegations from all member states meet annually in June to
- discuss social and labour questions
- establish and approve international labour standards
- adopt the working programmes and budget
- elect the Governing Body.
One of the most important tasks of the Labour Conference is to adopt conventions and recommendations which will form international labour law.
The Governing Body
The Governing Body is the executive organ. It decides on policy, controls the International Labour Office and elects the Director-General.
The International Labour Office
The International Labour Office is the ILO secretariat with administrative and information services.
More on ILO
- ILO:s Constitution.
- ILO Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work.
- The ILO website provides multilingual information about the programmes and activities, full text documents and reports, labour statistics, ILO recommendations and conventions, as well as access to relevant databases. The section Publications gives an overview of the most essential ILO publications.
- ILO journals:
- World of Work Report is published annually by the International Institute for Labour Studies, the research arm of the ILO.
- International Labour Conference (ILC). Dokumentation and information on the International Labour Conferences (ILC).
- Yearbook of labour statistics is an annual compilation of labour statistics from over 190 countries.
- ILO and Statistics and databases:
- Child Labour Statistics compiles websites on national and international statistics.
- ILOSTAT. Database of labour statistics that provides annual and infra-annual labour market statistics for over 100 indicators and 230 countries, areas and territories. It includes data series on global labour statistics from the former database LABORSTA.
- NORMLEX is a information system providing open access to the latest information on ILO international labour standards, as well as national labour and social security laws. It includes the NATLEX database and information contained in the APPLIS, ILOLEX and Libsynd databases.
- Labordoc is the online catalogue of the ILO Library with an extensive collection of references to books, articles and reports in the social and labour fields. ILO publications in fulltext.
- Global Compact and labour rights.
- UN Pulse #ilo. Dag Hammarskjöld library blog on current issues, including links to relevant documents and websites.
ILO was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize 1969.
Key UN documents
- UN Charter in Swedish | in English
- UN System Chart
- Yearbook of the United Nations
- Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Swedish | in English
- Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action
- Statue of the International Court of Justice
UN documents and publications in catalogues and databases
- United Nations Digital Library offers UN documents and open access publications, UN voting data and speeches, UN maps, Content in 6+ languages. Replaces the traditional online catalogue UNBISnet.
- UN iLibrary UN publications online covering different topics.
- ODS full-text UN documents published from 1993 onward and scanned documents published between 1946 and 1993 in the official languages of the UN.
- Daily list of documents (ODS). Documents published for the day, with full text links, can be found in the United Nations full text database ODS.
- UNBIS Thesaurus a multilingual database of the controlled vocabulary used to describe UN documents.
- Index to proceedings is an annual bibliographic guide to the proceedings and documentation of the major UN organs. The index includes:
- a list of all documents
- a comprehensive subject index
- an index to speeches
- a voting chart of resolutions
- United Nations Documents Index (United Nations Digital Library) References to all documents by subject area are published. A collection of indexes is held by the Dag Hammarskjöld and Law Library, Uppsala, and the Libraries at UN Headquarters in New York and Geneva.