Global Advocacy - ILO

The ILO promotes dialogue at the global level between its own constituents - representatives of governments, employers and workers - on the potential employment effects of trade policies and on measures that maximize opportunities for employment and decent work. The ILO also engages with other agencies to promote policy coherence between trade policies, on the one hand, and labour market policies, on the other. This requires, inter alia, ensuring that the objective of advancing opportunities for women and men to obtain decent work is integrated into sustainable development plans and strategies, including in trade and trade-related policies.

Working Party on the Social Dimension of Globalization (WPSDG)

The aim of the WPSDG is to provide a forum for the ILO’s Governing Body to discuss and formulate policies aimed at enhancing the social dimension of trade and related issues. The WPSDG is concerned with formulating policy orientations within the ILO to support the efforts of its constituents to adopt an integrated approach to, among other issues, trade and decent work. Such an approach ensures the simultaneous advancement of economic objectives, the creation of employment, the extension of social protection, the protection of workers’ rights, and social dialogue.

The WPSDG meets twice each year at the ILO Governing Body (composed of representatives of workers’ and employers’ organizations and governments from different parts of the world). Background papers are discussed and policy orientations are formulated for adoption. From time to time, other international organizations from either outside or within the UN System are invited to address the WPSDG.

The WPSDG has facilitated consensus between the ILO and the WTO on how the interaction between trade policies and labour market policies may either support the possibilities that exist to create employment or prevent these opportunities from being realized. This significantly advanced the mainstreaming of employment objectives and labour market policy in the international policy arena.