Himalayan News Service

Kathmandu, March 25:

The 292nd meeting session of the governing body of International Labour Office (ILO) concluded yesterday in Geneva. Tripartite delegates held wide-ranging discussions on issues ranging from respect of basic rights in Nepal, Myanmar, Zimbabwe and other countries to strategies for new partnership to promote fair globalisation. Regarding recent developments in Nepal, the governing body issued a statement saying ‘trade union activities have been severely limited, with any union meeting requiring prior authorisation from public officials, which is contrary to fundamental ILO standards’. The committee drew special attention to the case of Nepal, concerning the arrest and detention of trade unionists, significant prohibitions on the right to strike of workers engaged in a variety of services, restriction on the right of workers to stage peaceful demonstration and to put up banners.

The committee requested the government to take necessary measures to amend the

‘Essential Services Act’ so as to ensure that the power under the act was limited to prohibiting

strikes in essential services in the strict sense. During the three week session, Juan Carlos I, king of Spain, addressed the governing body delegates and described the extent of child labour as ‘appalling’ and called for it to be vigorously combated as part of the effort to give

‘human dimension’ to the process of globalisation in his speech. The governing body also recommended a provisional programme and budget level of $568.6 million for the 2006-07 biennium, estimated at the 2004-05 budget rate of exchange of 1.34 Swiss francs to the US dollar.

In constant dollars, the 2006-07 budget proposes a moderate growth of 1.1 per cent to address institutional investment needs and extraordinary items. The working party also agreed that the ILO should strengthen its partnership with the other multilateral agencies to develop more coherent policies, particularly by the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organisation and other actors within the respective mandates of each institution. It also called for the preparation of a paper on the linkages between growth, investment and decent work to be presented to the governing body in November. The Governing Body’s Working Party on the social dimension of globalisation discussed proposals for follow-up by the ILO to a report of the World Commission on the Social Dimension of Globalisation, released in February 2004.

Philippe Seguin, chairman of the governing body said that the working party had reached

‘clear and strong consensus’ on promotion of decent work as a global goal as the ILO’s distinctive contribution to fair globalisation. Building blocks of the new programme and budget are its focus on decent work as a global goal and interrelated actions needed at the local, national, regional and international levels to make it happen, including decent work community

programmes. The programme reinforces and deepens four strategic objectives of the ILO.