India and a hundred years of ILO

Very much like us humans, institutions are mortal too. They too are born, grow, peak and die. The similarities go further. Like us, most institutions die in their infancy. And only a few—very few—live up to be a hundred years old. It is then something very heartening that the United Nation's Specialised Agency, the International Labour Organisation—more commonly known to us as ILO—has completed a hundred this year 2019.

Yes, ILO was set up one hundred years ago in 1919, having come into being as a part of the League of Nations that was established under the Treaty of Versailles — the treaty that ended the first world war.

It is then something of a contradiction that the League of Nations itself died young, within 20 years of its birth. It could not withstand the onslaught of Nazism and Hitler's gruesome ambition. Like any ordinary building in the Poland of 1939 that Hitler invaded to inaugurate the Second World War, the League of Nations collapsed when the first bombs rained on Warsaw. But not ILO. ILO survived the League of Nations and the bloody Second World War, one of the very few organisations—a significant other being the World Health Organisation (WHO)—within the League of Nations to do so. And when in 1945, the United Nations was born post-San Francisco Conference, ILO became one of the first specialised agencies of the UN.

A year earlier in 1944, reeling from the genocide of Jews in Europe that followed in the wake of Nazi Germany, the Declaration of Philadelphia had restated the traditional objectives of ILO and then gone on to add a significant other, the centrality of human rights to social policy. I was profoundly fortunate to have worked in ILO for 20 years and oftentimes wondered where the longevity and the resilience that has enabled ILO to last for so long, comes from. And I have realised that the resilience and the longevity come from the fundamentals upon which ILO has been built, the fundamental being the importance that ILO has always placed, then as now on promoting and ensuring social justice. It comes from ILO's strong underlying belief that lasting peace comes not from growth and development alone, but when such growth and development go hand in hand with social justice and equity for all. As the Philadelphia Declaration of 1944 would remind us, there can also be no social justice or equity without human rights. For growth without equity, and social justice that is strongly based on human rights and fundamental human freedoms is unsustainable.

ILO's strength comes from its strong certainty and conviction that poverty anywhere constitutes a threat to prosperity everywhere. It believes that prosperity cannot be sustained merely through government policies and programmes (though these are very important) or through profit-making, job-giving businesses, industries and corporate (though these are also very important) but that sustainable prosperity and therefore lasting peace will happen only when, governments, businesses, industries and corporates join hands with workers and employees to establish a 3-party, or as we in ILO would say a tripartite collaboration, where governments, employers and employees can work with each other for equitable growth for everyone, everywhere.

ILO then is the only UN Agency that is tripartite in nature with equal representation for the governments of countries that are its members as well as representation for the employers and workers of every such member country. Thus, while the UN and its other specialised agencies such as for example, the UNICEF, WHO, etc., have only the governments represented in them, in ILO, not only the governments but representatives of employers and workers organisations of all member countries are also members of ILO.

How then does ILO work?

Just as our Parliament pass national laws which are enforceable in the country, ILO lays down international standards which are international laws. These international laws come in the form of ILO Conventions. ILO adopts various international Conventions at it's annual International Labour Conference (ILC) that is held every year in Geneva in the month of June. ILC is truly a world tripartite parliament consisting of governments, employers, and workers representatives of its 187 member countries. The International Labour Conference then is the world's largest forum of governments, employers and workers and no doubt represents the largest number of peoples across the world.

The International Conventions that ILO adopts are international laws, or international standards as they are called, which once ratified by a member country has the force of an international treaty and is binding on the ratifying country. Let me pause here to show how much of ILOs work in the past 100 years is today an unconscious part of our global collective thinking. Many of what we today consider common-place social thoughts, which are an inherent part of our thinking, are actually contributions of ILO, absorbed globally across countries, through the many Conventions that ILO has adopted in these years.

Thus, the concept of 8 hours work, 8 hours rest and 8 hours recreation, the concept of payment for overtime, work beyond 8 hours, the concept of rests after certain intervals of work, are contributions of ILO to our thinking and to our laws. These thoughts were of course derived by small and large groups agitating against long hours of work in sweat-shops across Europe and the US. But their universal acceptance by governments and businesses and most vitally as an inalienable right of all of us – for verily we are all workers – was ILO's contribution. The concept of equal pay for equal work, which lay the foundation of gender equity in the workplace is another contribution of ILO to our thinking and laws. While no doubt UNICEF and UN itself have played a great part in universalising the concept of child rights, the abolition of child labour and the concept that the right place for a child is school and not workplace is itself yet another contribution of ILO's conventions. The abolition of forced labour and bonded labour is another ILO contribution. Similarly, the essential necessity for social protection and for putting in place social safety nets that are now gaining ground even in India is a contribution of ILO to global social thought. During the 100 years of its existence, ILO has adopted 189 Conventions that lay down standards at the workplace thus contributing to social justice, equity, and peace. It is then worth repeating that ILO derives its strength, resilience, and longevity from the principles of equity and social justice linked to human rights.

India is particularly fortunate to have had a very long association with ILO, and vice versa. ILO has benefitted from India's many contributions to it. India is a Founding Member of ILO when way back in 1919 India was still a British colony. India and ILO have since then influenced each other in many ways. In 1928, ILO opened an office in New Delhi. Since then, there has been a strong and continuing consistency between ILO's and India's development and social goals. The Indian Labour Conference which meets regularly every year is itself modelled on ILO's ILC. India has been the recipient of many important Technical Cooperation Programmes of ILO. India, for example, was the first country to join ILO's International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC). For many years India continued to have the largest IPEC programme anywhere in the world.

However, there are some downsides in India's relations with ILO as well. For example, the pace of ratification of ILO's conventions has been rather tardy, the country has ratified only 47 of ILO's 189 Conventions. Notably and a bit strangely, India has not yet ratified ILO Convention No. 87 which ensures the freedom to form associations and the protection of workers to organise. This despite our Constitution's Article 19 granting every citizen the fundamental right to freedom of association.

Another serious shortcoming has been historical and continuing deficiency of Indian officials in ILO, especially at the senior-most levels. Because of the UN's convoluted system of basing the appointment of its officials on an archaic quota system, India has always had far fewer officials in ILO than its economic and political strength, its population, workforce, and particularly its workforce in the non-formal sectors for whom social justice and equity are paramount, and the globally proven leadership skills and abilities that Indian managers have shown across global corporates and business would have prescribed.

The quota system ensures that not only the number of Indians in ILO continues to be very insignificant, but that they do not rise very high in the system. For a long time after 1919 when India joined ILO, India had only 3 Indian officials there. Even at the time of Independence, India had only 6 officials. This disappointing trend continues, and the numbers of Indians in ILO continue to be insignificant even today.

Also very notably, in its 100 years of membership to ILO, there was never ever an Indian as the Director General of ILO. This is a glaring lacuna that needs to be immediately rectified. In the centennial year of India's association with ILO, the government of India should strongly push to ensure that the next Director General of the ILO is from India.

So what is the future of the ILO? The answer is simple. So long as there is work and a workplace, so long as there are jobs, and businesses, industry and corporates, so long as there are employees and employers, ILO will continue to exist, because of its objectives of bringing in a lasting peace through social justice and equity for all.

Finally, it is interesting to recall that ILO was the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1969, fifty years ago, fifty years after it was established in 1919. If 50 years ago, ILO deserved the Nobel Peace Prize, in today's angry world of protectionism, of barriers to migration, of isolationism, of continuing gender inequity, of anti-people and anti-worker sentiment, ILO deserves the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize; not for itself, but for emphasising the continuing importance of social justice and human rights for sustainable prosperity and lasting peace across the world. And most of all, for ensuring that poverty, which exists in abundant measure across the world today, does not pose a threat to the visibly growing prosperity in many pockets around the world.

I hope that ILO wins the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize so that it can strengthen its continuing fight for these outcomes. Is the Nobel Peace Committee Listening?

(The author is a former Indian and UN Civil Servant and worked with ILO in India and abroad for 20 years. The views expressed are strictly personal)