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5.0 Decent work, poverty eradication and policy coherence: Working Out of Poverty

Guest post by: International Labour Organization

Article Overview: Over the next ten years, over 1 billion young people, today aged between 5 and 15, will enter the working-age population. However, the global economy is not well organized to make full use of the enormous potential of their skills, energy and ambition to fight against poverty and make development sustainable. Today’s working life offers opportunities to some, but lowpaid work, unemployment and poverty to a great many.

5.0 Decent work, poverty eradication and policy coherence: Working Out of Poverty

Over the next ten years, over 1 billion young people, today aged between
5 and 15, will enter the working-age population. However, the global
economy is not well organized to make full use of the enormous potential of
their skills, energy and ambition to fight against poverty and make development
sustainable. Today’s working life offers opportunities to some, but lowpaid
work, unemployment and poverty to a great many.
●
The world’s labour force is increasing by about 50 million people each
year, as the number of new entrants exceeds those who stop working;
97 per cent of this increase is in developing countries.
●
About half of the over 1 billion people living on US$1 a day or less in
developing and transition countries are of working age (between 15 and
64). Despite often long and hard days of toil, they do not earn enough
for themselves or their families to live above bare subsistence levels.
●
180 million people are unemployed worldwide,
1
and almost half of
them are young people aged under 24.

These alarming trends form the background to major concern about
high levels of youth unemployment all over the world, particularly in developing
countries with fast-growing populations. This concern prompted the
United Nations Millennium Summit to resolve to “develop and implement
strategies that give young people everywhere a real chance to find decent
and productive work”. Subsequently, the United Nations Secretary-General
invited the ILO to lead a Youth Employment Network to catalyse national
and international action. Building on the recommendations of a high-level
panel, the Network is focusing on employability, equal opportunities, entrepreneurship
and employment creation as key issues for national action programmes. One of the means of assuring decent work for the current and
future generations of young people has to be “making full employment an overarching goal for global economic and social strategies and for national
policies”, as emphasized by the high-level panel in its recommendations.

Let me recap some major points made in preceding chapters.
We need to view global challenges through the eyes of people living in
poverty. Progress on all the Millennium Development Goals requires action
in local communities all over the developing world to promote decent work.
Social, economic and political empowerment of people and their communities
is essential. Their fight against poverty is directly linked to the realization
of basic human rights, especially those concerned with the freedom to
work in conditions of equity, security and human dignity.

The analytical work of the ILO and experience of projects and programmes
with communities vulnerable to poverty show that we can generate
a virtuous cycle in which work is better rewarded, social and economic security
is increased and community infrastructure enhanced. For enterprises and
communities to develop, however, an enabling macroeconomic framework
that promotes growth in employment and productivity is needed. If national
strategies for poverty reduction are to succeed, they must be supported by
international action to improve developing countries’ access to export markets
and investment finance.

The theme of this concluding chapter of the report is linking local empowerment
to comprehensive pro-poor and pro-jobs national strategies and
global action for sustainable development.

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  1.19 Building trust: Working Out of Poverty
  1.0 Overview: Working Out of Poverty
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  1.17 Building partnerships: Working Out of Poverty
  4.0 Sustainable pro-poor growth and the governance of the labour market: Working Out of Poverty

Article Tags: action programmes, age population, alarming trends, decent work, employment creation, employment network, equal opportunities, full employment, future generations, global economy, labour force, millennium summit, national policies, productive work, social strategies, subsistence levels, transition countries, united nations secretary general, youth employment, youth unemployment



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