The International Labour Organization (ILO) is a United Nations (UN) agency whose mandate is to advance social and economic justice by setting international labour standards. Founded in October 1919 under the League of Nations, it is one of the first and oldest specialized agencies of the UN. The ILO has 187 member states: 186 out of 193 UN member states plus the Cook Islands. It is headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, with around 40 field offices around the world, and employs some 3,381 staff across 107 nations, of whom 1,698 work in technical cooperation programmes and projects.

The ILO's standards are aimed at ensuring accessible, productive, and sustainable work worldwide in conditions of freedom, equity, security and dignity. They are set forth in 193 conventions and treaties (), of which eight are classified as fundamental according to the 1998 Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work; together they protect freedom of association and the effective recognition of the right to collective bargaining, the elimination of forced or compulsory labour, the abolition of child labour, and the elimination of discrimination in respect of employment and occupation. The ILO is a major contributor to international labour law.

Within the UN system, the organization has a unique tripartite structure: all standards, policies, and programmes require discussion and approval from the representatives of governments, employers, and workers. This framework is maintained in the ILO's three main bodies: The International Labour Conference, which meets annually to formulate international labour standards; the Governing Body, which serves as the executive council and decides the agency's policy and budget; and the International Labour Office, the permanent secretariat that administers the organization and implements activities. The secretariat is led by the director-general, Gilbert Houngbo of Togo, who was elected by the Governing Body in 2022.

In 2019, the organization convened the Global Commission on the Future of Work, whose report made ten recommendations for governments to meet the challenges of the 21st century labour environment; these include a universal labour guarantee, social protection from birth to old age and an entitlement to lifelong learning. With its focus on international development, it is a member of the United Nations Development Group, a coalition of UN organizations aimed at helping meet the Sustainable Development Goals.

Two milestones in the history of the ILO were the Treaty of Versailles in 1919, establishing the International Labour Organization, Article 427. And secondly, the Declaration of Philadelphia in 1944, reestablishing the ILO under the UN and reaffirming the first principle that "labour is not a commodity".

Structure

The ILO is a specialized agency of the United Nations (UN). As with other UN specialized agencies (or programmes) working on international development, the ILO is also a member of the United Nations Development Group.

Unlike other United Nations specialized agencies, the International Labour Organization (ILO) has a tripartite governing structure that brings together governments, employers, and worker representatives of 187 member states, to set labour standards, develop policies and devise programmes promoting decent work for all women and men. The structure is intended to ensure the views of all three groups are reflected in ILO labour standards, policies, and programmes, though governments have twice as many representatives as the other two groups.

Governing body The Governing Body is the executive body of the International Labour Organization. It meets three times a year, in March, June and November. It takes decisions on ILO policy, decides the agenda of the International Labour Conference, adopts the draft Programme and Budget of the Organization for submission to the Conference, elects the Director-General, requests information from the member states concerning labour matters, appoints commissions of inquiry and supervises the work of the International Labour Office.

The Governing Body is composed of 56 titular members (28 governments, 14 employers and 14 workers) and 66 deputy members (28 governments, 19 employers and 19 workers).

Ten of the titular government seats are permanently held by States of chief industrial importance: Brazil, China, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, the Russian Federation, the United Kingdom and the United States. The other Government members are elected by the Conference every three years (the last elections were held in June 2024). The Employer and Worker members are elected in their individual capacity.Article 7, ILO Constitution

Director-General On 25 March 2022 Gilbert Fossoun Houngbo was elected Director-General of ILO. On 1 October 2022 he succeeded Guy Ryder, who was elected by the ILO Governing Body in October 2012, and re-elected for a second five-year-term in November 2016. He is the organization's first African Director-General. In 2024, a group of African countries that play a crucial role visited the International Labour Office, such as Morocco, where they held talks with the Minister of Economic Integration, Small Business, Employment, and Skills Development, Younes Sekouri. The list of the Directors-General of ILO since its establishment in 1919 is as follows:ILO official site: Former Directors-General

NameCountryTerm Albert Thomas 1919–1932 Harold Butler 1932–1938 John G. Winant 1939–1941 Edward J. Phelan 1941–1948 David A. Morse 1948–1970 Clarence Wilfred Jenks 1970–1973 Francis Blanchard 1974–1989 Michel Hansenne 1989–1999 Juan Somavía 1999–2012 Guy Ryder 2012–2022 Gilbert Houngbo 2022–present

Membership

The ILO has 187 state members. 186 of the 193 member states of the United Nations plus the Cook Islands are members of the ILO. The 7 UN member states which are not members of the ILO are Andorra, Bhutan, Liechtenstein, Micronesia, Monaco, Nauru, and North Korea.

The ILO constitution permits any member of the UN to become a member of the ILO. To gain membership, a nation must inform the director-general that it accepts all the obligations of the ILO constitution. Other, non-UN states can be admitted by a two-thirds vote of all delegates, including a two-thirds vote of government delegates, at any ILO General Conference. The Cook Islands, a non-UN state, joined in June 2015.International Labour Organization. (n.d.). About the ILO in the Cook Islands. Retrieved June 26, 2021, from https://www.ilo.org/suva/countries-covered/cook-islands/WCMS_410209/lang--en/index.htm

Countries that had been members of the ILO under the League of Nations remained members when the organization's new constitution came into effect in 1946.

Objectives The Declaration of Philadelphia (10 May 1944) restated the traditional objectives of the International Labour Organization and then branched out in two new directions: the centrality of human rights to social policy, and the need for international economic planning.Norman F. Dufty, "Organizational Growth and Goal Structure: The Case of the ILO", (1972) 26 (3) International Organization 479 accessed 24 August 2011 With the end of the world war in sight, it sought to adapt the guiding principles of the ILO "to the new realities and to the new aspirations aroused by the hopes for a better world."Joseph Sulkowski, "The Competence of the International Labor Organization Under the United Nations System", (1951) 45 (2) The American Journal of International Law 286 accessed 24 August 2011. It was adopted at the 26th Conference of the ILO in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

In 1946, when the ILO's constitution was being revised by the General Conference convened in Montreal, the Declaration of Philadelphia was annexed to the constitution and forms an integral part of it by Article 1. Most of the demands of the declaration were a result of a partnership of American and Western European labour unions and the ILO secretariat.

"Labour is not a commodity" is the principle expressed in the preamble to the International Labour Organization's founding documents. It expresses the view that people should not be treated like inanimate commodities, capital, another mere factor of production, or resources. Instead, people who work for a living should be treated as human beings and accorded dignity and respect. Paul O'Higgins attributes the phrase to John Kells Ingram, who used it in 1880 during a meeting in Dublin of the British Trades Union Congress.O'Higgins, P., 'Labour is not a Commodity' — an Irish Contribution to International Labour Law' (1997) 26(3) Industrial Law Journal 225–234

History Origins

It is one of the first specialized agencies for the UN. While the ILO was established as an agency of the League of Nations following World War I, its founders had made great strides in social thought and action before 1919. The core members all knew one another from earlier private professional and ideological networks, in which they exchanged knowledge, experiences, and ideas on social policy. Pre-war "epistemic communities", such as the International Association for Labour Legislation (IALL), founded in 1900, and political networks, such as the socialist Second International, were a decisive factor in the institutionalization of international labour politics.

In the post-World War I euphoria, the idea of a "makeable society" was an important catalyst behind the social engineering of the ILO architects. As a new discipline, international labour law became a useful instrument for putting social reforms into practice. The utopian ideals of the founding members—social justice and the right to decent work—were changed by diplomatic and political compromises made at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, showing the ILO's balance between idealism and pragmatism.

Over the course of the First World War, the international labour movement proposed a comprehensive programme of protection for the working classes, conceived as compensation for labour's support during the war. Post-war reconstruction and the protection of labour unions occupied the attention of many nations during and immediately after World War I. In Great Britain, the Whitley Commission, a subcommittee of the Reconstruction Commission, recommended in its July 1918 Final Report that "industrial councils" be established throughout the world.Haimson, Leopold H. and Sapelli, Giulio. Strikes, Social Conflict, and the First World War: An International Perspective. Milan: Fondazione Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, 1992. The British Labour Party had issued its own reconstruction programme in the document titled Labour and the New Social Order. In February 1918, the third Inter-Allied Labour and Socialist Conference (representing delegates from Great Britain, France, Belgium and Italy) issued its report, advocating an international labour rights body, an end to secret diplomacy, and other goals.Ayusawa, Iwao Frederick. International Labour Legislation. Clark, N.J.: Lawbook Exchange, 2005. And in December 1918, the American Federation of labour (AFL) issued its own distinctively apolitical report, which called for the achievement of numerous incremental improvements via the collective bargaining process.Foner, Philip S. History of the Labor Movement in the United States. Vol. 7: Labor and World War I, 1914–1918. New York: International Publishers, 1987.

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