London, June 15 (IANS) The world needs a balanced approach to cope with the economic and job crises, the International Labour Organisation (ILO) has said.
‘Leaders from the real economy, meeting at the International Labour Organisation’s annual conference (in Geneva), held a high-level debate on ways out of the global economic and jobs crisis and called for an urgent, balanced policy approach that would combine economic recovery with jobs growth,’ the ILO said in a statement made available here.
Amid growing concern over unemployment across the globe, two high-level panels were convened at the International Labour Conference to discuss the impact of the ongoing debt crisis and measures to reduce deficits.
The world leaders supported the ILO’s ‘Global Jobs Pact and Decent Work Agenda’ as a foundation for a sustainable way out of the crisis.
The panels discussed ways of forging a job-rich recovery and fostering more sustainable and balanced growth by making employment a macroeconomic objective of the same order as low inflation and deficits, the statement said.
‘The ILO has helped lead the way with the Global Jobs Pact which is moving job creation up the priority list,’ UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon said.
‘Now is the time to go even further. A recovery is not meaningful if people learn about it in the newspaper. Working women and men need to see it in their own lives and livelihoods. Simply put, a real recovery must reach the real economy,’ he said.
Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim said strengthening economy while prioritising social justice had helped mitigate the impact of the global economic crisis in Brazil. ‘Peace, cooperation and fair trade will be the new name of development’.
US Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis, speaking in a video message, said the G-20 Labour and Employment Ministers’ meeting last April in Washington, had highlighted the role of the ILO’s Jobs Pact and Decent Work Agenda as ‘valuable resources for governments as they design further measures to address employment and social protection systems’.
Gilles de Robien, President of the Conference, said the succession of crises had shown that ‘social protection is both a social stabiliser and a stabiliser for the economy, at least in countries where such protection exists’.
