ILO Director-General’s message for World Day of Social Justice 2022

The COVID-19 disaster has exacerbated inequalities, each inside and between international locations.

It’s being referred to as the ‘nice divergence’.

Financial and social divisions have elevated.

Those that have been deprived earlier than the pandemic have been worst affected – youth, ladies, casual and migrant employees, small companies.

However none of this inevitable. It relies on the alternatives we make; the selections we take.

The 2022 World Day of Social Justice comes at a degree of inflexion. As coverage makers are shaping our restoration from the pandemic.

Their decisions will set the course of change. And by choosing the proper measures we are able to form the restoration the way in which we would like.

We’d like a response that focuses on individuals. That promotes social justice for all whereas defending the planet all of us rely upon.

One precedence should be formalizing the casual financial system, the place 60 per cent of the world’s employees nonetheless earn their residing, typically in poverty, with few rights or protections.

Different key steps should embrace:

• Common social safety.
• Bettering employees’ safety and enterprises’ sustainability.
• Selling respectable jobs and inclusive financial development.
• And, making a simply transition in the direction of a carbon-neutral world financial system.

To carry all of it collectively we may also want larger and extra coherent co-operation between international locations and between multilateral organizations.

It’s an infinite problem. However, we have already got a roadmap to information us.

The ILO’s Member States have unanimously adopted a Global Call to Action on COVID-19 recovery. It requires a restoration that’s human-centred, and based mostly on rules of inclusivity, resilience, sustainability, and respectable work for all.

To construct on this name, later this month the ILO is convening a Global Forum to take a look at methods to show this Name into sturdy, coherent motion.

We’re at a pivotal second. Not only for COVID rebuilding, however for the way forward for our societies.

We’ve got a uncommon likelihood to form a restoration that additionally delivers larger social justice.

We should not miss this chance.