Aeneas C. Chuma is the Assistant Director General of the International Labour Organisation (ILO) and regional Director for Africa, he spoke with selected Nigerian Journalists at the just concluded 103rd session of the International Labour Conference, in Geneva, Switzerland, on issues of concerns to the region. MOSES JOHN was there
What is Ouagadougou+ 10 about and what is the level of ILO involvement?
Ouagadougou + 10, is a follow up to the summit of 2004 in Ouagadougou where African Head of States agreed to put decent work at the Centre of their national development plans. Ouagadougou +10 is a follow up to that , to say ten years later what have we learnt, what do we accomplished and how do we move forward with this agenda after the next ten years, that’s what make it extremely important . the timing of Ouagadougou, now is very significant as you know the international community are negotiating the next generation of international development goals, as you know the MDGs supposed to end as it where by 2015 and now, the international community for the last two years have being involved in looking at the success arrangement, what comes after 2015, of course the development issue is still relevant but you need a new set of goals that capture the realities after 2015 and I think is important. Maybe next generation, things like example climate change are not specific into the current set of MDGs or is not as prominent as they should be in this point in time in terms of climate change or the specificity of youths unemployment as a development issue. So this is what Ouagadougou +10 is all about, looking forward the timing and beyond the summit and the new generation of sustainable development goals next September, the African region, the ILO would hold its meeting as well which comes up every four years. So all these things are neutrally supportive and are very important that Ouagadougou +10 inform the post 2015 development agenda. And is also important that African regional meeting that comes in November next year takes forward the main recommendations and decision of both of them, so this is the significant of Ouagadougou +10.
On the Ouagadougou+ 10, don’t you think the gap is too wide that need to be bridge by ILO?
Let me explain that Ouagadougou is not an ILO project but is a project of the African Union with very strong support from the ILO so AU owns Ouagadougou process, it also lead that process and currently there was a decision taken by the summit of African Head of States in January to have a follow up to the 2004 Ouagadougou summit. So it remains an important question which should be resolved by the summit itself, by the African Head of States and governments as to the frequency of the meeting. I think probable one of the most interesting proposal is to have a process of monitoring the implementation of the recommendations over a four years period so that in the fifth year, there is review and another implementation period of four years, and then the tenth year, the second fifth year there is another reviews.
What step is the ILO taken to ensure migrant workers are protected by the host countries?
I want to refer you to a report by the ILO Director General, Guy Ryder what he referred to as fair migration, way several principles espoused about the right of migrant wherever they are. Having said that, of Couse what happened in the Mediterranean is tragic, in as much also what has been happening to African migrants in other countries and continent such as the Middle East, the domestic workers there. So is something of major concern, let me mention that the largest numbers of migrants in Africa are within Africa, they move between economic region within African countries. The role of the ILO is to try and raised the profile with decision and policy makers draw attention to the rights of migrant workers, but also draw attention to the possibility that labour mobility can bring in terms economic benefit, skills, addressing the issue of skills shortages in several countries, in terms of the remittances that migrants not just working in Europe and the United State but working within Africa, bring back to their own countries in terms of economic benefit. So there are larger issues of social mobility or the mobility of the mobility of professional people, the portability in standardization of skills so that when countries can get together and try to define framework for fair migration they look up to all these issues. So what we are doing as ILO is that we are watching very closely at the regional level with other partners such as the IOM, Economic Commission for Africa, and the African Union support the African migration policy framework. We are also working at the sub-regional level, in ECOWAS we do have specialists tackling the issue with the Governments, and we also have intervention with others. So we look at the issue from the regional angle, we also look at the sub-regional angle so that we can address movement of people within the entity like ECOWAS and others. Going forwards, what we need is to have broad framework through which government and regional organization are able to manage migration in a constructive way, recognizing its essentials to economic development and migrants do bring economic benefits to the country they go and worked, paying taxes contributing as responsible citizens, but they also bring benefit to the country where they came through remittances so what they need to do is to ensure that the fundamental rights of migrant are respected in all countries. The ILO is working for those migrant that move to other region such as the gulf or the Middle East, ILO works with our officers there to try with government to ensure that the rights of migrant workers are respected there, so is an ongoing process and is not just an African issue but a global issue and we do have mechanism to respond to the challenge and encourage governments to respect and also protect the right of migrant workers.
Migration within the sub-region has its advantage, but don’t you think it also poised a security threat to the host country?
I think the larger part of migration is between people looking for economic opportunity but a lot of these people also provide skills, because migration is between countries so is very important that it is approach from regional perspective, it also make available broader range of skills to various countries so we have to look at it from the regional labour market rather than looking at it from just a country, if you look at Togo it’s an important country of course am not diminishing it but is part of ECOWAS, it means it has tremendous opportunity to grow within the sub-region but also access to much larger population based in the market much larger opportunity, so in addition to benefiting it can also contribute to the general development of ECOWAS. The challenges always have being around illegal migration and movement of people, the strategy is to try and encourage legal movement of people also in recent years concern around security and these are genuine concerned of countries, what the framework and the report of the Director General was tries to draw attention to is the potential of constructive migration, constructive such as mobility and movement, importability of skills within the region for the betterment generally and development of the particular region and the particular country, but it doesn’t mean that is perfect there are things that need to be worked on and what is important is to come up with a policy framework by which the region such as ECOWAS and individual members can be guided in dealing with the migration issue. This is the only way the thrust of the matter is and is very important to recognized that is not unique to Africa, I mean you see issues even in Europe here, which is the most advance economic grouping as it where but the issue with migration, I think Switzerland passed a law trying to limit the number of immigrants into the country people are just expressing concern and this have to be negotiated and taken into account and look at for two reasons, to ensure that the concern of the country is taken into account but most importantly the right of individuals migrant is respected and protected.
What is your take on human trafficking?
Human trafficking is a very area of concern. It is capture been around the gambit of migration, but to ensure fair migration is to try to discourage trafficking in children, workers and in women and those are the areas that is problematic in Nigeria so the broad framework of what we do in migration include all these dimension.
The MDGs which is ending in 2015 seems not to be perfect as most of the goals have not being implemented, what is your position on this?
Well, I think the report cards on MDGs is mixed, there are some goals that the countries will reach and in some cases exceed, there are some that required further work, goals around infants mortality for example, I think in aggregate countries have done well around access to education, especially for girls, there is also progress around HIV/AIDS, so the report cards is mixed but by region and by countries as well so we can’t say is a failure, because some of the goals there was an attempt, while others which has not been attempt clearly. One of my favourite is MDGs no. 8 where is supposed to under ping the international corporation around the seven development goals, very little have been accomplish there in terms of a new generational debt relived expanded from the old epic and better trade condition for developing countries particularly Africans through reductions of subsidized and DOHA round of WTO negotiation, not much has attempt there. In summery the progress is mixed, there is been significant accomplishment in some development goals but there is still further work that needs to be done going forward. What that means is that in some cases some of the goals will be carry forward into the next generation of sustainable development goals going forward may be they will be better define or may be the target will be much more sharply define.
What advice will you give to the members’ countries towards the actualization of transforming informer to formal sector?
It is true that one of the problems we faced in Africa is unemployment mostly of young people. Related to this we’ve got high level of under employment, we also have evidence as much as 80 percent of labour force is what is refer to as vulnerable employment and this include the informal sector. Now the strategies we are trying to recognize the existence of this considerable sector which contributes to the economic and often their contribution is not capture properly in the economic but also to recognize that being in the informal sector, they are also vulnerable as an entrepreneur or as a worker. The idea of trying to promote formality so that people can be protected by law often they have not access to legal redress in the informal sector and they can be provided support in a structure terms, if it is training, recognition of their skills, standardisation of their skills but also it could be in terms of access to capital to expand their business. Informal sector don’t have this things and if they have the protection of the rule of law, they could contribute more to the economic and they will pay taxes but they will also have protection of the law.
What are your priorities as ILO regional Director for Africa?
My priorities as a regional Director, one is to work on unemployment issue particularly as it applies to the youths, I think that is a critical Africans problem though is a global problem but is acute in Africa because of the very young populations. So I want to support investment in job reach, micro economic growth, and also supporting entrepreneurship of young people encourage them to participate in the supply chain of industries and we want also in particular support equal pay between men and women doing equal work, so these are issues around employment.
The second priority is the issue around inequality and the important of social protection, and supporting government providing guidelines, expertise and knowledge. Also promoting social partnership, social dialogue, employers’ workers and government working together on common development issues, that doesn’t mean that they agreed all the time but they can agree on 95 percent of the issues that need to be done in their countries in terms of fighting poverty, creating jobs. Issue around labour migration in particular, is a development issue for us in Africa we also have to deal with issues around the fragile states and what are the special needs of the fragile states. Central Africa Republic and south Sudan, their needs are not the same, so we need ILO to look at special packages of services that we can make available to these countries, those are my priorities.
