EMPLOYMENT AS DECISIVE ELEMENT OF HUMAN IDENTITY

Designing specific measures to place the goal of full employment at the centre of macroeconomic policy:

Accelerating growth, and ensuring the participation of poor people in that growth, is fundamental for poverty reduction. The proposals across this Report – on infrastructure, investment climates, governance, peace and security, trade, human development, culture, the environment and the quality of aid – should both boost participation and contribute strongly to increasing sustainable growth, investment and employment.

Strong and sustained progress in human development requires fundamental change. That change will happen only if women and men are at the centre of the action. The world has made inspiring commitments, including education for all and commitment to fight against AIDS. Sustained development requires financing that aligns behind national health and education systems and is harmonised with and complementary to other assistance. Effective use of the large new resource flows will require careful attention to mechanisms for delivering and monitoring results, and accountability to the poor communities that are being served.

There is solid evidence, based on two generations of experience and research, that there is a "population effect" on economic growth. Since 1970, developing countries with lower fertility and slower population growth have seen higher productivity, more savings and more productive investment. They have registered faster economic growth. Pregnancy and childbirth are heavy risks for poor women. Many, and unplanned for, children impose a heavy burden on them. High levels of fertility contribute directly to poverty, reducing women's opportunities, diluting expenditure on children's education and health, precluding savings and increasing vulnerability and insecurity. Additionally, the poor suffer from the direct effects of their numbers: lower wage rates for large pools of unskilled workers, landholdings divided among more inheritors, classes too crowded for educational improvements. High fertility means that poor people have less capacity to take advantage of opportunities to lift themselves out of poverty. Evidence supports the perception that large families and rapidly growing populations hold back development. First, in the household, children have a variety of needs, all of which have a cost. A large number of children compete for limited family resources for food and clothing, health and education, and some are left behind. In rural communities, farmland is a fixed resource. Dividing it too often impoverishes successive generations. Without resources for development, supplies of fuel or water must also be shared among growing numbers. In urban communities, those without some education can find only low-level, ill-paid work, if they can find work at all. Most countries officially frown on child labour, though implementation varies, and it is becoming socially and politically unacceptable from a humanrights perspective. The change from high to low mortality and fertility can create a "demographic bonus" for countries. Mortality declines first, followed by fertility. What happens as fertility declines is that the working-age population increases relative to younger and older dependents. That creates a one-time opportunity for growth. The opportunity can be realized if countries have made the appropriate investments, not only in family planning, but in health and education generally, with special attention to the needs of girls and women, and in employment opportunities for the new and enabled workforce. Open and responsive governance makes these adjustments possible.

“Productive work and employment are central elements of development as well as decisive elements of human identity. Sustained economic growth and sustainable development as well as the expansion of productive employment should go hand in hand.”1

Lack of access to education, the persistence of poverty and unemployment, and inequitable access to opportunities and resources could cause social exclusion and marginalization. Poverty is at least in part the result of inequitable distribution of opportunities, resources, incomes and access to employment and to social services. It further recognized that, in many countries, there is a growing gap between people in high-quality, well-paid employment and those in poorly paid, insecure jobs with low levels of social protection. Owing to continued discrimination and exclusion, women and girls face particular disadvantages. Discriminatory practices, social polarization and fragmentation, widening disparities and inequalities of income of wealth within and among nations, violence in all its forms were listed among many that present fundamental threats to societies and the global social order.

Actual progress in reaching the goal of full employment has also fallen far short of expectations. Rather than making strides towards the attainment of productive employment and work for all, the past ten years have witnessed a rise in unemployment levels. An unprecedented 186 million people were unemployed in 2003, accounting for 6.2 percent of the working population, up from 140 million a decade earlier. In addition, 550 million people fell among the ranks of the working poor. Where job growth has taken place, it has been disproportionately concentrated in insecure, informal forms of employment with low wages and few benefits.
Although the overall picture is negative, employment trends have shown considerable variation across regions and social groups. Among developed countries as a
whole, unemployment rates declined by 1.2 percentage points over the decade, in contrast to much of the developing world which experienced rising unemployment rates, ranging from an increase of 0.9 percentage points in East Asia, to 2.1 percentage points in Latin America and the Caribbean, 2.4 percentage points in South-East Asia and 2.9 percentage points for the Economies in Transition of Central and Eastern Europe. On a more positive note, unemployment rates held steady in South Asia and the Middle East and North Africa over the decade, while even declining by 0.2 percentage points in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Forced Labour

In 1807, Britain banned the slave trade and tried to get the French, the Spanish, the Dutch and the Portuguese to end this trade in human flesh. But despite the agreement reached at the Vienna Conference in 1815, it was by force of arms, and the confiscation of ships and their human cargo, that the trade in human beings was brought to an eventual end.

At least 12.3 million people are trapped in forced labour around the world, the International Labour Office (ILO) said in a new study where it points at forced labour as "a social evil which has no place in the modern world".

Among them 2.4 million are trafficked, as sex workers and other forms of slavery, a business that makes 30 Billion USD profit for pimps and traffickers. ILO in its annual report requesting the world cooperation to fortify laws and most important, to raise awareness of what is called a hidden issue. Forced labour is a global problem, in all regions and types of economy. Of the overall total, some 9.5 million forced labourers are in Asia, which is the region with the highest number; 1.3 million in Latin America and the Caribbean; 660,000 in sub-Saharan Africa; 260,000 in the Middle East and North Africa; 360,000 in industrialized countries; and 210,000 in transition countries.

Forced economic exploitation in such sectors as agriculture, construction, brick-making and informal sweatshop manufacturing is more or less evenly divided between the sexes. However, forced commercial sexual exploitation entraps almost entirely women and girls. In addition, children aged less than 18 years bear a heavy burden, comprising 40 to 50 per cent of all forced labour victims. But the report sees the biggest deterioration in the newly globalised economy, in sectors such as the sex industry, agriculture, construction and domestic service. Increased concern about organised crime has led to a new international protocol against people-trafficking.

Most forced labour today is still exacted in developing countries where older forms of forced labour are sometimes transmuting into newer ones, notably in a range of informal sector activities, the report says. Debt bondage frequently affects minorities - including indigenous peoples - that have long experienced discrimination on the labour market, and locks them in a vicious cycle of poverty from which they find it ever more difficult to escape. Many victims are working in remote geographical areas, where labour inspection presents a particular challenge. Devising effective strategies against forced labour requires a blend of law enforcement and ways of tackling the structural roots of forced labour, whether outmoded agrarian systems or poorly functioning labour markets.


Youth Unemployment and National Policies

Of all age groups, the increase in unemployment rates was most pronounced for youth aged 15 to 24. World youth unemployment jumped from 10 per cent, or 70 million young people in 1995, to 14.4 per cent, or over 88 million youth by 2003. Although youth comprise just 25 per cent of the working age population between 15 and 64 years, they account for nearly 47 per cent of the 186 million people unemployed worldwide. As a consequence, youth unemployment is typically two to three times higher than for others. Young women are especially at risk, as they experience unemployment rates 20 to 50 percent higher than that of young men.

The factors that shape these discouraging trends in employment vary across regions and economic groupings. Those that appear to stand out include: globalization;
competitive pressures; and national policy decisions. Globalization and the integration of economies have had major impacts on employment. As the ILO described recently, jobs, incomes, security and the rights of workers are heavily affected by such things as patterns of international investment, the growth of trade and the cross-border movement of workers. On the other hand, the drive to become ever more competitive in the international economy has created pressure among companies to contain labour costs, with the resultant action engendering feelings of insecurity and instability among workers worldwide. It is also important to recognize the impact of national policies and programmes. Given the level of job changes and dislocations inherent in today’s dynamic labour market, active labour market policies are essential to foster the smooth reallocation of labour from declining industries into new and emerging ones. Yet national policies are often not in place to facilitate job search assistance, training and skills upgrading to help dislocated workers’ transition into new jobs. In addition, without sufficient investment in education and training, countries cannot be assured of a skilled, adaptable workforce prepared to compete in a knowledge-based economy.

There is serious lack of employment policies in international economic and social strategies. There is a need for a broad coalition of international organizations to lay down concrete strategies on employment creation, the world labour force would expand over the next decade by some 500 million people, who should be seen as assets, rather than problems. Additionaly there is a need to direct official development assistance towards employment creation, as well as to transfer employment-creating experiences between nations. Such plans should focus on microeconomics, as well as macroeconomics, the quantity and quality of work, increased productivity in agriculture, and supply and demand.

why is employability important?
Employers face enormous changes in a highly competitive global marketplace. The new economy demands new ways of thinking, new ways of managing, and new ways of working. Thus, the level and type of education and skills required has also changed. And there is a need to prepare young people to participate in paid work, as employees or selfemployed, in the new environment. Educators face the challenge of preparing young people to participate in this increasingly complex and changing world of work, and they have been calling on employers to articulate and communicate their needs better. Employers' dissatisfaction with young job applicants is not primarily due to inadequate technical knowledge or skill. A review of the literature indicated that employers have no quarrel with the skills performance of today's graduates, but they do have serious reservations when it comes to their nontechnical abilities. providing young people with qualifications for employability is, among other things, an ethical responsibility. "This is not just an economic issue," Bhaerman and Spill (1988); "it is one of equity and fairness." They continue: Think about employability skill development as one of the civil rights issues....Those responsible for programs in this area have a moral obligation to provide the most complete education and training possible for students and clients (pp. 43-44). These employability skills include reading, basic arithmetic and other basic skills; problem solving, decision making, and other higher-order thinking skills; and dependability, a positive attitude, cooperativeness, and other affective skills and traits.

Youth unemployment and uncertain futur that have forced families to informal world of work has impact on their social behaviour, consequently disrespect and yobbish behaviour would prevail. People are increasingly faced with street corner and shopping centre thugs, with binge drinking, vandalism and graffiti. What youngsters need is a hopefull work oriented future perspective. Instead of bulk of advertisments and provocative images in every corner, what young people also need to see more are scenes, events and recreational gatherings that stimulates positive thinking, curiousity, creativity and more meaningful approach to life.

Extracted from:
1- World Summit for Social Development, March 1995, United Nations, Part II: Programme of Action of the World Summit for Social Development, para 42.
2- ILO World Commission on the Social Dimension of Globalization, “A Fair Globalization: Creating opportunities for all”, ILO 2004, p. 110.
3- Technology Information, http://ttclear.unfccc.int/ttclear/html/InfOverview.html
4- http://unfccc.int/methods_and_science/items/2722.php
5- http://www.unfpa.org/swp/2002/english/ch3/index.htm
6- http://www.un.org/womenwatch/asp/user/list.asp?ParentID=60
7- http://www.sd.aznet.org/en/index.htm
8- http://www.odi.org.uk/rapid/Lessons/Index.html
9- BBC online, Modern Slavery, 11 May