ADDIS ABABA (ILO News) – UNDP Administrator Kemal Dervis, speaking at the ILO's 11th African Regional Meeting here, has called for poverty reduction strategies that "fully integrate the employment dimension," adding that "Decent Work is at the heart of development and has to be also at the heart of the United Nations various work on development."
Citing the strong partnership between the ILO and his organization, the UN Development Programme Administrator called on donor countries to improve aid, provide greater debt relief and follow-up on financing commitments to support international efforts to create new jobs and reduce widespread poverty in Africa.
"Low inflation, a stable fiscal framework and responsible spending policies are absolutely key, but they are not enough," he said. Employment creation and poverty reduction have "to be part of the macroeconomic strategy and not an afterthought. It has to be built into the center of what we think about when we think about macroeconomic policies and development strategies. ILO and UNDP working together can contribute a lot."
In welcoming remarks, ILO Director-General Juan Somavia said "together, we are shaping a common message on employment and decent work in the framework of UN country programmes, sharing current practices of joint UNDP/ILO operations in the countries concerned and drawing lessons that can inform efforts to improve future practices, and making concrete preparations for 'delivering as one' at the country level."
"Our joint efforts are about advancing greater coherence and effectiveness in delivery and ensuring that decent work objectives correspond to a country's UN development framework which itself should fully reflect national development strategies," Mr. Somavia said.
Mr. Dervis said the UNDP was "involved in building a very strong partnership with the ILO which... reflects a profound underlying need to make growth and globalization employment-friendly and employment-enhancing. The road to success in development is through productive employment. There cannot be poverty reduction in a sustained way without productive employment."
Citing the role of the UNDP in managing the resident coordinator system of the UN, Mr. Dervis highlighted his commitment to putting UNDP offices "at the disposal of the employment agenda working closely with the ILO and also other agencies". He said this would be a "central priority of the UNDP in the coming years."
He also singled out the uniqueness of the ILO's tripartite structure and dialogue between public policy makers, governments, employers and workers. Drawing from his own experience while Finance Minister of Turkey, he said,"I think it is through this kind of dialogue that the best solutions can be found. Sometimes there are very clear differences of interest and differences of emphasis. But in the long run, the interests of development and prosperity are common."
Mr. Dervis said that employment generation, decent work and productive jobs were "at the heart of the matter".
"There is widespread consensus that unemployment represents one of the greatest challenges to development on the African continent — but not only the African continent I should add — many other parts of the world," he said.
The UNDP administrator also cited the new, stronger partnership forged at the policy and the operational levels between UNDP and the ILO. Last February, Mr. Dervis and Mr. Somavia signed a joint agreement to strengthen their collaboration and partnership in a major new effort to bolster UN actions designed to reduce poverty and create more decent work.
The agreement is a direct follow-up to the 2006 UN Economic and Social Council Ministerial Declaration on decent work and full employment and a practical step towards the implementation of UN system efforts to "deliver as one".