The ILO has a rich and varied history. Created by the Treaty of Versailles in 1919 along with the League of Nations, it traversed the Second World War with its principles, methods and goals not only intact but reiterated and reinforced. Throughout its history the ILO has offered ideas, options and policy instruments in the pursuit of social justice. By bringing together the actors of the world of work, the ILO has been able to forge solutions to some of the most pressing problems of our times.

In 2019 the ILO will complete its first century. This project aims to ensure that it reaches the centenary with as complete as possible an understanding of the success achieved to date and the conditions for that success. It will show how the ILO has adapted its instruments to changing global economic, social and political conditions. It will examine the importance of its distinctive tripartite framework, in which employers and workers are represented alongside governments, as a crucial factor in its ability to build a sustainable policy agenda, and the roles played by each of these actors. It will explore the genesis of the key ideas that the ILO has nurtured, and how they have come to influence global and national policy. It will look at the contributions of key figures within the Organization – the nine Directors-General, other influential staff members of the Office, leading personalities among its constituents.

In doing all of this, the project will examine not only achievements, but also challenges and difficulties. It will consider how the economic and political interests of States and political actors have limited or oriented the ILO’s action, and the ways in which these constraints have been overcome. It will consider how far the ILO’s methods of dialogue and debate have succeeded in building bridges between the distinct perspectives of its tripartite constituents. It will also examine the role of the Organization in international action to overcome persistent global scourges – poverty and inequality, unemployment and exclusion, vulnerability and insecurity, inhumane conditions of labour and lack of respect for human rights – which fall within its mandate, and the effectiveness of its work. The Century project will explore how the ILO has adapted its goals to the diversity of human situations and objectives across space and time, and the lessons for the future.