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By incorporating inputs from relevant ILO units, the crisis response programme can bring a variety of expertise to bear on crisis challenges.
This allows the organization to tailor its approach to each affected area’s specific conditions and needs.
Local Economic Recovery
The Local Economic Development (LED) and Recovery approach seeks to rebuild and reengineer the local economy and society through consensus-based action.
It encourages the full participation of public and private stakeholders. LED’s aims are to increase local business capacity and stimulate innovation with endogenous resources.
The ILO has used LED strategies in post-conflict operations since the early 1990s. These techniques combine ILO tools and methodologies in such areas as business
promotion, employability training, social finance, employment-intensive investments, and social dialogue. Together, they have fostered peace and reconciliation and boosted
employment opportunities in countries like Mozambique, El Salvador, Sri Lanka, Argentina, Somalia, and Peru. ILO/CRISIS refines and packages these tools to adapt them to
fragile post-crisis societies, forging partnerships to stimulate socio-economic dialogue and development.
Employment Intensive Investment
ILO/CRISIS capitalizes on the ILO’s recognized 25-year leadership in employment-intensive investment. ILO interventions in over 30 countries have shown the wide applicability and merits of this approach in crises. From prevention and preparedness to humanitarian relief and reconstruction, labour-friendly activities can benefit affected populations and communities immensely, generating jobs and income quickly while rebuilding damaged infrastructure. They are also an important bridge between immediate needs and longer-term reconstruction and development. Jobs created soon after a crisis help jump-start the local economy by increasing purchasing power and restoring links with neighbouring markets. And once infrastructure is repaired or constructed, its maintenance is easier and cheaper, and creates further jobs.
Moreover, labour-based methods help affected communities develop skills in technical areas, planning, negotiation, and decision-making. This cements peace and cohesion among people working together toward a common goal.
Labour-based reconstruction assistance can include several elements, both upstream and downstream. First, ILO/CRISIS produces manuals and other publications on techniques and project management. Second, it offers advisory and capacity-building services for planning and completing employment-intensive projects. These include roads, irrigation systems, drainage facilities, soil conservation programs, water supply upgrades, and slum improvements. Finally, ILO/CRISIS and its partners conduct direct interventions in crisis-affected zones.
Employability and Vocational Training
Investments in human capital remain the best means to rebuild societies and pull individuals and communities out of poverty. Therefore, rebuilding training facilities and curricula (such as after a conflict), or
redirecting them to new needs (such as after a jarring political transition), is an important tool in crisis response. Training programmes must fit their contexts and provide skills useful in the local market. Instituting successful training often proves a daunting challenge; needs are extraordinary while financial and human resources are tight. In addressing this challenge, ILO/CRISIS has developed expertise, including in the informal or unorthodox approaches sometimes needed to launch training services in badly damaged economies.
Microfinance
This technique provides crucial income-generating opportunities for the poor and disadvantaged. Intervention tools span a wide range, including support for micro-scale informal activities and micro-credit schemes.
Drawing on a wide range of ILO expertise, interventions can also provide materials, marketing advice, guidance, and training to microfinance lenders and micro- and small-scale enterprises, including cooperatives.
This kind of livelihood support is valuable in crises because, first, it can be tailored to vulnerable populations, as with a micro-credit fund for women. In addition, wage employment is rare in many societies and beneficiaries of livelihood support may be able to offer jobs to others.
Emergency Employment Services
ILO/CRISIS interventions in this area help revitalize employment services damaged by a crisis and orient them toward their clients’ current needs. After a difficult transition or economic downturn, interventions can
help service centres adapt to the new circumstances. After a conflict or natural disaster, by contrast, new centres are often needed, usually in the capital and large cities. Basic services like job matching, information distribution, and referral are in high demand among affected groups. ILO/CRISIS can help the community establish or repair these facilities to boost the local economy and respond quickly to needs.
Employment Policies
Crises often disrupt basic labour market information flows. And in some countries, these flows did not exist at all. ILO/CRISIS work on employment policies aims to establish or reorient information exchanges to
meet specific post-crisis needs. Tasks include evaluating the volume and type of job seekers and the skill requirements of humanitarian and reconstruction operations. This is crucial to promoting decent work after a crisis.
Social Security and Safety Nets
ILO/CRISIS coordinates its activities with specialists in the Social Protection Sector at ILO headquarters and in field offices. The programme takes a wide approach focusing on the extension of coverage and its role
in preventing and mitigating crises. Social security principles are crucial to promoting long-term socio-economic and cultural development, which can often reduce the effects of crises on the population, and indeed the risk of a crisis occurring at all. These principles can especially benefit vulnerable groups, such as migrant workers or those with HIV/AIDS. ILO/CRISIS interventions have emphasized social protection in Thailand, Korea, and Indonesia during the Asian financial crisis, and more recently in Argentina.
Social Dialogue
Tripartism and social dialogue are the ILO’s bedrocks. This gives ILO/CRISIS and other units an advantageous perspective in crisis interventions involving these principles. The essence of social dialogue is pursuing
broad socio-economic goals: democracy, transparency, equitable resource distribution, and general consensus and goodwill. All are key to minimizing the risk of a crisis. And if one occurs, strong dialogue helps reduce its impact, rebuild communities, and restart them on a sound development path.
Since its founding in 1919, the ILO has executed considerable analytical and operational work on social dialogue, helping societies and producing valuable lessons. ILO/CRISIS and its partners now apply these lessons to create a propitious environment for dialogue. Steps include establishing proper institutions, strengthening the capacity of ILO constituents, and adapting social dialogue to individual crisis-related situations.
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