I.  Philadelphia Declaration: Meeting in 1944 for the express purpose of defining its future policy, the International Labour Organisation (ILO) affirmed in what has become known as the Philadelphia Declaration.

All this provides a fundamental framework for one of the most unique international organisations concerned with human rights in the world, the ILO.

II. Globalisation: Workers and Trade

A major dilemma confronting all international organisations whether it be the ILO, the United Nations system or non government bodies, such as the World Council of Churches is that they are increasingly located in the wrong place, their agendas are determined by a Eurocentrism which is rejected by the rest of the world, and their resource base is increasingly restricted.

The North-South debate for example, has always been a debate initiated, resourced and controlled by the North.

Emerging globalisation however, will have an agenda dominated and controlled not by the North and its Atlantic relationships, but by Asia. A different kind of Asia from the past, an Asia which is starting to define itself as Asian.

"This emerging Asia, is not one of imperialist pretensions, ideological fervour, totalitarian paranoia or superpower hubris - those ideas are viewed as retrogressive approaches that fractured the region for most of this century. The Asian consciousness is animated by workaday pragmatism, the social awakening of a flourishing middle class and the moxie of technocrats, although still tinged perhaps by anticolonialist resentment, racism and indifference to civil liberties." (Yoichi Funabashi, The Asianization of Asia, Foreign Affairs 72:5 Nov/Dec 1993)

The region bordered by Afghanistan in the West, Japan in the East, Korea in the North and Australia in the South, contains a population of 3 billion people, i.e. 55% of the worlds population. China and India together have a population of 2 billion and growing at a rate of 18 million a year (China) and India at a rate of 12 million a year.

When the 15 economies of Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) met in Seattle (and it will be the ASEANS, the AFTAs, the EAECs, rather than the EUs and the NAFTAs, which will be the significant acronyms of the future), accounted for 40% of the world’s GNP and 50% of the worlds trade.

At the end of 1993, according to one commentator, "the dollar based GNP of Japan, China and the rest of East Asia was 5.4 trillion dollars. The North American Free Trade Association (NAFTA) members was 6 trillion and the European Union's (EU) was 6.5 trillion. The White House Council of Economic Advisors is forecasting a 2.5% annual growth rate for NAFTA........the European Commission has forecast around 2.5% for Europe. The World Bank is forecasting 5.4% for Asia........that means that the shift in the world s economy s centre of gravity is going to occur over the next decade." (K. Courtis, "The New Agenda and Its Four Forces", Asia, Inc. March 1995)

It should be observed also that the institutions which have declared themselves as being identified with the poor and exploited, the churches (the Koinonia) and the trade union movements (solidarity), are at their most vulnerable in Asia.

One dimension of the emerging globalisation, of what one commentator called "the four intersecting webs of global commercial activity on which the new world economy largely rests: the global cultural bazaar; the global shopping mall; the global workplace; and the global financial network," (Global Dreams: Imperial Corporations and the New World Order, R. Barnet and J. Kavanagh, 1994, Simon and Schuster, New York), is the global movement of labour.

Paul Kennedy, historian and author of the "Rise and Fall of Great Power and Preparing for the First Century", argued recently in the Singaporean Press that "this is an age which virtually all of what the classical economists termed the factors of production are being liberated, finance, trade, intellectual property, patents, cultural programs, tourists, exchange students - everything is becoming part of globalised system".  He continued, "but there is one factor of production that is not being allowed to roam across the board as it will; labour, people, human beings. Isn’t there a basic contradiction here? Isn’t this precisely one of the greatest challenges that a global society faces as it doubles from 5 billion to 10 billion people in the coming half century." (Sunday Times, 15.1.95)

He is right about the globalised system, but his is wrong about labour.   Labour is roaming; despite the best efforts, harshest penalties, creative expertise of politicians, governments, civil servants, law enforcement agencies and armies, workers are on the move.

The International Labour Organisation talks of 70 million workers on the move; the Pacific Economic Cooperation Council (PECC) speaks of an unprecedented flow of labour in the PECC region; analysts talk of anything from 50 to 150 million workers and their families on the move in China; Malaysia has a million foreign workers; while the Philippines recruits some 700,000 Filipinos to work overseas  (it is estimated that together with illegals there are more than 5 million Filipinos working outside their country); Japan nearly 1 million, most of them illegal (and an estimated labour shortage of upwards of 5 million by the end of the century); and Hong Kong more than 100,000 domestic workers from South East Asia.

According to the World Watch Institute, "Globally, the remittances of migrant workers - the money they earn abroad and, then send home to their families and communities - are a vital economic resource. By the end of the eighties, remittances amounted to more than 65 billion dollars a year according to a World Bank study, second only to crude oil in their value to the world’s economy, and larger than all official development assistance." (L. Brown, 1995, State of the World: Report on Progress Toward a Sustainable Society, World Watch Institute, New York, p 143).

Globalisation of the market means also a global labour market. And workers caught up in the frenetic activity of the market find their standards of wages and working conditions not only under a threat, but in many situations being systematically destroyed.  Compounding this attack on their livelihood are factors such as:

"a. high and rising levels of unemployment and underemployment in many parts of the world;
b. rapid growth of the informal sector, not only in developing countries but also in industrialised countries;
c. increasingly inequalities both within and between countries;
d. the strong wave of neo liberal economic policies;
e. structural adjusting policies which are seen by many as being inimical to labour standards;
f. the decline and weakening of trade unionism in many quarters;
g. spread of an individualistic ethos in the pluralism of lifestyles, partly related to increased inequality in the distribution of income, both within and across nations"

(W. Sengenberer, "International Labour Standards in a Globalised Economy: The issues," in International Labour Standards and Economic Interdependence, edited, W. Sengenberer and D. Campbell, 1994, ILO, Geneva. p 9).

The recent headlines of the Asian press reflect the reality of much of the labour situation:

The ILO reports that the Philippine Embassy in Kuwait, receives 40 complaints a day from migrant workers; the Sri Lankan Embassy, 25-30 complaints each day, mostly from migrant women workers; 35% of the complaints by women workers to the Philippines Embassy relate to maltreatment and physical abuse; a fifth of all complaints to the Sri Lankan Embassy relate also maltreatment and physical abuse. (L. Gulati, 1993, Women Migrant Workers in Asia: A Review, International Labour Migration, ILO India, p 13-15).

The Philippine Embassy in Singapore at any one time in 1991 for example, was providing shelter and protection for up to 90 migrant women workers.

The ILO Committee of Experts in its report to the 1995 International Labour Conferences draws attention not only to the increase in migrant labour generally, but particularly to migrant domestic workers.  According to the Committee,

According to the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU), "One of the world s best kept secrets is that between 100 and 200 million children between the age of 4 and 15 are labouring in the mines, making matches, selling gum in the street, cooking, washing clothes, working as domestic servants, weaving carpets, making clothing, selling underwear, and working the fields at the plantations and on the building sites around the world." (Child Labour: The World's Best Kept Secret, 1994 ICFTU, Brussels).

In the Fujian provincial city of Xianen (China) there are 40 workers, one tenth of the workforce in one particular factory, with fingers and hands crushed because of obsolete machinery. In Guangdong province there have been 45,000 industrial accidents resulting in 87,000 deaths. In 1993, one of the worst factory fires in the world in the Kader Industrial Toy Company (Bangkok, Thailand) killed 188 workers and injured a further 469 others.

In its 1994 Annual Survey of Violations of Trade Unions Rights, the ICFTU reported that: