For its 100 year anniversary, the ILO marks the occasion with the adoption of Convention 190 on violence at work!

The Commission of Norms of the International Labor Organization (ILO) adopted on Monday, June 17, 2019 the Convention 190 aimed at eradicating violence and harassment in the world of work. Noticeably affecting all types of work all over the world, this binding instrument will now have to be ratified by the member states of the organization.

In 2018, the International Labor Organization (ILO), alerted to the catastrophic consequences of violence and harassment in the world of work, launched a normative process to develop a binding international standard to combat this unacceptable problem. After two intense working sessions organized during the International Labor Conference in June 2018 and 2019, the work has just ended this Monday, June 17, to the applause of the 500 people composing the Standards Committee, exhausted by two weeks of hard work which often continued till late.

8 years after the adoption of the latest Convention to protect domestic workers, the ILO is therefore adopting this new regulation, which is proof that this multilateral body still functions, despite the geopolitical turbulence and the political antagonisms that mark the current context. This adoption also indicates a victory for social dialogue, as the ILO is the one institution that brings together workers, employers and States in a systematic attempt at consensus-building.

Unions and civil society around the world had been mobilizing for over two years to bring this Convention into being. "It's wonderful, we conducted an intense campaign of awareness and advocacy to convince everyone that we needed this Convention, and now it has become a reality," said Patricia Jimenez of the Dominican trade union CASC. For Ema Liliefna (KSBSI union, Indonesia), who was close to the negotiating team led by Canadian Marie Clark Walker (CLC union), "workers will now be protected against all types of violence they may encounter and that in all places where they perform their tasks, whether they work in the formal or informal sector, which is the case for a vast majority of workers in Asia, Latin America and Africa”.

After concluding the negotiations on the Convention, the normative commission is yet to negotiate the text of the Recommendation, a complementary non-binding instrument aimed at providing practical guidelines to States to assist them in the implementation of the Convention. But hopefully, the very positive atmosphere during the discussions will help lead to a quick conclusion!

The plenary assembly of the ILO will have to formally adopt these two instruments at the closing session of the 108th Labor Conference on Friday 21 June 2019. It will then be up to the States to act! They will be asked to ratify the standard. It should be recalled that every Convention has to be ratified by the 187 member states of the organization, which must then translate it into national law and regulations.