Decent Employment for the Rural Poor
Of the developing world’s 5.5 billion people, 3 billion live in rural areas, nearly half of humanity. Agriculture is a source of livelihoods for an estimated 86 percent of rural people. Of these rural inhabitants an estimated 2.5 billion are in households involved in agriculture. Agriculture provides jobs for 1.3 billion smallholders and landless workers. Rural employment is a critical means for poverty and hunger reduction, as labour is often the only asset that poor people own. The main problem with employment in rural areas, however, is that many jobs do not ensure decent levels of income and sustainable livelihoods. Rural workers are at the heart of the food production system but are disadvantaged in many respects. They are among the most socially vulnerable, the least organized into trade unions, and the least likely to have gender equality in opportunities and pay, and access to effective forms of social security and protection. Many of them are employed under poor health, safety and environmental conditions.
Ensuring productive and decent work for rural workers is crucial if they are to escape from poverty and providing the means to produce or purchase adequate and nutritious food. However efforts to reduce poverty and hunger by raising on- and off-farm incomes and diversifying livelihoods can be hindered by emerging forms of employment relationships based on more flexible and casual forms of agricultural work. Dramatic changes are taking place in agricultural systems worldwide. The expansion of value chains associated with agribusiness and agro-industry, the difficulty of self-employed small farmers to earn a living wage, and labour shortages in some regions together with underemployment in others, are transforming rural labour systems. Achieving fairer conditions of employment means providing opportunities for productive work that delivers a fair income, workplace security and social protection for workers and their families, better prospects for social integration and personal development, equality of opportunities and treatment for all women and men, freedom for people to express their concerns, to organize and participate in the decisions that affect their lives. For more information on how decent and productive employment contributes to the MDGs, please click here.
The International Labour Organization (ILO) Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work is an expression of commitment by governments to encourage fair conditions of employment, including: i) freedom of association and the right to collective bargaining; ii) the elimination of forced and compulsory labour; iii) the abolition of child labour; iv) the elimination of discrimination in the workplace. The ILO has merged these four areas into the over-arching concept of "decent work". Decent work involves opportunities for work that is productive and delivers a fair income; security in the workplace and social protection for families; better prospects for personal development and social integration; freedom for people to express their concerns, organize and participate in the decisions that affect their lives; and equality of opportunity and treatment for all women and men.
Policy coherence
At the international policy level there is increasing recognition of the importance of the linkages between rural employment, poverty reduction and food security. The report of the UN Secretary-General for the High-level segment (HLS) 2006 of the substantive session of the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) focuses on the theme: “Creating an environment at the national and international levels conducive to generating full and productive employment and decent work for all, and its impact on sustainable development”.
An increased focus on rural employment as a key component of rural development is critical for the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), particularly Goal 1, and of other commitments such as those of the 1996 World Food Summit, the World Food Summit: five years later and the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD).
Mainstreaming Employment and Decent Work
The World Summit of the United Nations General Assembly (2005), the High Level Segment of the UN ECOSOC (2006) and the Chief Executives Board for Coordination (CEB) of the UN system (2007) agreed to mainstream the goals of full and productive employment and decent work in their policies, programmes and activities as a means to achieving the internationally agreed development goals.
More specifically, the United Nations System CEB, at its April 2007 session, fully endorsed the Toolkit for Mainstreaming Employment and Decent Work prepared by the ILO in collaboration with FAO and others. Since then the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) adopted a Resolution on 17 July 2007, which calls upon all United Nations Funds, Programmes, Agencies, Functional and Regional Commissions and International Financial Institutions to collaborate in using, adapting and evaluating the application of the Toolkit.
The Toolkit is designed to be a “lens” that agencies can look through to see how their policies, strategies, programmes and activities are interlinked with employment and decent work outcomes and how they can enhance these outcomes. It is an awareness raising tool and a diagnostic checklist of questions that an organization may ask itself to self-assess and maximize the employment and decent work outcomes of its strategies, policies, programmes and activities.
The Toolkit is complemented by a set of Guidelines for self assessment. They are intended to help ensure that each organization will be able to determine how it could better deliver the outcomes under its own mandate by integrating employment and decent work outcomes and to use the results of its self assessment to develop its own action plan.
FAO is currently undertaking its self-assessment of the impact of its programme on the creation of employment opportunities and mainstreaming of decent work.
Contacts
FAO Focal Point: Paola Termine, ESWD (Paola.Termine@fao.org)
ILO Focal Point: Loretta de Luca, EMP (deluca@ilo.org)
