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Nobel Peace Prize

ILO at Nobel laureates’ summit: Employment is key to peace

Representing the ILO at the 16th World Nobel Peace Prize Laureates’ Summit in Colombia, ILO Regional Director José Manuel Salazar highlighted the challenge to make peace socially sustainable.

Press release | 03 February 2017
© ONU Colombia
BOGOTÁ, Colombia (ILO News) – Addressing a summit of Nobel Peace Prize Laureates, the ILO Regional Director for Latin America and the Caribbean, José Manuel Salazar recalled, that “work is directly linked to peace” which explained the need for measures that generate more and better jobs, especially in post-conflict situations.

“Tension and belligerence, are higher in societies with excessive unemployment, underemployment or precarious working conditions,” explained Salazar who represented the ILO at the 16th World Summit of Nobel Peace Prize Laureates. The meeting was opened last Wednesday by Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos who was awarded the prize in 2016.

Salazar highlighted the enormous challenge to give social sustainability to peace while employment was key to achieving that goal.

The ILO was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1969 – 50 years after its foundation. At the time, the Norwegian Committee stated that “the ILO’s main task will be to ensure that this new world is based on social justice; in other words, to fulfil the command that is inscribed on the document in Geneva: Si vis pacem, cole justitiam. If you desire peace, cultivate justice.” Salazar also addressed a panel on “Peace and the Private Sector: Peace, Employment and Opportunity,” where he recalled that in post-conflict situations “you cannot talk about a better future of work if there is no better future for production and productivity”.

On Wednesday afternoon, the ILO made a special presentation on “Youth and the Future of Work,” which among others, raised the need to address the high rate of youth unemployment in Latin America and the Caribbean which reached 18.3 per cent in 2016.