President of ICFTU-APRO, Ms. Sharan Burrow
ICFTU General Secretary, Mr. Guy Ryder
ICFTU-APRO General Secretary, Mr. Noriyuki Suzuki
Ladies and Gentlemen, brothers and sisters.

I am greatly honoured to be addressing this important Conference and wish to thank you for your kind invitation. This 18^th ICFTU-APRO Regional Conference has special significance for me personally - it is my first major address since assuming responsibility as the ILO Regional Director for and the Pacific in January this year. I am very pleased that this is with the ICFTU – because I believe in the trade union movement and in strong and cohesive tripartism as the key mobilizing tool for making decent work a growing reality for all workers, their families and communities. This meeting is an opportunity to offer you my own commitment and the commitment of the ILO Regional Department for and the Pacific to work ever more closely with workers and workers’ organizations on our common agenda.

I was privileged to have attended the 18^th ICFTU World Congress in at the end of last year. At the Congress, the ILO Director-General highlighted three main challenges the ILO, together with you, faces as a tripartite organization: union organizing, developing new policy approaches centred on decent work and protecting and deepening democracy through a fair globalization. I would like to elaborate on these challenges in the Asia-Pacific context.

First, on union organizing, which is perhaps the biggest challenge we face. 13 countries in the region have ratified the Freedom of Association Convention (No.87) and 16 countries have ratified the Right to Organize and Collective Bargaining Convention (No.98) but I am aware that there are still many cases of violations of this fundamental principle. I will do whatever I can to help ensure that the ILO deals with such violations. Pro-actively, we have been helping to build a legal, administrative, social and political environment where joining and taking part in union activities is accepted for what it is – a basic human right at work and a critical element of economic, social and political progress. In the region, the ILO has also been giving particular emphasis to assisting trade unions in reaching out to the very large and growing numbers of unrepresented informal economy workers – who mainly account for the working poor. Organizing the unorganized and reaching the unreachable is a task the ILO and trade unions have to work closely together on. The ILO has also been focusing on capacity building for workers’ organizations so that they are able to participate more effectively in tripartite policy dialogue at local, national, regional and international levels. For example, in the countries which have conducted Poverty Reduction Strategy exercises, the ILO has helped to ensure that workers’ and employers’ organizations have been actively involved.

The second major challenge is to put productive employment at the heart of economic and social policies in the region. The delegates to the 13^th Asian Regional Meeting held in in 2001 had emphasized the importance of employment generation as the central element of the decent work agenda and as a principle means of reducing poverty. With an estimated 768 million or two-thirds of the world’s poor living in the Asia-Pacific region, two-thirds of whom are women, it is very clear that we have to focus on gender-sensitive, employment-intensive growth. And our emphasis is not just on more jobs but also better jobs. The problem in the region is not just that unemployment, especially among young people, is growing. The problem is also that many people are under-employed – they are working and often working very hard and very long hours, but under conditions so poorly paid that they and their families do not even have US$1 per day per person to live on. The ILO approach to creating more and better jobs and to putting employment at the heart of economic and social policies is based on policy coherence with integrated components for employment-intensive investments, an enabling environment for entrepreneurship and enterprise development, respect for workers’ rights, social protection especially for the most vulnerable, and social dialogue with tripartism.

The third major challenge is a fair globalization. For the Asia-Pacific region, perhaps more than for any other region of the world, a fair and inclusive globalization is crucial. is the biggest destination of foreign direct investments and the locus of major global productions systems and the operation of multinational enterprises. How the region addresses the challenges and opportunities of globalization will determine whether every woman and man has a fair chance at a decent job that allows them to feed themselves and their families, send their children to school, have access to basic health care and have a voice in decisions that affect their lives and livelihoods.

That is why we have identified Making Decent Work an Asian Goal as the theme for the 14^th Asian Regional Meeting. Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to share with you some information on the 14^th Asian Regional Meeting. Every four years, the Asian Regional Meeting (ARM) brings together the political, economic and social actors from countries of the region. This 14^th Meeting will be held in Busan, from the 10^th -14^th October 2005 . It will focus particularly on the themes taken up in two reports of the Director-General. The implementation report on Decent Work in Asia Reporting on Results 2001-2004 responds directly to the conclusions of the previous ARM, which had called upon the Office to provide information on and evaluation of the progress made in the national plans of action for decent work. The report will show, for example, that in all the countries of the region, workers’ and employers’ organizations have been closely involved in the development, implementation and monitoring of national plans of action for decent work. The second report, the thematic report on Making Decent Work an Asian Goal identifies what is needed to build upon the progress achieved so far at local and national levels and to progressively move towards coordinated sub-regional and regional initiatives on decent work in an increasingly globalizing world.

The Convocation Letter inviting countries to be represented at the 14^th ARM will be sent out in May and it will stipulate that member States must send tripartite delegations whose members are able to act in full independence of each other; it will also encourage greater participation of women in all delegations. We look forward to your active participation in the ARM. The discussions and conclusions reached should shape the future regional agenda for decent work and guide both ILO constituents and the Office in strategic planning, implementation, monitoring and evaluation.

Before concluding, I must report to you what the ILO has been doing to respond to the devastation caused by the earthquake and tsunamis of December 26^th 2004 . The figures keep rising daily but as of January 31, the death toll had risen to more than 286,000 with many thousands more reported missing or displaced and living in temporary shelters. Preliminary estimates by the ILO suggest that at least 1 million people in and have lost their jobs and that more than 3 million people have been affected by income losses.

The ILO has been both active and pro-active in its response. Here in the Regional Office, we set up a task force supported by a task force at HQ and in constant communications with the SRO in New Delhi, Manila and Bangkok and in particular the Offices in Colombo and Jakarta. The ILO initially concentrated its efforts in the two most seriously affected countries, and and submitted proposals for inclusion in the Flash Appeals. which did not initially seek international aid has recently asked for assistance from the international agencies, so the ILO is also responding. In , the ILO has been working with the UN Country Teams, the government and workers’ and employers’ organizations to see how the ILO can support their initiatives. To support all these efforts the ILO has committed its own regular budget resources, redirected relevant on-going technical cooperation activities to the affected areas and groups and is actively seeking extra budgetary resources. The ILO focus has been on employment-intensive recovery, giving special attention to the needs of the most vulnerable groups, mainly children and women. We aim at assisting the affected communities through providing jobs for those who can work and income support and social protection for those who cannot or can no longer work.

As the crisis requires substantial reconstruction support from all of us, I am very pleased to learn that ICFTU-APRO, Global Labour Unions and a growing number of national trade union centers, together with the support and collaboration of ILO ACTRAV have already been effectively engaged in providing assistance, including advice on medical insurance and compensation, employment opportunities and reconstituting workers’ organizations.

Ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, let me conclude by reaffirming my commitment and the commitment of the ILO Regional Department for and the Pacific to work closely with the trade union movement to promote decent work for all workers. Let me also on behalf of all my colleagues in the region and on my own behalf wish the 18^th ICFTU-APRO Regional Conference every success. Thank you.