The ILO played an important role in the adoption of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, maintaining the momentum of the past decade: decent work as a major aspiration for all is reflected in many of the SDGs, which also address poverty, health, quality education, and gender equality. Key to the ILO’s concerns is SDG 8: “sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all”.

Thinking on international policy also advanced. Development cooperation has come to be understood as more than a mere portfolio of projects funded by voluntary contributions. It is now part of a broader international effort aligned with the 2030 Agenda, in which the ILO will promote the Decent Work Agenda as a basis for political governance and sustainable social and economic growth, everywhere.

The ILO continued to strengthen the role of governments, and employers’ and workers’ organizations to meet challenges in the world of work and to put the world back on a sustainable track towards equitable growth and development. Progress was made in 2014-15 globally, regionally and at the country level on enhancing policy coherence and convergence on issues central to the ILO’s mandate, in particular through extended cooperation with the United Nations (UN) and its entities, the G20, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the OECD, and regional organizations, including development banks and economic commissions.

In 2014-15, the ILO delivered some USD 606 million under the regular budget, USD 430 million in extra-budgetary voluntary funding, and USD 32 million under the Regular Budget Supplementary Account (RBSA). The share of domestic funding in total extra-budgetary voluntary funding increased from 3.8 per cent in 2012–13 to 5 per cent in 2014–15. The ILO achieved a delivery rate of 80.4 per cent in 2015.

DECENT WORK COUNTRY PROGRAMMES: QUALITY JOBS WANTED! DWCPs are the main ILO vehicle of support at country level. They represent the common commitment of governments, workers’ and employers’ organizations, and the ILO to collaborate on specific objectives and initiatives to reduce decent work deficits and strengthen capacity to mainstream decent work into social and economic policies. In 2014-15, 102 DWCPs were active and/or in preparation, worldwide.

A total of 774 country outcome results were achieved across 137 Member States and covered all four pillars of the Decent Work Agenda. This was more than the 721 targets set at the beginning and reflects the deliberate effort to concentrate resources on fewer and better integrated interventions. By the end of 2015, the ILO had a portfolio of over 600 projects with 120 development partners in more than 100 countries.
 
A record of 92 new public-private partnerships were signed over the course of the biennium, bearing witness to increasing cooperation with the private sector, and 10 new partnerships were signed with middle-income countries and South–South and triangular cooperation partners – an area in which the ILO has shown itself to be a pacesetter.