Feature articles

2022

  1. © Better Work 2024

    Helping Women Workers Manage Cultural and Professional Barriers in Pakistan

    14 February 2022

    Female labour force participation in urban Pakistan is among the lowest in the world. In a new training, home-based women workers learn financial literacy, and perhaps most importantly, self-advocacy.

2018

  1. Panel discussion on ‘The benefits: learning from practical experience of producers – case study of collective bargaining at Kohinoor Textile Mills Ltd.’

    05 December 2018

    The ILO Labour Standards in Global Supply Chains (LSGSC) project, which is funded by BMZ on behalf of the Federal Republic of Germany, facilitated a panel discussion at the regional Multi-Stakeholder Dialogue for Change Conference on Scaling up Dialogue Approaches for Social Compliance organized by Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH on 15 November 2018 in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. The discussion provided the opportunity to share a regional-level exchange of first-hand worker and employer experiences of enterprise-level collective bargaining, complemented and contextualised by ILO expert perspectives.

  2. Exposure visit of government officials from Pakistan to the work on labour inspection in the Philippines

    20 November 2018

    The ILO Islamabad office under its Dutch funded project on Strengthening Labour Inspection System in Pakistan (SLISP) organized an exposure visit of Pakistan’s Government officials to Philippines. The visit emulated helping the government officials grasp learning from the good practices in the Asia region and bring back replicable lessons pertaining to strengthening of Labour Inspection Management Information System (LIMS).

2016

  1. After the flood: Turning disaster into opportunity

    21 July 2016

    Following the devastating floods in Pakistan’s rural Sindh province, the International Labour Organization joined the United Nations to help thousands of families put their lives back on track.

  2. International Women’s Day round up

    15 March 2016

    The ILO’s theme for International Women’s Day 2016 is “Getting to Equal by 2030: The Future is Now”, reflecting the urgency of addressing the gaps in order to achieve the U.N. 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda. The ILO office for Pakistan honoured this day with some excellent events on and around the big day of Tuesday 8 March.

2015

  1. Women weave a better future

    02 November 2015

    The ILO has set up weaving centres in one of Pakistan’s poorest provinces to boost the quality of the products, and improve skills and income of the weavers.

  2. NO to child labour, YES to quality education

    12 June 2015

  3. Survey on “Measuring migration costs for low-skilled migrant workers from Pakistan to Saudi Arabia and the UAE”

    24 March 2015

    ILO is embarking on an exciting collaboration with the Lahore School of Economics (LSE) by commissioning a survey on “Measuring Migration Costs for Low-Skilled Migrant Workers from Pakistan to Saudi Arabia and the UAE” under the South Asia Labour Migration Governance (SALM) Project funded by the EU.

  4. The Changemaker

    06 March 2015

    Asma Ahmad Sheikh has helped people in rural Pakistan get training and set up their own businesses. Her work as a Changemaker led to her winning in a global skills competition.

  5. Giving rights to millions of domestic workers in Pakistan

    26 February 2015

    Promoting Gender Equality for Pakistan, an ILO project funded by the Canadian government, is working with tripartitie partners in Punjab to bring rights and recognition to domestic workers.

2014

  1. SAARC commits to helping migrant workers

    18 December 2014

  2. SAARC commits to helping migrant workers

    18 December 2014

    By Yoshiteru Uramoto, Assistant Director-General and Regional Director for Asia and the Pacific of the International Labour Organization (ILO)

  3. ILO and Pakistan Textile Exporters Association (PTEA) agree to jointly promote ‘International Labour Standards in Textile Industries in Pakistan’

    20 August 2014

    The Pakistan Textiles Exporters Association has partnered with ILO for technical assistance in helping the association and its members in designing, developing and enforcing a self-inspection system.

  4. Migrant workers get the short end of the stick

    30 April 2014

    Pakistani migrant workers, have very little information about the law in their own country or the destination country. They are given no pre-departure briefings or any information about how their embassy can support them once they leave. As a result, they are left to rely on recruitment agencies, who being largely unregulated, can be quite unscrupulous.

  5. A teacher like Baji

    28 April 2014

    Rubina’s story was told by representatives of the Punjab Literacy Department attending the South Asia Labour Conference recently held in Lahore. They were there to emphasize the close links between literacy, education, skills, employment and income.

  6. Fingerprints solve the social security problem for Pakistan’s Brick Kiln Workers

    24 April 2014

    The Department of Labour Punjab and the ILO are working to extend labour laws and social protection to brick kiln workers. For some it starts with finding their fingerprints again.

  7. Underrated, underreported: Working women in Pakistan

    03 February 2014

    Gender stereotypes are common in Pakistani media and continue to make it difficult for women to play an equal role in the country’s workforce. A recent ILO project focuses on Pakistani journalists themselves, using media to re-shape public perception about working women.

2013

  1. A dream comes true in a motorbike repair shop

    15 October 2013

    Changing perceptions is sometimes the biggest challenge when it comes to fighting child labour. But dialogue and cooperation is always a good start.

  2. From classroom to college – A champion for child workers

    12 June 2013

    When Farzana Hassan began teaching a handful of child labourers at an ILO project in Pakistan, she never imagined that, years later, she would have turned her classroom into a fully-fledged college for girls.

2012

  1. All aboard the women’s rights bus

    24 September 2012

    For working women in Pakistan, the bus ride to work can be particularly uncomfortable. The country’s National Highways and Motorway Police (NH&MP) has been trying to change that, with a bit of help from the ILO.