Cuba remains committed to full employment and decent work for all, 100 years after the founding of the ILO.

New York, 11 April 2019. Ambassador Ana Silvia Rodríguez Abascal, Deputy Permanent Representative and Chargé d'Affaires a.i. of the Permanent Mission of Cuba to the United Nations, attended today the High-level Plenary Meeting of the General Assembly on "The future of work" organized on the occasion of the centenary of the International Labour Organization (ILO). At the event, she recognized the work of the organization in establishing labour standards, formulating policies and developing programmes to promote decent work for all.

Cuba is a founding and active member of the organization and was one of the nine member countries of the Labour Committee to draft the Constitution of the ILO in 1919. It has ratified 90 Conventions, including the Eight ILO Core Conventions, said the Cuban ambassador.

She also explained that the ILO has reached its centenary facing great challenges, including the increase in the number of workers living in extreme poverty, the tendency to increase the number of people unemployed, which by 2020 will reach the figure of 174 million, the huge gender gap in labour force participation, where three out of every five of the 3.5 billion people in the global labour force in 2018 were men.

Rodríguez Abascal reiterated that poverty eradication in all its forms and dimensions, including extreme poverty, is the biggest global challenge and an imperative; its main obstacles are increasing inequality among and within countries, illiteracy, lack of access to basic rights such as healthcare, education, food and other elements of the prevailing unjust international economic order.

Cuba will continue to support the important work of the International Labour Organization in terms of full and productive employment and decent work for all, showing its strong commitment to the search for a just, equitable and inclusive world, in which the full implementation of the 2030 Agenda, and in particular its Goal 8, is not a pipe dream but a reality, concluded the Cuban diplomat.

Permanent Mission of Cuba to the United Nations