ILO Meeting of Caribbean Ministers of Labour to address ‘Decent Work for Sustainable Development’

The 9th ILO Meeting of the Caribbean Ministers of Labour, organized by the International Labour Organization (ILO) in collaboration with the Government of The Bahamas, will be held on 3-4 March 2015 at the British Colonial Hilton in Nassau, The Bahamas.

The Meeting will bring together Ministers with responsibility for Labour, Permanent Secretaries and high-level officials of the English- and Dutch-speaking Caribbean, as well as representatives of the Caribbean Congress of Labour (CCL), and the Caribbean Employers’ Confederation (CEC).

The Rt. Hon. Perry  Christie, Prime Minister and Minister of Finance, The Bahamas; and Guy Ryder, Director-General, ILO, will address the Opening Ceremony of the Meeting – ILO News.
Under the theme, “Decent Work for Sustainable Development”, the Meeting will address labour issues such as the green economy, social dialogue and youth employment.  Labour Ministers will discuss the CARICOM and ILO partnership and the implementation of decent work in national and regional policy agenda, as well as the regional tripartite social dialogue mechanism.

The Meeting follows the call by Caribbean delegates at the ILO’s 18th American Regional Meeting in Lima, Peru, on 13-16 October 2014, for policies that would mitigate the impact of climate change on the economies of Small Island Developing States (SIDS) in the region.  A session entitled “Creating job opportunities and developing skills for youth employment and productivity in the Caribbean” will explore the issue of youth unemployment in the Caribbean region, with actors of the real economy, international and regional partners such as Republic Bank, Colleges and Institutes Canada, and the Association of Caribbean States (ACS).

The ILO’s Director-General, Guy Ryder, also attended the previous Meeting of the Caribbean Ministers of Labour, held in Trinidad and Tobago in July, 2013.  The first ILO Caribbean Labour Ministers’ Meeting was also held in Trinidad and Tobago in 1996.  Subsequent meetings have been held in Guyana (1998), Jamaica (2000), Barbados (2002), The Bahamas (2004), Trinidad and Tobago (2007), and Guyana (2010).

For more details on this Meeting, please refer to the website: www.ilo.org/caribbean orwww.ilo.org/carminlab2015.