ILO convention on the human right to freedom from sexual harassment expands and deepens the rights of working people. The issue needs Parliament’s attention.
Although India is among the very few erstwhile colonies to have signed the treaty that established the International Labour Organisation (ILO), the country’s Parliament, mass media, and human rights and social movement activists remain too preoccupied with other issues to pay attention to some of the landmark events associated with the agency’s centenary celebrations. Although in a welcome move last year, the Union home minister issued directions to states to ensure that Internal Complaints Committees to examine the issue of sexual harassment at the workplace are constituted, only benign neglect has so far greeted the ILO’s Convention and Recommendation on the human right to freedom from sexual harassment and violence in the “world of work”. Issues like national security are important but sexual violence and harassment at workplaces is so widespread that one hopes the issue will receive due, effective and expeditious attention in Parliament’s next session.
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The ILO adopted the Convention and the Recommendation at the 108th meeting of the International Labour Conference. Held in Geneva from June 10 to 21, it was attended by more than 5,700 delegates, representing governments, workers and employers from the agency’s 187 member states. These were the first set of instruments to be enunciated by the International Labour Conference since 2011, when the Domestic Workers Convention was adopted. Conventions cast legally binding obligations whereas Recommendations offer valuable advisory pathways. And the history of ILO archives the importance of both.
Source: Indian Express
