CWS Identified Internships

The ILO was created in 1919, as part of the Treaty of Versailles that ended World War I, to reflect the belief that universal and lasting peace can be accomplished only if it is based on social justice.  As the world’s only tripartite multilateral agency, the ILO is dedicated to bringing decent work and livelihoods, job-related security and better living standards to the people of both poor and rich countries. It helps to attain those goals by promoting rights at work, encouraging opportunities for decent employment, enhancing social protection and strengthening dialogue on work-related issues.

The year 2009 is significant in many ways for the International Labour Organization (ILO). It is the 90th anniversary of the founding of the ILO, the 10th anniversary of its gender equality action plan and the year the International Labour Conference (ILC) will hold a general discussion on “Gender Equality at the Heart of Decent Work”.

In the lead-up to this discussion, the ILO is launching a global campaign on gender equality and the world of work. The objectives of this campaign are:

• increase general awareness and understanding of gender equality issues in the world of work;
• highlight the specific linkages between gender equality and securing decent work for all women and men;
• promote the ratification and application of key ILO gender equality labour standards; and
• advocate the importance of overcoming existing barriers to gender equality as beneficial for all.

The campaign is built around twelve Decent Work themes. These themes will be looked at through a gender lens, showing how various issues may affect women and men differently in their access to rights, employment, social protection and social dialogue. It is a one-year campaign, starting in June 2008 and ending in June 2009. The themes will be unveiled on this website throughout the year. For each of the campaign themes, an information brief will be made available, accompanied by a poster and a postcard. Events may be organized by ILO offices in different regions throughout the year.

The campaign actively reaches out to ILO constituents and the general public. For example, the campaign supports:

• Activities around the 12 themes undertaken by governments, employers’ and workers’ organizations;
• Efforts made by women’s associations, gender equality civil society groups and various academic gender and labour institutions to highlight the key issues;
• Sharing of experiences, stories, video footage, photographs, and facts illustrating gender equality and/or gender-based discrimination in the world of work;
• Promoting gender equality and decent work stories through local media and press, for example written articles, radio programmes or local television featuring special programmes.

Internship Description:

The intern at the ILO will work in a very dynamic field office, and be supervised by the Gender Specialist. She will work on the above described campaign, particularly in the production of national briefing sheets, articles and materials adapted to the Central America context. To do so, she will make use of the available research produced by the research department of the ILO-Subregional Office (Observatorio Laboral) as well as thematic reports such as the regional research on Women, Work and family responsibilities, subregional study on Youth Employment and others.

Ideal Internship Qualification: