Just who will become the next director-general of the International Labour Organisation?
The answer may be known at least by January as the governing body of the ILO prepares to elect a new head in March next year. But whichever way it goes, it could create history, either by having a woman or an African elected for the first time in history.
The ILO helps create policy for social justice, including workers’ rights. The new head will replace Guy Ryder, a Briton whose second and final term is ending next year.
Representatives of most African countries, including Kenya, Malawi, Senegal, Algeria and Lesotho, have rallied behind South African entertainment lawyer Mthunzi Mdwaba to become the first African to lead the ILO.
Yet, though it is the oldest specialised UN agency (created in 1919 by the UN’s predecessor organisation the League of Nations), it has been led only by men. In fact, of all the 10 men who have headed it so far, just one came from a non-Western country: Juan Somavia of Chile, between 1999 and 2012.
This time, two female candidates have expressed their interest among five contenders: France’s former labour minister Muriel Pénicaud and South Korea’s former foreign minister Kang Kyung Hwa.
Both women are experienced in the fields of human rights and social justice. Each has offered to raise the profile of the ILO in influencing policies to protect jobs and decency as the world rises from Covid-19 ashes.
“Countries around the world have confronted the pandemic in their own ways, and we have managed to endure the hardship while relying on the hard work of one another,” the Korean contender said in her vision statement provided by the ILO secretariat.
“However, socioeconomic challenges in the wake of the crisis persist, and nationalistic tendencies in the response and recovery efforts have heightened concerns over widening inequalities among as well as within countries.”
Proposing what she says should be a “human-centred” approach, she says the ILO must help both the UN and member states to adopt policies that will shield workers from health harm, as well as ensure they work in an environment that is holistically safe.
But first there must be universal vaccination, a direct call for continued vaccine equity for all.
“Collective immunity against the virus must be achieved around the world so as to reinstate the free movement of labour and goods across borders and normalise global supply chains,” she said, arguing this could go a long way to protect jobs that rely on movement of people and goods.
Her other female competitor, Ms Pénicaud, doesn’t focus much on vaccines but thinks recovery from the pandemic should work in the context of globalisation, the pandemic itself, climate change and digital transformation, all of which affect the quality and even availability of decent work.
“In a world of work divided by inequalities between and within countries, my vision is that of an ambitious ILO that works relentlessly to protect individuals and empower everyone; an ILO that creates the conditions for a new social contract to reconcile economic development, environmental protection and social justice,” the French candidate observes.
Though running as a female contender itself adds an advantage, France has already run the ILO before, when Albert Thomas became the inaugural director-general (1919-1932) and Francis Blachard headed it later (1974-1989). France, the UK and the US have produced ILO bosses more than once in its 100-year history.
The Korean candidate, though, could bank on the fact that she comes from a region that has never headed the agency, and is female, following the trend set recently by the UN to increase the number of women in its top leadership positions.
Born in 1955, Ms Kang graduated from Yonsei and later received a doctorate in communication from the Graduate School of Massachusetts in the United States. She was foreign minister of South Korea until February this year, having held the role since 2017.
Before that, she was the UN Secretary-General’s special adviser for policy, the deputy of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, and the deputy emergency relief coordinator of the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
Her CV also includes experience in the fields of human rights, disaster response and the rights of women and other minorities. She has promised to elevate the issues of work and social justice at multilateral levels, citing the ILO as an important agency to connect countries to a common social justice policy.
The governing body of ILO is in January expected to interview each of the five candidates. Later in March, members of the body will, during the 344th session, conduct what is known as candidate hearings before picking by secret ballot a new director-general should the previous steps fail to reach a decision.
The other candidates are Gilbert Hougbo of Togo and Greg Vines of Australia. As is tradition, the winner of the ballot will have to garner more than half of the voting members of the governing body, an organ of the ILO composed of workers and employers’ lobbies and government representatives.
Candidates may be submitted and endorsed by a member state of the ILO, as well as respective members of the governing body, usually representatives of employers’ and employees’ bodies in respective member states.
So far, the South African candidate, Mr Mdwaba, has been endorsed by representatives on the governing body from Kenya, Malawi, Cameroon, Senegal and Algeria. He also has the support of the African Union, Malawi and Lesotho. BY DAILY NATION