- The first of these, as articulated in the report of the World Commission on the Social Dimension of Globalization is that of making employment a central objective of macroeconomic and social policies – rather than a hoped-for outcome of policies that, more often than not, do not directly address the employment challenge. The Commission report’s conclusion is predicated on the observation that rising economic interdependence has neither been inclusive nor uniformly beneficial.
- The second shared objective is that of poverty reduction, with a focus on the fundamental role that employment plays in attaining that objective. For a variety of reasons – a context of inadequate global economic growth among them – the 1990s largely saw a slowdown in the rate of poverty reduction. This, in turn, reinforces the need for policies to focus on “working out of poverty”, a theme broadly explored at the International Labour Conference in 2003.
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