MAY 2017Switzerland

JapanILO Cooperation
Japan is a founding member State of the ILO, and a valued partner in promoting the Decent
Work Agenda. Japan has ratified 49 Conventions, including 6 Fundamental, 3 Governanceand 40 Technical Conventions. Japan holds one of the ten permanent government seatson the ILO Governing Body as a State of Chief Industrial Importance.

Japan’s contribution to the ILO
Japan has a long-standing relationshipwith the ILO in the field of development cooperation, establishing itself asa key partner in the promotion of social
justice and decent work, especially inAsia and the Pacific. Japan supports
the ILO´s mandate by contributing toboth its core budget and its development cooperation programmes.
The ILO cooperates closely with
the Ministry of Health, Labour andWelfare, as its governmental constituent. The partnership aims primarily at
supporting a fair globalization, contributing to poverty reduction, advancing
occupational safety and health standards, promoting international labour
standards and social dialogue.
The Ministry of Health, Labour andWelfare has provided strategic fundingto ILO priority programmes in Asia andthe Pacific, as well as for the regionalSkills and Employability Programme,
the ILO International Training Centrein Turin, and the Social Safety Nets
Fund.

Further support to development cooperation activities is provided by
the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, both
directly and through the UN Trust Fundfor Human Security. The cooperation
extends primarily to livelihood-oriented
emergency response to both humanitarian and environmental crises.
The ILO also collaborated with theJapanese International Cooperation
Agency (JICA) for technical interventions in Sierra Leone, Afghanistan andthe Pacific.
In terms of cooperation with the private
sector, the ILO implements a global
programme to reduce the worst formsof child labour in tobacco-growing
communities with the support of Japan
Tobacco International.
Furthermore, the ILO avails itselfof Japanese expertise thanks to thecountry´s participation in the Junior
Professional Officer programme and to
the secondment of Japanese officials,
as well as specialists from the Japanese
Consumers´ Cooperative Union.

JAPAN’S DEVELOPMENT
COOPERATION
Japan contributes proactively to thepeace, stability and prosperity of theinternational community.
The priority areas within Japanesedevelopment assistance are:• Peace building• Poverty reduction: education,
health and population, water andsanitation and agriculture and ruraldevelopment• Resilient international community:
environment, energy and disaster
reduction• Good governance, gender equality
and human security.
Japan’s development cooperation
strives to address these priority areas
to achieve “quality growth” though
the development of infrastructureand human resources.
In 2016, Japan provided US$ 10.37
billion in Official Development Aid,
which represents 0.2% of its grossnational income. (source: OECD Development cooperation report 2017)

FJAPAN’S FINANCIAL CONTRIBUTION
TO THE ILO

Japan’s overall voluntary contributions to the ILO(2012-2017) in US$

Japan funds the ILO through:9• Assessed contributions, which arepaid by all ILO Member States byvirtue of their membership. Withmore than USD 271 million provided
between 2012 and 2017, Japan isthe second largest contributor tothe ILO’s regular budget.

8Million US$• Voluntary contributions earmarked
to priority programmes and projects. Between 2012 and 2017,
it amounted to USD 31.8 million.

765432102012

2013

2014

2015

2016

2017

Promoting and building social protection in Asia
Since 2011, the ILO and the Ministryof Health, Labour and Welfare havesupported ASEAN members to strengthen their social protection systems.
The cooperation includes measures
to expand social protection coverage,
design and improve unemployment
insurance schemes, pensions’ reforms, and promote better maternity
and sickness protection, including
for migrant workers. Viet Nam andIndonesia are receiving direct techni-

cal support for improving their legal
and institutional frameworks in viewof increasing social security coverage.
Lessons learnt and good practices
are disseminated to other ASEAN
members through South-South andTriangular cooperation. The project
also helps ASEAN members to definea monitoring framework to measureprogress, as part of their efforts toachieve the Sustainable Development
Goals.

In Mongolia, the project helped thecountry defining its social protection
floors, devise the old-age pension´sreform and its extension to herders,
while also encouraging the ratificationof the ILO´s Social Security (MinimumStandards) Convention. Support isalso provided to design income security and employability measures forrural youth.

Sustainable and inclusive growth through industrial relations
Implemented with the support of theMinistry of Health, Labour and Welfare of Japan, the InSIGHT Project
aims at strengthening national andregional industrial relations in Asia,and specifically in Indonesia and VietNam. By enhancing the capacities andplatforms for tripartite dialogue, theproject aims at creating a shared vision among governments, workers andemployers on how to achieve sustainability and inclusive growth. InSIGHT

also supported capacity building activities in enterprise greening, as well as
overall improvements in the workplace
conditions, with concrete benefits forboth workers and employers.

The Fund for Building Social Safety Nets in Asia and the Pacific
Recognizing the growing importanceof social safety nets in Asia and thePacific in terms of response to financialcrises, unemployment and natural disasters, the Ministry of Health, Labourand Welfare of Japan established withthe ILO in 2011 the Fund for Building

Social Safety Nets in Asia and thePacific (SSN Fund).
Designed as a flexible and rapid funding mechanism, the SSN Fund has
supported over 35 different projects
to develop social protection schemes,
improve occupational safety and health,promote employment through skills
training and entrepreneurship, anderadicate child labour. The fund also
contributes to the region’s resilience tonatural hazards by supporting livelihoods recovery and reconstruction projects
in areas affected by natural disasters.

Lifting people out of poverty through entrepreneurship
For many people in Cambodia, Lao
PDR and Thailand, entrepreneurshipand vulnerable employment in micro-enterprises are the only available

income streams, often in the informal
sector, with limited impact in termsof social and economic development.
Responding to this situation, theproject “Fostering an enabling environment for livelihoods developmentin vulnerable and at risk communities
through entrepreneurship and microenterprise skills” develops the capacityof institutions to provide, sustain,
and scale up interventions throughinnovative and low-cost models built
around self-facilitation and social learning techniques. The ILO’s Community-Based Enterprise Development(C-BED) program provides a comprehensive suite of self-implemented training tools for participants to develop
basic skill sets and competencies inentrepreneurship, business management, marketplace financial literacy,social protection and rights at work.
The tools incorporate simple, handson, activity-based lessons, maximizing
the use of diagrams and pictures sothat even participants with little or noliteracy are able to learn together.

Supporting post-disaster recovery in Fiji
In February 2016, Cyclone Winston,
the largest storm ever formed in theSouthern Pacific, hit Fiji. It affected

about 540,400 people - representing
62 percent of the country’s population. The SSN Fund promptly brought

its support through the “Resilient
Employment and Livelihoods throughEnterprise and Skills Development”
project. Based on a Post-Disaster
Needs Assessment (PDNA), theproject provides skills trainings to theaffected provinces, in order to support
their livelihoods. The trainings range
from carpentry skills to “build backbetter”, to small engine repairs forboats in the coastal areas, or entrepreneurship skills. These programmes
are tailored to each community’sneeds, to generate livelihoods andpromote a sustainable recovery.
They also address the psychologicalimpact of such disasters among children and adults. This comprehensiveand unique approach is helping Fiji
to attain a sustainable and resilient
recovery.

PROGRAMMES AT THE INTERNATIONAL
TRAINING CENTRE OF THE ILO
Within the scope of the cooperation framework between the ILO and the Ministryof Health, Labour and Welfare, the Government of Japan provides financial andtechnical support to the training activitiesof the ILO’s International Training Centrein Turin. The appointment of Japaneseexperts has strengthened the Centre’s
training offer on employment and training policies and practices, occupationalsafety and health and labour inspections,while allowing the Government of Japan
to benefit from international exposure andpeer-to-peer exchanges.

Regional Skills and Employability programme in Asiaand the Pacific and the Pacific
The ILO and the Ministry of Health,Labour and Welfare initiated a 3-years
programme to support skills development for green jobs in Asia and thePacific, as a tool to ensure an efficienttransition to a green economy andfoster sustainable growth.
Recognizing the need to create sustainable jobs in Samoa, the ILO developed and pilot tested a national green
job skill-set, which was shared at theregional workshop on Core Skills andCompetencies for Green Jobs in theagricultural sector in March 2016.
The event provided guidance on how
to better integrate environmental
awareness into domestic skills development policies.
In Myanmar green competencies wereintegrated into the skills standards fortour guides, in order to enhance thedelivery of tour guide services in thearea of green tourism.

Durable Solutions for Somali refugee returnees
Somalia is one of the poorest andmost vulnerable countries in theworld. Also due to the prolonged
conflict, there are 1.1 million internally displaced people in Somalia and 1
million Somali refugees in the Horn ofAfrica. With funding from the Ministryof Foreign Affairs of Japan, the ILO organized vocational skills and business
management training for refuge returnees, internally displaced persons
and host communities to support theiremployment-based reintegration. The
project imparted fundamental skills to320 beneficiaries in Baidoa aiming toincrease their access to and opportunities for self-employment. At thesame time, in collaboration with theJapanese NGO Community Road Empowerment (CORE), 2,814 workdays
were created for 134 returnees togenerate immediate income throughroad maintenance technology.

Way out of Informality: Facilitating the formalization of the informal
economy in South Asia
A significant share of the workforce
in South Asia earns its livelihoodin the informal economy, with noaccess to social protection and noformal labour rights. To address thisproblem, in 2012-2017 Japan and theILO implemented a project to promoteformalization in Bangladesh, Indiaand Nepal, in close cooperation withgovernments, employers’ and workers’organizations. The project achieved
important regulatory and policy improvements in Bangladesh and Nepal,
and greatly increased the awarenesson the importance of formalizationand strategies to achieve it, throughworkshops, policy dialogues and thesharing of good practices.

The project´s results include the establishment in Nepal of a registration
system for informal construction
sub-contractors (with about 2,300
registered entities) and the registration of more than 2,827 microentrepreneurs. An association ofsub-contractors was founded in
Bangladesh, with more than 500
members joining, while 521 informal
workers in Pune (India) while morethan 1,400 informal workers in Pune
(India) were made eligible to accesssocial security.
A training programme on the transition
to the formal economy was piloted
in Nepal and adopted by the ILO´sInternational Training Centre in Turin.

Contact
International Labour Organization
4, Route des Morillons
CH-1211 Geneva-22 – Switzerland

Tel: +41 22 799 7239 / Fax: +41 22 799 6668
E-mail: pardev@ilo.org
www.ilo.org/pardev

DEPARTMENT
OF PARTNERSHIPSAND FIELD SUPPORT