Introduction to the ILO’s programme: Global Action for Prevention on Occupational Safety and Health

Each year, 2.78 million workers die from work-related injury and disease

Each year, 2.78 mil­lion work­ers die from work-relat­ed injury and dis­ease and 313 mil­lion work­ers suf­fer from non-fatal work-relat­ed injury and ill­ness. Lost work days rep­re­sent 4 per cent of the world’s GDP (ILO esti­mates ). Despite a grow­ing con­sen­sus that invest­ment in occu­pa­tion­al safe­ty and health (OSH) is key to achiev­ing sus­tain­able devel­op­ment, sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenges remain, par­tic­u­lar­ly in devel­op­ing coun­tries, includ­ing among oth­ers: 1) insuf­fi­cient aware­ness and under­stand­ing of occu­pa­tion­al haz­ards and risks; 2) lack of capac­i­ty nec­es­sary for pre­ven­tion, com­pli­ance and enforce­ment relat­ed to OSH; 3) inad­e­quate and inac­cu­rate data on occu­pa­tion­al fatal­i­ties, injuries and dis­eases; 4) and inad­e­quate leg­is­la­tion, reg­u­la­tions and poli­cies on OSH.

In addi­tion to the above chal­lenges, there are spe­cif­ic areas of con­cern that require atten­tion including:

• Pre­ven­tion of OSH haz­ards and risks in glob­al sup­ply chains (GSCs);
• OSH pre­ven­tion in sec­tors such as agri­cul­ture and con­struc­tion, which require focused atten­tion due to their per­sis­tent and sig­nif­i­cant haz­ards and risks, their con­tri­bu­tion to eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment both at nation­al and glob­al lev­els, and the share and com­po­si­tion of the work­force in these areas;
• Espe­cial­ly vul­ner­a­ble groups, such as young work­ers who suf­fer work-relat­ed injury at a much high­er rate than old­er workers.

In order to address these chal­lenges, the ILO, through its Flag­ship Pro­gramme OSH — Glob­al Action for Pre­ven­tion (OSH GAP), seeks to fos­ter the cre­ation of a glob­al cul­ture of pre­ven­tion, with the objec­tive of achiev­ing real reduc­tions in the inci­dence of work-relat­ed death, injury and dis­ease. The Pro­gramme seeks to achieve this over­all objec­tive by:

• Pro­mot­ing demand for safe and healthy workplaces;
• Strength­en­ing nation­al capac­i­ties to address OSH issues in order to ensure the sus­tain­abil­i­ty of interventions;
• Build­ing knowl­edge through the devel­op­ment of OSH indi­ca­tors that dri­ve pre­ven­tive action, method­olo­gies for col­lect­ing OSH data, and the under­tak­ing of research to bet­ter under­stand the chal­lenges to effec­tive OSH pre­ven­tion and poten­tial dri­vers, notably in Glob­al Sup­ply Chains (GSCs);
• Forg­ing strate­gic part­ner­ships and sup­port­ing OSH pro­fes­sion­als, insti­tu­tions and net­works at nation­al, region­al and glob­al levels.

The OSH GAP Pro­gramme focus­es on small and medi­um sized enter­pris­es in the con­struc­tion and agri­cul­ture sec­tors and is ini­tial­ly tar­get­ing young work­ers aged 15–24, oper­at­ing in vul­ner­a­ble con­di­tions. Through these inter­ven­tions, the OSH GAP Flag­ship Pro­gramme also seeks to make a sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tion to the 2030 Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment Agen­da  and in par­tic­u­lar to Goal 8  on decent work and eco­nom­ic growth. The programme’s work will sim­i­lar­ly under­pin progress on Goal 3 , on good health and well-being.

Core projects under the OSH GAP flagship programme

• “SafeYouth@Work ”, to improve the health and safe­ty of young work­ers, fund­ed by the Unit­ed States Depart­ment of Labor;
• “Mod­ern­iz­ing inter­na­tion­al net­work­ing in occu­pa­tion­al safe­ty and health knowl­edge and infor­ma­tion ”, sup­port­ing inter­na­tion­al, region­al and nation­al net­works active in the area of OSH, fund­ed by the Min­istry of Labour of Korea; and,
•  “OSH in Glob­al Sup­ply Chains ” – A joint ILO-EU project to improve the knowl­edge base and safe­ty and health in glob­al sup­ply chains, sup­port­ing G20 work on safer work­places, improv­ing knowl­edge of OSH issues in glob­al sup­ply chains and val­ue chains. The project is fund­ed by the Euro­pean Commission.
• “Youth4OSH “, a project fund­ed by the USCIB Foun­da­tion aim­ing to Sup­port the health and safe­ty of young work­ers and employ­ers in Glob­al Sup­ply Chains of South East Asia.
• “Enhanc­ing Occu­pa­tion­al Safe­ty and Health Stan­dards in Con­struc­tion Sec­tor in Cam­bo­dia “, a project fund­ed by the Gov­ern­ment of Japan and aimed at address­ing OSH haz­ards in haz­ardous indus­tries in Cambodia.