The Right to Decent Work - Dispatch from Liberia

Realizing Rights' staff, including Heather Grady (2nd row, far left), joined Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Foreign Minister Olubanke King-Akelere and Minister for Development and Gender Vabah Gayflor in celebrating the second anniversary of the President's election last January. Photo - Realizing Rights

By Heather Grady | Monrovia, Liberia

I’m just returning to our office in New York from a weeklong trip to Liberia and Ghana. The trip was in preparation for some events we are doing during our EHHR theme month in September on promoting the right to Decent Work.

People don’t often understand what the term ‘decent work’ means, but basically it’s taking the notion that was in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 that all men and women have the right to fair pay for work (at a minimum, what people sometimes call a ‘living wage’), and just and favorable conditions of work. With globalization changing so many economies down to the farm level, paying attention to how people experience changes in their working lives is essential.

In September we are planning three events around this concept of Decent Work, in order to help get a critical mass of attention to prioritizing employment issues in developing countries. One of these meetings will be in Liberia in the second week of September. Next March we are also helping to sponsor a Women Leaders International Colloquium in Liberia where we will again work on the issue of Decent Work. So this trip was to work with local partners on planning both of these meetings.

Liberia had a catastrophic civil conflict that lasted 14 years. But 2 ½ years ago Liberians elected the first woman president in Africa, President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf. She is an amazing woman whom I have had the privilege to meet a few times. She has worked to bring her country back to stability in partnership with the United Nations, a lot of supportive foreign governments, a whole range of civil society organizations from The Carter Center to Oxfam, and her own people. She has put very capable and committed individuals into leadership positions within the government, and is encouraging responsible businesses.

But unemployment is a gnawing worry, especially unemployment among youth which can create a tinderbox environment that risks a decline back into open fighting. The statistics on work are at best, confusing, and at worst, unavailable. In countries like Liberia the employment problems are a combination of un-employment, under-employment and over-employment (working more than full time just to make ends meet). One statistic is undisputed: most people work in the informal sector of the economy, and this almost always means their work is poorly paid, carries no social benefits like health insurance, and is precarious – no job security at all. A lot of work is unpaid: farmers may toil on land and earn nothing but the minimal sale of crops; market women eke out a living selling a few kilos of goods a day; day laborers work as sharecroppers on the land of others. There may be more formal employment, but in difficult conditions: rubber tappers on the Firestone plantations or miners working in the supply chain of Arcelor Mittal steel company rarely earn enough to climb out of poverty.

Our organization, Realizing Rights: The Ethical Globalization Initiative is working with the Ministry of Labor and other government and civil society folks to try to remedy this. We are saying that it is possible to put the goal of creating more, and more decent, jobs at the center of government and aid policies. We think that if it’s ‘all hands on deck’ to include human rights standards in employment it can be a reality – with a visionary government like Liberia’s in place, at least. These human rights standards include things like equality and non-discrimination for women, respecting the right of workers to form and join trade unions of their choice, and building social protection (like health insurance) into the economy.

This was my third visit to Liberia this year. Each time I visit I see progress. But I also see a country where people work very hard for very small returns. We have to help create more local work opportunities that allow people to lead lives of dignity. We have to get cash in the hands of poor people so that the growing food crisis doesn’t wipe out all the gains that President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and her government has helped bring about.

Heather Grady works with Mary Robinson at Realizing Rights: The Ethical Globalization Initiative as Director of Policy and Strategy. She runs their 'Trade and Decent Work' program. Watch the Campaign News section of everyhumanhasrights.org for more information on Realizing Rights' work in Liberia in the coming weeks.