The XIX World Congress on Safety
and Health at Work – the world’s largest gathering of health and safety experts
– opened in Istanbul
The 5-day meeting brings together
more than 3,000 policy-makers, experts, industry and labour leaders from over
100 countries to discuss issues such as comprehensive and proactive approaches
to safety and health at work; social dialogue and partnerships on occupational
safety and health; and new challenges in a changing world of work and an uneven
global economic recovery.
The congress seeks to build on the
Seoul Declaration on Safety and Health at Work, adopted at the Safety and
Health Summit held on the occasion of the XVIII World Congress in June 2008,
just prior to the onset of the global economic and jobs crisis. The Seoul
Declaration committed its signatories to “taking a lead in promoting a
preventative safety and health culture and placing occupational safety and
health high on national agendas”.
It also stated for the first time
that the right to a safe and healthy working environment should be recognized
as a fundamental human right.
Participants to the congress will
discuss the latest ILO “Global Trends and Challenges on Occupational Safety and
Health”. The report shows that the overall number of fatal work-related
accidents and diseases increased between 2003 and 2008. At the same time, the
report also says that while the number of fatal accidents declined from 358,000
to 321,000, but the number of fatal diseases increased from 1.95 million to
2.02 million over the same period.
This equates to an average of more
than 6,300 work-related deaths every day, and with some 317 million workers
injured in accidents at work each year, a daily average of some 850,000
injuries that result in four or more day absences from work.
In fact the numbers released in the
report represent just the tip of the iceberg. In his statement in the occasion
of the World Day for Safety and Health at Work, ILO Director-General Juan
Somavia said that “Dramatic events such as the nuclear accident at Fukushima , Japan
this year or the Pike River mining accident in New Zealand
According to the report, there have
been considerable advances in occupational safety and health over the past
decades. This is due to an increased understanding in many countries of the
need to prevent accidents and occupational diseases. There is also a growing
acceptance of the heavy burdens that unsafe and unhealthy working conditions
impose on women and men’s health and their well-being, in addition to the
adverse affects on productivity, employment and the economy as a whole.
However, the report also states
that “the global economic recession appears to have had a significant impact on
workers’ safety and health and on their working conditions. While it is too
soon to tell what long-term effect it has had on rates of accidents and
ill-health, there is evidence that some of the recent advances in terms of
promoting OSH
“Increased work intensity due to
the pressures in enterprise performance can lead to less time being given to
prevention and less effective OSH
The report also notes that
psychological factors, such as stress, harassment and violence at work have a
marked impact on workers’ health, adding that “such factors are likely to be
more significant as employment becomes more precarious for some, and workloads
and working hours often increase for those remaining in employment”.
The XIX World Congress,
co-organized by the International Labour Organization (ILO) and the
International Social Security Association (ISSA) in cooperation with the
Turkish Ministry of Labour and Social Security (MOLSS), is also expected to set
the guidelines and priorities ahead of the next global gathering in 2014.
For more information on the World
Congress or to request interviews with ILO or ISSA experts, please contact:
Ms. Iselin Danbolt, ILO Department
of Communication:
E-mail: g3dcomm@ilo.org – Mobile
Mr. Alexander Belopopsky, ISSA
Promotion Unit:
E-mail: belopopsky@ilo.org – Mobile
Further information about the XIX
World Congress on Safety and Health at Work and the ILO can be found at: www.ilo.org/oshcongress2011.
The XIX World Congress on Safety
and Health at Work takes place 11-15 September 2011 in Istanbul , Turkey Republic
of Turkey
Source: ILO. 12 September 2011
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