By Le Figaro with AFP
The World Labor Organization (ILO) announced on Thursday that the Workplace Violence and Harassment Convention, approved in June 2019, will come into force in a year after Fiji has ratified it, the second country to to have done it after Uruguay.
The text had been adopted by an overwhelming majority of member countries a year ago at a conference marking the 100th anniversary of the ILO, but it required two ratifications to enter into force. Fiji’s ambassador to the UN in Geneva, Nazhat Shameem Khan, informed ILO Director General Guy Ryder that his country had ratified the text during a virtual ceremony on Thursday, said the organization. in a press release. “With the deposit of the second ratification, the Convention will enter into force on June 25, 2021”, she said. Uruguay ratified the Convention in early June.
“The risk of violence and harassment is escalating”
Guy Ryder underlined that the crisis of the new coronavirus had made the entry into force of the Convention more urgent. Ratification by Fiji “Is an important step towards the achievement of decent work, especially in this unprecedented period when the world is struggling to overcome and recover from a global pandemic”, did he declare. “In times of crisis and economic insecurity, the risk of violence and harassment escalates”, he noted.
The ILO began working on the text in 2015, two years before the campaign against sexual harassment sparked by accusations of sexual assault against Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein. Last year, Guy Ryder considered that the #MeToo campaign against sexual harassment had given impetus to the drafting of the Convention. Convention stresses that violence and harassment in the workplace “May represent a violation of human rights”, and that they are “Unacceptable and incompatible with decent work”. It enjoins states to promote “A general environment of zero tolerance” with regard to this violence at work.
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