The rise of ILO

The rise of ILO can be attributed to the early 20th century and the cause would be the
increasing demands for the effective social policies which were in turn used to counter the
evils of unregulated capitalist developments which included features like excessive working
hours or unfavorable wages or even bad working conditions. The main aim of the ILO was
also to counter the social unrest that was developing after the first world war around various
political decisions and movements. After the formation of ILO there was a belief that the
conditions of the labour would change for a better. This was a major challenge taken up by
the Paris Peace conference of 1919. There few radical new ideas were adopted. To name a
few: the ILO had the power to develop the standards of labour internationally thereby also to
supervise their implementation by the various sovereign countries.
The newly formed organization had gratified few frameworks in the first 10 years of its life
and adopted 28 conventions covering various aspects like health and safety , hours of work ,
protection of the various vulnerable groups and so on. The organization so formed also had a
very strong support from various employees and in turn pursued various political agendas
also. But having said that although the ILO had a global agenda yet in the practical sense it
was mainly centered around European policy as the US did not join until the late 1934s and
most of Asia and Africa was still under colonial rule or domination
Even during the world war two the ILO played a major role in portraying itself as the
guardian of the human labour rights specifically in the Declaration of Philadelphia.