Tehran calls on ILO to spearhead global action against war
Iran’s Minister of Cooperatives, Labor and Social Welfare Ahmad Meydari urged the International Labor Organization (ILO) to take the lead in preventing armed conflicts, telling the 114th International Labor Conference in Geneva that war poses the gravest threat to workers, social justice and human dignity worldwide.
Addressing delegates via videoconference, Meydari said wars destroy jobs, fracture families, devastate communities and place workers across the world at risk.
He called on the ILO to move beyond documenting the human cost of conflicts and play a more active role in preventing them, Tasnim News Agency reported.
Invoking the ILO’s founding principles and the Declaration of Philadelphia, he said peace and social justice remain the twin pillars of workers’ welfare and global prosperity.
Meydari proposed that the ILO Director-General convene a special conference next year under the theme “War and the Workers of the World”, arguing that the international labor body should mobilize its full capacity to confront what he described as the greatest obstacle to decent work.
“Wars may begin against oppressed nations, but their flames ultimately engulf everyone,” he said, warning that workers on every continent ultimately bear the economic and social consequences of conflict.
The minister also praised trade unions that have condemned what he described as aggression and acts of terror against Iran, saying labor organizations should remain on “the right side of history” in defending peace and workers’ rights.
Drawing parallels between the suffering caused by war and other social injustices, Meydari said the international community must show the same determination in opposing conflict as it does in combating child labor and discrimination against women.
He called for global solidarity, urging governments, workers and employers to unite against war and what he termed “war capitalism”, saying indifference to conflict ultimately threatens humanity as a whole.