The ILO Regional Office for Arab States works to enhance national capacities of Arab States and strengthen social dialogue, in order to enable independent employers’ and workers’ organizations to participate with governments to come up with solutions to economic and social problems. The Regional Office in Beirut was reopened in 1994 after a 23-year absence due to security considerations.
In particular, the Regional Office seeks to: help constituents alleviate poverty; promote employment; develop human resources; end discrimination with respect to employment and occupation; ensure equality in treatment and opportunity in employment; expand the coverage of social security to cover excluded groups, eliminate child labour; improve capacities of labour administration; further vocational training; rehabilitate the disabled; establish independent employers and workers organizations; strengthen the mechanism of collective bargaining; set up viable structures for social dialogue; and encourage ratification of international labour standards.
In its efforts to achieve these objectives, the Regional Office and its multidisciplinary team cooperate with international and regional organizations and institutions. In particular, it seeks to strengthen its working relationship with the Arab Labour Organization, the International Confederation of Arab Trade Unions, the General Union of Chambers of Commerce, Industry, and Agriculture in the Arab states, the Executive Bureau of the Council fo Ministers of Labour and Social Affairs in the Gulf Cooperation Council States, the Arab Fund for Ecomomic and Social Development, and the Economic and Social Commission for West Asia (ESCWA).