"Counteracting the risk of a slide into persistent slow growth accompanied by… rising income inequality is perhaps the major policy challenge facing the multilateral system"
Why does widening inequality around the world concern you?
Excessive income inequalities deprive the world economy from much-needed demand and business opportunities. Growing inequalities, together with six years of weak economic recovery and a faltering policy response, have left millions more behind, without jobs and with less affordable food and services.
What is the most important contribution that multilateral institutions could make to tackle widening inequality?
Counteracting the risk of a slide into persistent slow growth accompanied by entrenched unemployment and high and rising income inequality is perhaps the major policy challenge facing the multilateral system. Creating jobs and narrowing inequalities are essential both to global recovery and to underpin medium term sustainable development. In this context, the ILO gives high priority to the protection of workers from forms of work that deny fundamental principles and rights at work, that puts at risk the lives, health, freedom, human dignity and security of workers or keeps households in conditions of extreme poverty.
Mr. Guy Ryder will speak at the plenary session on Macroeconomic dimensions of inequality on 18 June.
He assumed office as the ILO's 10th Director-General in October 2012. Guided by a strong commitment to social justice and as an active practitioner of tripartism, he has consistently reached out to secure consensus in diverse contexts.
Mr. Ryder has served in senior positions in the ILO, including as Director, Office of the Director-General (1999-2002) when he actively contributed to the development of the ILO's decent work agenda, and as Executive Director, International Labour Standards and Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work from September 2010 to September 2012.
At a different stage in his career he was instrumental in the unification of the democratic international trade union movement within the ITUC. Elected as the ITUC's first General Secretary in November 2006, he established sustainable development and climate change as key international trade union priorities.
Born in Liverpool (UK) in 1956, Guy Ryder was educated at the Universities of Cambridge and Liverpool.
