Background:

As recent entrants into the labour market, young people find themselves navigating their way through a complex world of work characterised by both opportunities and challenges. With boundless ambition, energy and enthusiasm, they aspire to access employment opportunities that provide fair wages, job security and a safe working environment. Yet, these aspirations for decent work and dignified lives may be jeopardized by their limited knowledge of the legal standards, norms and the fundamental principles and rights at work governing workplace relations and conditions. Young entrepreneurs encounter additional barriers such as limited access to skills, finance, markets, and networks, exposing them to risks like discrimination, exploitation, and unsafe working conditions.

Access to decent work not only provides income for young individuals but also represents a path to building a secure future and making meaningful contributions to society. However, young people, especially those in forced displacement situations due to conflicts or violence, face specific challenges in accessing decent work and equal rights at work. Raising awareness about their rights is crucial to ensuring successful integration into the workplace, promoting freedom, dignity, and security.

Against this backdrop, the ILO is launching “Work Wise Youth: A guide to youth rights at work”, an updated and expanded version of the 2015 manual “Rights @ Work 4 Youth: decent jobs for young people”. The guide sheds light on young people’s rights at work, including wages, working time, occupational safety and health, prevention of violence and harassment in the world of work, gender equality and non-discrimination, and access to social security. The content is tailored to the current and evolving shifts in the labour market – driven, among other things, by the polycrisis, technological advancements, climate change and globalization – and aims to promote equality, including gender equality, through a transformative agenda. It is intended for ILO constituents and other stakeholders involved in the development and implementation of initiatives aimed at raising young workers’ awareness of their rights at work, in particular young people in forced displacement contexts.

This guide has been produced under the initiative, Advancing Young People’s Engagement and Meaningful Participation in the Partnership for improving prospects for forcibly displaced persons and host communities (PROSPECTS), jointly implemented by the ILO, UNHCR and UNICEF with the support of the Government of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. PROSPECTS seeks to improve access to employment, education and protection for refugees and host communities and is implemented by the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the International Labour Organization (ILO), the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the World Bank.

Objectives:

• Foster knowledge and awareness of the international labour standards and fundamental rights under the Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work that lay down important provisions on the working conditions of young workers, including forcibly displaced youth, such as social protection entitlements, occupational safety and health, among others;
• Highlight the freedom to engage in economic or business activities, and to access the skills, knowledge, financial resources, markets and networks needed to become drivers of economic opportunities for themselves and their peers;
• Facilitate a dialogue among young people representing employers, workers and refugee communities about the importance of promoting youth rights at work for individuals, businesses and societies at large; and
• Launch Work Wise Youth: A guide to youth rights at work; a reference framework for facilitators to support them in delivering training for young people to raise their awareness on their rights at work, social protection entitlements and fair conditions of work.