Polycom represented at the ITUC

Economic empowerment for the Girls and Young Women is key as most of them yearn to be self-independent and professionally grow in their careers. Most of these young people find themselves in these spaces unaware of their trade and human rights. A number of times this particular group are economically excluded.

International Trade Union Conference Africa (ITUC-AFRICA) and Stop the Bleeding Consortium Region Conference on Advancing Human and Labour Rights (HTUR) in Africa organized a 3 days meeting from 30^th March to 1^st April on Activating young people’s power to foster human and labor rights in the region. From these discussions it was evident that most of the youths are unemployed and underemployed. The gender dilemma is another issue when it comes to the inclusion of women in decision making on human and labor rights policy formulation fora.

The Illicit Financial Flows leads to the recurrent cycle of underdevelopment as transparency and accountability is refuted thus the rise of poverty levels in the African region. This is key aspect as it cuts across the problems that most of the Girls and Young Women face in the society due to lack of proper governance on the money usage. The equal work for equal remunerations is never achieved.

• Ensure that women access education with specific interests of either formal or informal in order to have bargaining powers in the spheres of work.
• Inclusion of every social strata should be key and multidimensional since half of the population are the women coming from the underserved communities for example rural and the slum areas.
• Encourage the girls and women to join the trade union as they are the ones given the mandate to protect and uphold workers’ rights.

It is hoped that the civil society organization should be able to delve and meaningfully engage with the trade union societies to foster a conducive environment that is inclusive. This is an area of interest for it ensures that workers’ rights are adhered to and it is also vivid that humans spend almost all their life working to earn an income.