ILO, China join hands to enhance employment policymaking in Southeast Asia

The initiative aims at "leveraging knowledge generation and sharing, policy dialogue and capacity development to support policymakers in addressing labor market issues in Southeast Asia and promoting employment policies and opportunities for decent work," the ILO said in a statement.

"The project will facilitate the sharing of good practices and lessons learned between countries in the ASEAN region and China through a regional knowledge-sharing network to ensure productive employment and decent work for all."

With US$1 million in funding from China for 2023, the initial phase of the ProSSCE-ASEAN project will encompass pilot interventions in Cambodia, Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam. It will subsequently expand to include other Southeast Asian countries.

In Vietnam, the project will assist policymakers and ILO constituents in evaluating existing entrepreneurship programs, with the objective of providing recommendations for the policy dialogue process, as well as for designing and implementing entrepreneurship policies. These aim to create more decent jobs, especially for youth.

Chihoko Asada-Miyakawa, ILO's Assistant Director-General and Regional Director for Asia and the Pacific, said the project was expected to "help address significant employment challenges and to develop a new generation of employment policies and strategies that can contribute to a human-centered recovery as well as more equitable and just societies."