"Employment growth and basic needs: one - world problems, Report of the Director - General of the International Labour office

The fight against unemployment and poverty has been the main concern of the ILO throughout its 57 years of existence. It was the central preoccupation of the founding fathers of the ILO in 1919, who stressed the need to attack conditions of labour involving such " injustice, hardship and privation to large numbers of people as to produce unrest so great that the peace and harmony of the world are imperilled ".
It was at the centre of the ILO's efforts in the years of the Great Depression in the 1930s. It has been the driving force behind the ILO's attempts to set internationally agreed minimum standards governing conditions of employment. It was stressed in unequivocal terms in the Declaration of Philadelphia which marked the first 25 years of the ILO's existence by a forceful statement of the aims and objectives of the ILO. The Declaration proclaimed that "poverty anywhere constitutes a danger to prosperity everywhere "; and that the war against want requires to be carried on with unrelenting vigour". It entrusted to the ILO responsibility for promoting among the nations of the world programmes to achieve full employment and the raising of standards of living" and a "just share of the fruits of progress to all
This concern found expression in the rapid expansion of ILO activities in the postwar years, and its participation in a broad international effort of technical assistance to raise standards of living through rapid economic growth in the less developed nations.