Mr Chairman of the Board of Directors,
Chief Executive Officer,
Distinguished delegates and observers
Intervention by Albert Anor for the IAFT
On 7 October 2024, the Palestinian trade unions called a 15-minute international strike. More than 200,000 workers in the West Bank and Gaza have been deprived of jobs and wages since 7 October 2023, despite Israel’s commitments to the ILO.
The ILO Governing Body decided to propose a draft resolution on the occupied Arab territories to this conference. The background information presented in support of this resolution obviously dates back several months. During those months, experts, humanitarian workers and many journalists were targeted, apparently deliberately, by the occupying power and lost their lives. In 2024, GDP fell by 28% in the occupied territories and by 82% in the Gaza Strip (unemployment rate 79.7%), where consumption fell by 80% (figures). According to the UN, more than 50,000 people have been killed, mainly women and children. UNRWA itself, which employs or used to employ 13,000 people, was targeted by Israeli fire, as was the ICRC.
These figures, of course, do not take into account the very many children and their mothers who disappeared under the bombardments during the same operations.
The International Association of the Free Thought, which I represent here, fights for absolute freedom of conscience and it is for this reason that one of its presidents, at one time a member of the ILO Governing Body, our comrade Marc Blondel, suggested that we put forward our candidature to contribute our point of view as an INGO.
The AILP delegation to the ILO: Alain Collard and Michel Godicheau
The figures I have just mentioned can have only one meaning, the one that is, with worldwide sadness and horror, observed by all honest human beings: this is not a conflict of territories, a conflict of religions, it is a matter of extermination. The proof of this is that the occupying power has attacked, with the efficiency of modern technology, not only women and children, but also the mosques and churches of Christians who were Palestinian or even Lebanese. Women, men and children are thus targeted both for what they think and for what they are: employers, employees, civil servants, humanitarian workers and their families, in a word: Palestinians and those who support the civilian population!
This is why, in this 113th ITC, our international association is ready to support all the parties involved in working for an immediate and definitive ceasefire and a ban on arms sales to Israel.
Thank you for your attention.