Excerpt from: BUILDING WORKERS' POWER --- Congress Statement -3rd ITUC World Congress 18-23 May 2014 Berlin
Weapons of mass destruction pose a grave and present threat to humanity. The ITUC will work with its civil society allies to see all countries ratify and implement the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, including through the 2015 NPT Review Conference. We call for urgent negotiations on a treaty to ban the manufacture, stockpiling and possession of nuclear weapons as a first step towards their complete eradication. We will also act to ensure regulation of the small arms trade and to show how hundreds of billions of dollars of military expenditure must be better spent meeting vital needs for sustainable employment and development.
Migration must be a free choice for every person, and may be necessary to escape from war, dictatorship, slavery or poverty. Migration policies must be the responsibility of the UN and therefore based on a rights-based approach, in line with ILO principles. Every migrant should have the choice to stay at home where full employment, decent work and social protection is guaranteed or alternatively, have a path to citizenship in a new country of their choosing. The world needs investment that provides opportunity everywhere, not walls that divide people and deny them the chance to build a decent future.
We demand that the UN post-2015 Sustainability Goals include targets for full employment, decent work and a social protection floor, including universal, free, quality, education and access to affordable healthcare, food, water, sanitation, and energy security. Global action on HIV-AIDS and other pandemic and epidemic diseases must remain high on the agenda. The ITUC stands beside our brothers and sisters engaged in liberation struggles and the fight for democracy and human rights, including in Bahrain, Belarus, Egypt, Fiji, Libya, Tunisia and Western Sahara. The ITUC denounces the harsh suffering of the Saharawi people, which has continued for half a century, and urges the UN and all parties involved to search urgently for a just, lasting and acceptable solution which guarantees the self-determination of the people of Western Sahara.
We denounce the occupation of Palestine by Israel, and will mobilize for a just and sustainable peace between Israel and Palestine, in accordance with the legitimacy of international law and in particular Resolutions 242 and 338 of the UN Security Council. We call for: An end to the construction of illegal Israeli settlements and removal of existing settlements; Israel's withdrawal from all Palestinian lands, in
line with the 4th of June 1967 borders; and the dismantling of the illegal separation wall.
These demands will support equity, justice and the achievement of a comprehensive peace, confirming the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination and the establishment of a free and independent
Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital. We equally support the demands of our people for peace and security in nations ravaged by conflict, such as Afghanistan, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of Congo, Guinea, Haiti, Iran, Iraq, Mali, Somalia, Syria and those subject to oppression in Iran, Swaziland and Zimbabwe. And we deplore the denial of rights, in particular attacks on freedom of association, and anti-union actions. We will fight for an end to impunity in Colombia, Guatemala and Turkey, and for an end to slavery in Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and other nations. We will continue to oppose oppression and discrimination on the grounds of ethnic or indigenous origin, religion, sexual orientation or gender identity. Discrimination and xenophobia have no place in just societies, whether at home or at work.
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