ILO response to the earthquakes in Türkiye and Syria

Described as “one of the biggest natural disasters of our times” the multiple earthquakes which struck Türkiye and northern Syria on 6 February 2023 have resulted in the death and injury of tens of thousands of people, and have caused extensive damage to buildings and infrastructure across both countries.

Disasters such as the earthquake have severe implications on the world of work. Jobs and livelihoods are destroyed, businesses interrupted and workplaces damaged. This can also lead to an exacerbation of other decent work deficits. In addition, debris and rubble removal works without proper safety measures also subject workers to a number of Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) risk factors, such as exposure to hazardous objects, unsafe working conditions and work-related accidents.

In such a humanitarian context that requires a viable solution, one of the suitable instruments that the ILO can apply is the employment intensive approach. The approach aims to combine efforts to rehabilitate destroyed infrastructures with an immediate decent job creation scheme, and a longer-term objective of skills development and employability enhancement as well as improvement of working conditions. As such, the ILO interventions in the aftermath of the earthquake aim to ensure human security from an early recovery angle.