Information available in Spanish

Through the Inter-American Centre for Knowledge Development in Vocational Training (ILO/CINTERFOR), the ILO has consolidated a network of national institutions responsible for this topic, and during the period it encouraged the establishment of models and standards for skill-based professional training. By bringing together training, social dialogue, and job creation, the ILO has developed the System for the Measurement and Improvement of Productivity (SIMAPRO), which has been successfully applied at sugar mills in Mexico and has been expanded into other countries and economic sectors.

In the area of promoting employment, as a part of its country-specific Decent Work Programmes the ILO has made progress with business sector development, including technical assistance for promoting companies of different sizes and cooperatives. For example, it has promoted intensive methodologies for employment investment in nations of the Andean region, Central America, and the Southern Cone, which have enabled the establishment of sustainable microenterprises and the construction of local infrastructure. It has worked actively on strengthening labour institutions in all the region’s countries to improve the capacity of national systems and public employment services, to transition from informal to formal employment, and to create statistics of use in policy formulation. Notable examples include the creation of a network of labour market observatories, the enhancing of the Central American observatory, and the consolidation of the Labour Analysis and Information System for Latin America and the Caribbean (SIALC). The ILO has emphasized two specific aspects of employment: rural employment, through in-depth reports on labour markets and rural poverty in five of the region’s countries (Brazil, Costa Rica, Chile, El Salvador, and Peru), conducted in conjunction with ECLAC and the FAO; and youth employment, an area in which regional and national programmes have been undertaken to bolster national youth employment plans and to enhance the employability of this sector of the population. Two comprehensive regional reports with updated statistics were completed in 2009 and 2010 (Decent Work and Youth in Latin America).