Iran Calls on ILO to Help Gaza
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – An Iranian minister implored the International Labour Organization (ILO) to use its influence to curb Israel’s raging violence in the besieged, impoverished Gaza Strip.
Iranian Minister of Cooperatives, Labor and Welfare Ali Rabeiei said he has sent a letter to ILO Director-General Guy Ryder, calling on the international organization to “condemn the Zionist regime’s measures against the defenseless people of Gaza.”
“I have asked him, as (director of) an important organization in maintaining the rights of workforce, to use all its leverage to stop such savage (Israeli) attacks,” Rabeiei explained.
He also said Iranian workers plan to hold a demonstration to condemn the Israeli regime's atrocities against the defenseless people of the Gaza Strip.
On July 8, Israel launched air strikes on the Gaza Strip. After 10 days of bombardment of the enclave from the air and sea, the Israeli forces started a ground operation in the Gaza Strip.
The death toll from the 24-day Israeli onslaught on Gaza has exceeded 1,300 and over 7,000 have been injured.
The Israeli offensive has killed mostly civilians, according to the UN. The fighting has forced over 215,000 Gazans to flee their homes in the overcrowded coastal strip, the WHO said.
In its annual report on the situation of workers of the occupied Arab territories, published in May, the ILO had called for the lifting of restrictions to improve the situation of Palestinian workers and entrepreneurs.
“In Gaza the situation is dramatic due to the blockade which has paralyzed much of economic activity and led to an 80 per cent aid dependency rate,” the report said.
The authors of the report had describe the situation in Gaza as a “tinderbox where a single spark can light a fire which will be extremely difficult to contain.”
They had also called for urgent measures to allow for the movement of people and goods to bring relief to an area where “four-fifths of people have to count on humanitarian aid, economic activity has been paralyzed, and achieving decent work is an increasingly distant dream.”
In Gaza, almost a third (32.5 percent) of workers were unemployed in 2013. This rate rose to 51.8 percent for young men and an extraordinary 86.3 percent for young women aged 15-24, the report added.
