Yesterday was a momentous day! It was African Day of the Child, it was Jonathan's birthday but the momentous thing was that the ILO adopted a new convention on domestic work! HOOORAY!
Jonathan tells me that trades unions around the world have been campaigning for this for 50 years. I've only spent the last 3 years working on it. But it was quite a moment for me yesterday...I was at Anti-Slavery's office, with Audrey and Christine - we were supposed to be evaluating our time at the International Labour Conference where we'd been lobbying with five child domestic workers for their rights in this new convention. We were trying to get a live feed from the ILO (on ILO TV can you believe such a thing exists!!) but we couldn't get the sound and only had a very jumpy picture. We had two computers both trying to get the live feed and a set of speakers (that weren't working)...and Audrey was getting very frustrated, trying to find out how the vote was going (the UK Government have been VERY obstructive in the last week concerning the convention so this had made us nervous that the whole thing was not going to be voted in). With no sound it was impossible to know what was happening so I called Jonathan (at home) as he was also watching it live but WITH SOUND....he gave me a running commentary, I relayed that back to Audrey and Christine. All the time, I was tweeting madly on the progress of the convention (to my huge number of 10 followers!) and Audrey was desperately trying to fix her computer (and swearing in French and English). We also had texts coming in from a colleague at Human Rights Watch who was at the ILC - in Geneva.
OMG (as my children would say)...it was riveting, it was nerve wracking! The convention was passed and then about 20 minutes later the recommendation was passed...phew, hooray, applause! We felt like breaking into spontaneous song! The UK Government's stance was appalling and embarrassing but who cared they were out voted!! We had a latte and a custard tart to celebrate (and Jonathan tells me he did his tax return?! What?!) A day to remember!
Jonathan tells me that trades unions around the world have been campaigning for this for 50 years. I've only spent the last 3 years working on it. But it was quite a moment for me yesterday...I was at Anti-Slavery's office, with Audrey and Christine - we were supposed to be evaluating our time at the International Labour Conference where we'd been lobbying with five child domestic workers for their rights in this new convention. We were trying to get a live feed from the ILO (on ILO TV can you believe such a thing exists!!) but we couldn't get the sound and only had a very jumpy picture. We had two computers both trying to get the live feed and a set of speakers (that weren't working)...and Audrey was getting very frustrated, trying to find out how the vote was going (the UK Government have been VERY obstructive in the last week concerning the convention so this had made us nervous that the whole thing was not going to be voted in). With no sound it was impossible to know what was happening so I called Jonathan (at home) as he was also watching it live but WITH SOUND....he gave me a running commentary, I relayed that back to Audrey and Christine. All the time, I was tweeting madly on the progress of the convention (to my huge number of 10 followers!) and Audrey was desperately trying to fix her computer (and swearing in French and English). We also had texts coming in from a colleague at Human Rights Watch who was at the ILC - in Geneva.
OMG (as my children would say)...it was riveting, it was nerve wracking! The convention was passed and then about 20 minutes later the recommendation was passed...phew, hooray, applause! We felt like breaking into spontaneous song! The UK Government's stance was appalling and embarrassing but who cared they were out voted!! We had a latte and a custard tart to celebrate (and Jonathan tells me he did his tax return?! What?!) A day to remember!
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