Violence and Harassment: ILO C190

Working relationships do not end at the office door. Recruitment, training, travel, messaging and employer-provided accommodation can extend the power to demand, refuse and punish. Adopted by the International Labour Conference on June 21, 2019, the Violence and Harassment Convention, No. 190 uses the world of work to broaden the frame. Article 1 includes more than sexual harassment: unacceptable behaviors, practices or threats likely to cause physical, psychological, sexual or economic harm, whether occurring once or repeatedly.

Article 2 extends protection beyond employees with standard contracts to trainees, apprentices, volunteers, jobseekers, applicants and people whose employment has ended, across formal and informal economies. Not yet having a job, or having lost one, does not remove work-related power. Recruitment and future references may make refusal difficult, although particular harms still require evidence rather than being established by status alone.

Linked to work, beyond the workstation

Article 3 includes work-related travel, social activities, communications, employer accommodation and commuting. Someone need not first locate the incident beside an official desk. A domestic worker living in an employer’s home or pressure continuing in a work messaging group illustrates how place and employment relations can overlap. Whether particular conduct violates applicable law still depends on the relevant system and facts.

Prevention therefore exceeds a lesson in good manners. Article 9 requires laws and regulations concerning employer measures commensurate with their control and, so far as reasonably practicable, participation by workers and representatives in policy and risk assessment. Work organization, unequal power and complaint mechanisms need attention. Teaching only potential victims to be alert transfers risks an organization could change onto individuals.

Article 10 connects complaints and investigation with external remedies, support and protection from retaliation. It also requires that privacy and confidentiality not be misused. Confidentiality can protect a person or become an institutional demand for silence; the difference concerns safety, choice and accountability. Organization, collective bargaining and collective agreements in Articles 5 and 12 likewise make prevention more than a management code imposed from above.

Support is different from control

Article 10(f) recognizes the effects of domestic violence and requires mitigation within the world of work so far as reasonably practicable. Income, attendance and safety cannot be dismissed through an absolute private/work division. That does not authorize employer control over intimate life. Supportive working conditions respecting choice differ from surveillance undertaken in the name of protection.

Adoption, ratification and implementation are distinct. The Convention entered into force internationally on June 25, 2021; Article 14 specifies registered ratifications and rules for entry into force for individual Members. Its appearance in the UK’s 2024 Treaty Series reproduces the 2019 instrument rather than supplying a new adoption date. Recommendation No. 206 is not another treaty requiring the same ratification. Universal rights objectives do not establish identical directly usable procedures everywhere. Institutions and workers’ experiences are needed to assess implementation.

The workplace-harassment interview in Les Couilles sur la table helps examine how peer approval and organizational settings sustain boundary violations. CEDAW No. 35 connects State diligence with housing, care, services and reparation. Together they ask whether someone can refuse harm without losing livelihood or voice, rather than reducing safety to personal courage or an institutional policy document.