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TRAVEL RISK MANAGEMENT 2015
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Think of work and we imagine a factory with a production line, or a busy oice or shop with the workers commuting daily between their nearby home and place of employment. While most people still work in this way, the situation is changing. For many, work means crossing international borders.
The rate of growth of the world’s migrant population more than doubled between the 1960s and the 1990s, reaching 2.6 percent in 1985-1990, and it is forecast that this trend will most likely accelerate in the 21st Century1. Many people also travel extensively for their work, either as contractor, employee, or self-employed.
Sadly, an estimated 2.3 million people die every year from work-related accidents and diseases, more than 160 million people sufer from occupational and work-related diseases, and there are 313 million non-fatal accidents per year. In economic terms, the ILO (International Labour Organisation) has estimated that more than 4% of the world’s annual GDP (Growth Domestic Product) is lost as a consequence of occupational accidents and diseases.2
This harm occurs to people working out of their normal work environment, working in diferent countries as well as to those doing their job in their normal place of employment, and these workers should not be excluded from prevention and protection. “Everyone has the right to life, to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment”.3
Prevention of harm should cover all workers, from all hazards and risks, in all work activities. This requires thought, planning, action, and follow-up to ensure that measures put in place are efective and continue to be so.
Christa Sedlatschek
Director, European Agency for Safety and Health at Work
1. https://osha.europa.eu/en/priority_groups/migrant_workers/index_html
2. http://www.ilo.org/global/topics/safety-and-health-at-work/lang--en/index.htm accessed March 2015 3. Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UN, 1948)