A leading Vatican diplomat said that it is “imperative” for the International Labour Organization to return to its founding principles.
“The multilateral system is currently experiencing turbulent times,” Archbishop Ettore Balestrero, apostolic nuncio and Permanent Observer to the United Nations and other international organizations in Geneva, Switzerland, said at a meeting of governing body of the UN agency. “Amidst this turmoil, it is imperative to return to the principles on which this Organization was founded.”
Archbishop Balestrero explained:
The conviction that ‘all human beings […] have the right to pursue both their material well-being and their spiritual development in conditions of freedom and dignity’ and the ideal of ‘universal and lasting peace, based on social justice’ must be strongly reaffirmed.