Rangers and International Labour Standards A total of 190 conventions have been drafted through the International Labour Organization (ILO) in the one hundred years since the first six conventions were put forward for state party signatures in 1919. The table on the opposite page highlights twenty conventions that are of particular relevance to the enjoyment of safe and rewarding work for rangers. It also shows the extent to which these instruments have been ratified – both in ranger survey countries and globally. Ratification is highly meaningful in that it creates a legal obligation to adopt the convention’s provisions into national laws (assuming that the convention in question has already come into force).
Rangers are in constant danger for carrying out their tasks in every continent as is evident from the figures presented on page 105 of this publication. As an example, just weeks before the release of this report, Romanian forest ranger Liviu Pop was shot dead with a hunting rifle when responding to a tip-off about illegal logging – six rangers have now lost their lives in that country in recent years. The unions that cover these employees have called for better protection of rangers and denounced the limited resources and training given to park authorities, even holding a protest outside parliament in Bucharest. The ILO provides tools to respond to these urgent calls for action. Two of them stand out for their capacity to improve compliance with decent work standards: the Labour Inspection Convention, 1949 (No. 81) and the Convention on Labour Relations in the Public Service, 1978 (No. 151). Together, they have the potential of ensuring that rangers can count on working conditions that are mutually agreed and reliable. Convention No. 81 seeks to ensure that all workers enjoy the effective protection of the laws, regulations and collective agreements that establish conditions of work. It requires that governments oversee labour inspectors, who should be fully engaged in enforcement and independent from all outside interference.
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Future ILO conventions will continue to be applicable to rangers. This includes the newest convention; Violence and Harassment Convention, 2019 (No. 190), which should be considered by countries in regard to its implications for the ranger sector. Finally, it is worth noting that there already exist ILO conventions specific to certain sectors, such as domestic work, seafaring, nursing and mining. The development of a convention that aims to further define proper working conditions for rangers and related workers might be a worthwhile consideration for ILO member states over the coming years.
Convention No. 151, in turn, provides guarantees that wildlife rangers need to exercise their rights to establish and join worker organizations, to have an effective voice in the determination of their working conditions, and to resolve disputes without strikes. The Committee of Experts on the Application of Conventions and Recommendations (CEACR) has been emphatic that wildlife rangers should enjoy these protections, because they are not members of the armed forces or the police: - ‘While some of the officials mentioned by the Government are obliged to carry a weapon in the course of their duties, this does not mean that they are members of the police or armed forces.’ (CEACR, Morocco, C151, 2017.) - ‘While members of the armed forces, the police and civil servants in the administration of the State can be excluded from the application of the Convention, all other categories of workers, including prison, fire and wildlife services, as well as civilian personnel in the armed forces, should benefit from the rights granted by it.’ (CEACR, South Sudan, C98, 2019.) – Carlos R. Carrión-Crespo, Sectoral Specialist for Public Service and Utilities, International Labour Organization.
