TNAG-1520-FCO40-2081-Employment-in-Hong-Kong-1986 — Page 72

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NON-SELF-GOVERNING TERRITORIES

between law and public opinion, on the support of which the effec- tive enforcement of the obligations uitimately depends.

The International Labour Conference at Philadelphia laid down in Article 4 of the Recommendation a guiding principle calculated to prevent any such dificulty:

All possible steps shall be taken effectively to associate the peoples of the dependent territories in the framing and execution of measures of social progress, preferably through their own elected representatives where appropriate and possible.

In Paris a further indication of the necessity for full consultation at all stages was given when the Conference's Committee on social policy in dependent territories invited consideration of

the possibility of providing for the admission to the Conference of repre- sentatives of the administration, organised employers and organised workers of dependent territories who have been appoited to accompany a delegation by the Government of a Member of the Organisation and of taking other appro- priate steps to promote the effective association of dependent territories in the work of the Organisation.

These proposals, together with the numerous provisions in the Recommendations providing for the association of organised employers and workers in the details of labour regulation, should endow the labour policy advocated with the support of national opinion. This, however, makes it all he more important that, when considering the terms of a Convention, the Office should propose nothing to the Governments or to the Conference which, however admirable as a rule of employment, could possibly weaken the effective interest of the peoples of dependent territories in its adoption and enforcemeat.

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The form of this Report is dictated primarily by the probability that the provisions which the Conference will find suitable for expression in a Convention are some of those already adopted in the Philadelphia and Paris Recommendations. The Office's imme- diate task is therefore to supply information setting out the law and practice in dependent territories on the basis of the Recommenda- tions. For this purpose the Recommendation texts have been broken down into the parts which for reasons of constitutional propriety raise differing considerations.

Thus, in the first place there are a zumber of articles of the Philadelphia Recommendation which invite the ratification and application of existing Conventions concerned with matters of particular significance in certain dependent territories, or which