A/HRC/20/15 affecting health, which are directly related to safety and hygiene at work. 4 “Industrial hygiene” (or occupational hygiene) encompasses all efforts to protect workers‟ health through control of the work environment, including the recognition and evaluation of those factors that may cause illness, lack of well-being or discomfort among workers or the community.5 9. Under the right to health, everyone is entitled to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of health conducive to living a life in dignity. The ILO Decent Work agenda establishes the primary goal of the ILO to promote opportunities for women and men to obtain decent and productive work, in conditions of freedom, equity, security and human dignity.6 The joint ILO-WHO social protection floor approach, a strategic objective of the Decent Work agenda, is committed to promoting human dignity and increasing the productive capacity of vulnerable groups.7 The ILO Convention No. 155 on occupational safety and health states that it applies to “all branches of economic activity” (art. 1) in which workers are employed, including the informal economy 8 where workers may be particularly vulnerable, as discussed below. General comment No. 14 also places special emphasis on States‟ responsibilities vis-à-vis vulnerable and marginalized groups, including in the core obligations to formulate and implement a national health policy and to ensure access to health facilities, goods and services on a non-discriminatory basis (para. 43(f)). The right to occupational health, as an integral component of the right to health, thus includes the promotion of the dignity of workers, realized in part through safe and healthy working conditions, with a particular focus on vulnerable and marginalized groups. A. The informal economy 10. The informal economy can be defined as a diversified set of economic activities, enterprises and workers that are not regulated or protected by the State. As defined by the ILO, the informal sector consists of “private unincorporated enterprises” which are not registered under specific forms of national legislation. 9 Informal employment, however, is broader in scope and consists of all employment in the informal sector, plus those workers employed informally within the formal sector. 10 The informal economy includes both the black economy, which seeks to avoid taxation and regulation, and the criminal economy, which deals in illegal goods and services. However, the black and criminal economies account for only a small share of the informal workforce. Most informal enterprises and workers deal in legal goods and services, and operate in a semi-legal, but not deliberately illegal manner. 11. The informal economy stands in contrast to the formal economy in a number of critical ways, the most important being the relative absence of State regulation. The lack of 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 ILO Convention No. 155 concerning Occupational Safety and Health, art. 3(e). Benjamin O. Alli, Fundamental principles of occupational health and safety (Geneva, ILO, 2001), p. 84. ILO, Report of the Director General: Decent Work, International Labour Conference, 87th session, Geneva, June 1999. ILO, Social protection floor for a fair and inclusive globalization, Report of the Social protection Advisory Group (Geneva, 2011), p. 6. ILO, “Decent work and the informal economy,” Report VI, International Labour Conference, 90th session, Geneva, 2002; ILO, Women and men in the informal economy: A statistical picture (Geneva, 2002). ILO, “Decent work and the informal economy,” p. 126. ILO, “Statistical update on employment in the informal economy” (Geneva, ILO Department of Statistics, 2011), p. 12. 5