Where was the 112th International Labour Conference organised?

Concept — the International Labour Organization (ILO), created in 1919, is the specialised agency of the United Nations system that deals with the world of work. Its supreme deliberative organ is the International Labour Conference (ILC), a tripartite body in which every member State is represented by government, employer and worker delegates and which meets in ordinary session once a year. Under the ILO Constitution and long-settled practice, an ordinary session of the Conference is convened at the seat of the Organisation — the city of its permanent headquarters — unless the Governing Body decides otherwise.

Applying it here — the 112th ordinary session of the International Labour Conference ran from 3 to 14 June 2024. Following that practice it met at the seat of the ILO, that is Geneva, Switzerland, sitting in the Palais des Nations and in the ILO headquarters building. The venue asked for is therefore Geneva.

Why not the other cities —

• Milan — the capital of Italy’s Lombardy region and the country’s financial and fashion centre. It hosted the 2015 World Expo, but no session of the International Labour Conference.

• Paris — the headquarters city of UNESCO and of the OECD, and the venue of the 2015 climate conference, but not the seat of the ILO.

• Berne — the seat of the Swiss federal authorities and of the Universal Postal Union. It hosted the early international labour conferences of 1905–06 and 1913, which pre-date the ILO itself, but no ILC session.

• Geneva — the permanent headquarters of the ILO since 1920 and the regular venue of the Conference’s ordinary sessions, including the 112th in June 2024.

Cross-check — the pattern is easy to remember: the very first session of the Conference met in Washington, D.C. in 1919 and the young Organisation was based in London until 1920; from that year Geneva has been its permanent seat, interrupted only by a wartime relocation to Montreal between 1940 and 1948. So any recent numbered session of the ILC — the 110th, 111th or 112th — is held in Geneva.