Campaign to implement the ILO Convention  
What can I do? Action ideas!  

• Familiarize yourself with the summary information provided in this website and ILO's website. They also have several publications you may find useful. Here is a list of their distributors and sales agents around the world, their depository libraries and their field offices. 

• To take advantage of the new ILO Convention calling for improvements in maternity protection, you need to work with your own government, in particular the ministry of labour. They probably already have a group working on this, examining the text of Convention 183 to decide if they want to ratify it and if so what changes it might require in national laws. 

• The largest labour unions and employers' organizations are good places to do advocacy, as they are supposed to be officially consulted. 

• Contact your ministry of health if you know they are concerned about exclusive breastfeeding. You might be able to work through them to make an input into your country' s work on ratifying the new ILO convention or developing new legislation. Indeed, if the ministry of health has not so far been consulted, they may want to request a meeting with the ministry of labor in order to discuss the need to harmonize policy between the two sectors.. 

• Contact your local UNICEF office or UNICEF Committee, as they are working on exclusive breastfeeding in your country as part of the Baby Friendly Hospital Initiative. They may be able to help or advise you on who to contact. 

• Once you have found the right people, ask if you can meet with them to discuss the importance of exclusive breastfeeding and provide them with recent scientific evidence on this. You may also be able to provide them with evidence that the prevalance of exclusive breastfeeding from birth is low in your country. (In many countries, the Demographic and Health Surveys often provide the best nationally representative data.) Point out that there is little hope of making exclusive breastfeeding for about six months (or whatever your country's policy is) the norm unless working women are enabled to be with their babies for that period of time. In particular, health workers will do a better job educating mothers if their own children have had the possibility of being exclusively breast fed.

• A good review of more general actions you might want to consider taking to improve support to the breastfeeding rights of working women can be found on the excellent APHA website.  

• Be aware of the arguments that are commonly used AGAINST strenthenging maternity protection. See this page for a description of them and some "ammunition" you can use when confronted by them!