Officers of the ILO Governing Body

Anousheh Karvar draws upon years of experience from a career spanning academia, the trade union movement and government service. Since 2012, she has assumed various governmental positions in the international  scene, including as representative of France in the ILO Governing Body and in the G7-G20 for Labour, Employment and Social Protection and chairing Alliance 8.7, the Global Partnership against Child Labour, Forced Labour, Human Trafficking and Modern Slavery from 2019 to 2023. Ms Karvar holds a PhD in History and Sociology of Science from the University of Paris and has taught at La Sorbonne and the Paris Institute of Political Studies. She was appointed Knight of the Legion of Honour by the President of France in 2021, the highest civilian honour awarded by the Government.

Matthias Thorns is the Director of Global Labor Relations and Human Rights at Samsung Electronics, a position he started in 2023. Before that, he served as Deputy Secretary-General of the International Organisation of Employers (IOE), leading the IOE’s work on multinational enterprises and SMEs, sustainability and human rights, as well as G20 and G7. He began his career as Adviser for Social Affairs in the European Business Federation UNICE (now BUSINESSEUROPE), before moving to the Confederation of German Employers (BDA) as Adviser and later Deputy Director of the International and European Affairs Department. He joined the IOE in 2012 as Senior Adviser. He is member of the OECD Sustainable Business Expert Group, the Stakeholder Advisory Board of the Association of Professional Social Compliance Auditors (APSCA) as well as the Stakeholder Advisory Board of the Birmingham Business School. He holds a Master of Arts in European Studies and a Magister Artium in History and Philosophy, both from the University of Hannover.

Ms Passchier is the Chairperson of the Workers’ group in the International Labour Organization (ILO) since 2017. She studied law at Utrecht University and started her career as a barrister in Amsterdam. In 1988, she joined the Confederation of Trade Unions of the Netherlands (FNV) as its legal adviser, and in 2003 was elected Confederal Secretary of the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) in Brussels. In 2010 she went back to the Netherlands to become a member of the executive board and vice-president of FNV until May 2017. In 2018, she joined the National Contact Point (NCP) for the OECD guidelines for Multinational Enterprises of the Netherlands as one of its independent members, and became its Chairperson in May 2021. She currently is also the Vice-Chairperson of the Fair Wear Foundation.