GCSPF Newsletter # 46 - November 2020

The global community of nations has long decided to ensure the Human Right of all people to social protection. Studies have shown that ensuring a basic level of social protection for all is affordable for most countries and definitely for the global community of nations. A solidarity-based Global Fund for Social Protection could support countries to design, implement and, in specific cases, co-finance national floors of social protection. This side event offers civil society and academic perspectives on the proposal of a Global Fund for Social Protection and gives room to discuss ways and means of turning this idea into reality.
Moderator: Alison Tate - Speakers: • Valérie Schmitt (ILO) • Gabriel Fernandez (APSP) • Markus Kaltenborn (Ruhr University Bochum) • Sulistri Afrileston (ITUC) • Michael Cichon (GCSPF) • Marcus Manuel (ODI)
Watch the video

Nicola Wiebe spoke on behalf of the GCSPF at the Civil Society Meeting “Financing for Development in the Era of COVID-19 and Beyond” held by the UN Secretary General and Deputy Secretary General with civil society on 2 November 2020. She spoke about the rationale and need for the Global Fund for Social Protection, details of the civil society call for this were shared and responded to in the meeting and the GCSPF SPF film was shown in the course of the meeting. The video of the intervention on Social Protection is here and the PDF version is available here.

The High-level Meeting provided the opportunity to comment on the menu of options, strategize on how to strengthen the role of the United Nations in economic governance and explore how to keep the momentum for FfD in the coming period. The video of the event is here. Read more

Members of the Global Coalition also participated in the meeting:

Dialogue 1 – Climate: The UN role in promoting a Just Transition
David Boys, Deputy General Secretary, Public Services International

Dialogue 2 – Fiscal Consolidation/Austerity and Privatization of Public Services
Magdalena Sepulveda, Executive Director, Global Initiative for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (GI-ESCR)

Open Dialogue with interventions from the floor
Helen Saldanha, VIVAT International on behalf of the NGO Committee on FfD

Interlude 3 – Video on Social Protection Floors

Closing Segment
Peter Kamalingin, Pan Africa Program Director, Oxfam International

By Michelle Bachelet, Olivier De Schutter and Guy Ryder
Building back better from the pandemic so that we have greater resilience against future crises’ requires international solidarity and better social protection for all, that covers the poorest and most marginalized as well as those who currently have resources to pay.
Social protection floors for all are affordable. The financing gap for all developing countries – the difference between what these countries already invest in social protection and what a full social protection floor (including health) would cost – is about $1,191 billion in the current year, including the impact of COVID-19. But the gap for the low-income countries is only some $78 billion, a negligible amount compared to the GDP of the industrialized countries. Yet the total official development assistance for social protection amounts to only 0.0047 per cent of the gross national income of donor countries. Read more

The idea of a Global Fund for Social Protection starts from the finding that social protection floors are affordable, provided low-income countries receive international support in order to complement their own efforts to mobilize domestic resources.
The desirability and feasibility of a new international mechanism in support of social protection floors remains debated.
On 22-23 September 2020, Olivier De Schutter, Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, organized jointly with the French government a High-Level Expert Meeting on this topic, which brought together 12 governments, 18 international agencies, social partners, civil society, and academic experts. The questions listed here are informed by the views expressed during that meeting. The Special Rapporteur would be grateful for answers to be provided before 1 December 2020. On the basis of the reactions received, he intends to present the Human Rights Council with a mapping of the positions adopted, and to identify ways forward.
The GCSPF will submit its contribution which will be based on “A Global Financing Mechanism for Social Protection”.

More than three quarters of the global population had no access to comprehensive social protection and for even more people, income losses have been only partially mitigated.
These large and persistent gaps in the coverage, comprehensiveness and adequacy of social protection are linked to significant financing gaps that have been further exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, which has both increased the urgent demand for social protection and eroded government resources by diminishing tax and social insurance revenue. A range of government action is under way to cushion the most adverse health and socioeconomic effects of the pandemic, including the introduction of many (though largely temporary) social protection responses (ILO 2020).
This brief summarizes the results of the 2020 working paper entitled “Financing Gaps in Social Protection: Global Estimates and Strategies for DevelopingCountries in Light of COVID-19 and Beyond”. It provides global and regional estimates of social protection financing gaps, which indicate the order of magnitude of the financial challenge that needs to be addressed in order to realize the human right to social security and achieve SDG targets 1.3 and 3.81. Read more

Choosing between people or the economy has become a persistent theme in political debates as the world grapples with the COVID-19 pandemic. Across countries, movements and world views, people are clamoring to rethink how our economies should function and who they should serve. To advance this debate, the Center for Economic and Social Rights (CESR) and Christian Aid are launching a new publication, A Rights-Based Economy: Putting people and planet first. It asks a radical question: what would it look like if we had an economy based on human rights? Read more

On the occasion of the World Day for Decent Work, celebrated on October 7, the Jordan Labour Watch (JLW) issued a new report, demanding the new government expected to be formed within a few days to take quality measures to halt the growing unemployment rate.
In the report, the JLW said that unemployment rates have reached unprecedented levels due to the coronavirus crisis and due to the “ineffective policies” each government has implemented in the past. The decent work standards in the Kingdom suffer from many gaps, which have been there before the crisis began in March, where unemployment rates were already high and only increased further in the second quarter of 2020 to 23 per cent; 21.5 per cent among males and 28.6 per cent among females, the report said. Read more

AbibiNsroma Foundation (ANF) is a not-for-profit, non-governmental organisation established in 2020 in Ghana, and committed to identifying, promoting and empowering grassroots to develop innovative solutions for the developmental challenges in Ghana and Africa.  Through capacity building, training, research, advocacy and community development in the areas of energy, climate change and environment, natural resources, education, health and agriculture, as well as water, sanitation and hygiene to enhance Sustainable Development in Ghana and Africa as whole.
Further information can be found here.
Contact information: Robert Tettey Kwami Amiteye, Executive Director
info@abibinsromafoundation.org and abibinsromafoundation@gmail.com