e-Newsletter # 63 – January 2022

Phenix Center for Economic and Informatics studies has launched two studies on gender-based violence in the workplace and the impact of the COVID-19 on the employment of youth within the Jordanian labor market.
The study found that over 46% of the study's sample size of over 380 women in the governorates of Tafilah, Madaba, Karak, and M'an are paid less than the minimum wage, with 50% of respondents lacking health insurance and 36.6% being excluded from social security coverage. The study revealed that just 47.8% of women's workplaces in the labor market abide by occupational health and safety practices, which means that more than half of women are exposed to work injuries of different levels of severity. Additionally, the study showed that only 13% of the respondents said that they are able to access their legal financial rights, such as accessing loans and provident funds. The study argues that these factors disempower women both economically and socially. The study also found that women's health is adversely affected as a result of a lack of health insurance and the high costs of treatment compared with their salaries. The study also found that one of the factors leading to an increase in risk of gender-based violence is a common perception within the labor market that women are weaker, despite the fact that 13% of working women are the heads of their households and over 300 thousand households in Jordan are female-headed. Read more

Daria Cibrario and Vera Weghmann
Looking at the intersection between various dimensions of inequality and the lack of equitable access to public services (PS), this paper is PSI's contribution to the GOLD VI Report and it explores emerging trends in local PS delivery, including public, public-community and commoning approaches. It especially focuses on (re)municipalisation as a viable policy option for local and regional governments, highlighting the need for adequate public investment; recal-ling the primary role of public institutions at all levels to ensure equitable PS access for all; and alerting about the risks that privatization entails in terms of deepening inequalities. Read more

You are cordially invited to the launch of the global network INSP!R, the International Network for Social Protection Rights. Close to 100 social movements mobilize across 24 countries in Africa, Latin America, Asia and Europe join their forces to guarantee the right to social protection for all.
Thursday 3rd February 2022 at 2 PM (CET time)
The invitation is available in English, French and Spanish. Read more

By Thalif Deen. Inter Press Service (IPS).
The UN’s highly-ambitious goal of eradicating extreme poverty by 2030 has been severely undermined by a rash of problems worldwide, including an escalating coronavirus pandemic, continued widespread military conflicts and the devastating impact of climate change.
According to published estimates, more than 700 million people have been living in poverty around the world, surviving on less than $1.90 a day.
But the fast-spreading pandemic, whose origins go back to December 2019, has been singled out as the primary reason for a rise in global poverty– for the first time in 20 years. Read more

The participants in the Arab Ministerial Forum 2021 endorsed the Declaration “The future of Social Protection in the Arab Region: Building a vision for a post-COVID-19 reality”. The Ministerial Declaration states key guiding principles for post-COVID-19 social protection that will inform policy making for countries and international partners in the region. Read more

By Martha Melesse, Rachel Moussié, Ana Ogando
The Covid-19 pandemic is not just a health and economic crisis. It is also a crisis of care, which has impacted women the most. But not all women have been affected in the same way. Nor have they enjoyed the same levels of support through social protection measures and access to public services. Unlike those in the formal economy, informal workers have no paid family and sick-leave policies, or unemployment benefits. They frequently also lack the technology and opportunity to work remotely, which has enabled many white-collar workers to sustain their livelihoods through the pandemic. Read more Versión en español

The forum “Promote Development Justice for meaningful post-COVID 19 Recoveries” was organized at the critical moment when the whole world is grappling with COVID 19 pandemic and unfortunately, South Asia is already has already been agonized with various internal issues including poverty, hunger, inequality, insecurity, environmental degradation, climate change and decaying democracy and human right situation. The fallout from the pandemic is affecting women and girls significantly, the poor, marginalized, vulnerable and daily wage farmers and workers have been badly affected. Beyond wage and income inequality, digital divide and vaccine inequality have explicitly appeared as new forms of inequality. Social exclusion has been instrumentalized as a political strategy. Geo-politics and growing nationalism are deepening challenges in the region. Ensuring rule of law and access to justice has become challenging at the moment with the SAARC, the inter-government regional cooperation mechanism, is almost non-functional catering the issues of South Asia.
The participants of the SAPF 2021 urge all key decision-makers and stakeholders to act urgently to address the deteriorating democratic and human rights situation and to promote rule of law and access to justice in South Asia with special focus on hunger and inequality, digital divide and environmental justice. These ambitious policy objectives are set out in SDGs of the UN’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, to which all governments across South Asia are signatories. Read more

With Paraguay's ratification on October 2021, 60 countries have now ratified the ILO Social Security (Minimum Standards) Convention, 1952 (No. 102) , considered to be the foundation of all ILO social security Conventions.
Convention No. 102 is the only international instrument based on basic social security principles that establishes globally agreed minimum standards for all nine branches of social security: medical care, sickness benefit, unemployment benefit, old-age benefit, employment injury benefit, family benefit, maternity benefit, invalidity benefit and survivors' benefit.
It is considered an important tool in extending social security coverage and provides ratifying countries with an incentive for doing so by offering flexibility in its application, depending on their socio-economic level. Read more