GCSPF at the Global e-Conference “Turning the COVID-19 crisis into an opportunity: What’s next for social protection?”

e-GCSPF # 45 - October 2020
 

Global e-Conference
5, 6 and 8 October 2020

Turning the COVID-19 crisis into an opportunity: What’s next for social protection

socialprotection.org organised the Global e-Conference “Turning the COVID-19 crisis into an opportunity: What’s next for social protection?”, which took place on October 5, 6 and 8.

The GCSPF promoted the Global Fund for Social Protection and had a virtual booth to interact with participants.

Members of the GCSFP participated in different activities, see the list below.

If you missed any session you would like to have joined or just want to revisit a discussion, the recordings for the event are already available.

Side event 1: A Global Fund for Social Protection

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)

This session recording is available here.

Tuesday, October 6

RT 2 - Older people's livelihoods and social protection during COVID-19 and beyond
Moderator: Florian Juergens - Speakers: • Rosita Lacson • Nuno Cunha • Aura Sevilla

This session recording is available here.

Virtual Booth Talks 4 - Extending social protection to workers in the informal economy in the COVID-19 crisis and beyond
Speakers: Christina Behrendt • Laura Alfers • Quynh Anh Nguyen

The presentation by WIEGO is available here.

RT 3 - Financing universal social protection during COVID-19 and beyond: A case for national and global solidarity to build social protection systems which are adequate, sustainable and adapted to developments in the world of work
Moderator: Bart Verstraeten - Speakers: • A.K.M Mizanur Rahman • Anousheh Karvar • Ugo Gentilini • Matthias Thorns • Valérie Schmitt • Nenad Rava • Alison Tate

This session recording is available here. Presentationas are available here.

RT 4 - Unemployment protection and its extension to workers in the informal economy
Moderator: Celine Peyron Bista - Speakers: • Laura Alfers • Renata Nowak-Garmer

This session recording is available here.

RT 6 -Different perspectives of the role of the ‘political economy’ in building back better social protection systems for the furthest behind in Covid-19 Times
Moderator. Michelle Winthrop - Speakers: • Patricia Conboy • Sintayehu Demissie Admasu • Stephen Devereux • Michael Samson

This session recording is available here.

Clinic 7B - Linking - and transitioning between - non-contributory (social assistance) and contributory (social insurance) social protection for informal workers and beyond
This clinic will be hosted by the ILO and WIEGO.

This session recording is available here.

Wednesday, October 7

Side event 2: Expanding Social Protection to Decrease Inequality
Moderator: Britta Olofsson - Speakers: • Carin Jämtin • Michael Samson • Joakim Palme • Winnie Fiona Mwasiaji • Ulrika Lång • Gunnel Axelsson Nycander

This session recording is available here. Presentation available here.

Thursday, October 8

Expert panel discussion 2: Implications of the COVID-19 crisis for universal social protection
Moderator: Fabio Veras Soares - Speakers: • Juan M. Villa • Rachel Moussié • Michal Rutkowski • Shahra Razavi • Natalia Winder Rossi

This session recording is available here.

   
   
   

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GLOBAL COALITION FOR SOCIAL PROTECTION FLOORS - GCSPF

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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.

The event “A Global Fund for Social Protection” was organised by GCSPF, Africa Platform for Social Protection (APSP), Brot für die Welt, Overseas Development Institute (ODI), International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) and the International Labour Organization (ILO).

Alison Tate (ITUC) was the moderator and the speakers were: Valérie Schmitt (ILO), Gabriel Fernández (APSP), Markus Kaltenborn (Ruhr University Bochum), Sulistri Afrileston (ITUC), Michael Cichon (GCSPF) and Marcus Manuel (ODI).

The event took place in the framework of the Global e-Conference “Turning the COVID-19 crisis into an opportunity: What’s next for social protection?” organised by socialprotection.org, which took place on October 5, 6 and 8, 2020.

Further information can be found here. This session recording is available here.

e-GCSPF # 43 - October 2020
   
   
 

Spotlight on Sustainable Development 2020 - Shifting policies for systemic change

   
 

Lessons from the global COVID-19 crisis.
The COVID-19 pandemic and the national responses to it brought the world almost to a complete lockdown. All over the world, States have intervened, to various degrees, to restrict the freedoms of their citizens in order to slow down the spread of the pandemic and prevent healthcare systems from collapsing. What makes the situation even worse is that many countries were already confronted with massive social, ecological and economic problems before the crisis. These have not now disappeared. Climate change with its devastating consequences continues at a rapid pace; systemic racial and gender discrimination perpetuate inequality and injustice and undermine social cohesion; the increasing number of authoritarian regimes is a serious setback for human rights and the urgently needed socio-ecological transformation. The Spotlight Report 2020 unpacks various features and amplifiers of the COVID-19 emergency and its inter-linkages with other crises.

The GCSPF and several members of the GCSPF participated in the 2020 Report. The article “We are only as safe as the most vulnerable among us” - Strengthening public health and social protection systems in response to the COVID-19 pandemic by the GCSPF. Read the publication here and see below the contributions by members of the GCSPF.

The report was launched in a virtual event. If you missed it, you can watch the recording here.

The Spotlight Report is published by the Arab NGO Network for Development (ANND), the Center for Economic and Social Rights (CESR), Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era (DAWN), Global Policy Forum (GPF), Public Services International (PSI), Social Watch, Society for International Development (SID), and Third World Network (TWN), supported by the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (FES).

   
   
 

“We are only as safe as the most vulnerable among us”
Strengthening public health and social protection systems in response to the COVID-19 pandemic

   
 

By Mira Bierbaum, Thomas Gebauer and Nicola Wiebe
Global Coalition for Social Protection Floors

The health and socioeconomic crisis caused by COVID-19 has shown in a dramatic fashion that we are only as safe as the most vulnerable among us. Despite previous legal and policy commitments and laudable progress in many countries, only between one-third and one-half of the world’s population were covered by essential health services. More than 55 percent had no access to social protection at all, with devastating consequences for societies worldwide. Millions of people have already fallen into poverty, are suffering from hunger and destitution or have died. The crisis has put into sharp relief the large underinvestment in public health systems that struggle to detect, isolate and treat cases. It has also demonstrated the need for robust and comprehensive social protection systems that protect individuals against income losses in case of sickness or job loss and that reduce the depth and duration of economic downturns by means of counter-cyclical spending. Read more

   
   
 

Spotlights on the multiple crises: Impacts and responses on the ground

   
 

By Roberto Bissio
Social Watch

COVID-19 is a global catastrophe, but every one of the millions of infections has happened in the context of close local contact. While global mobility has spread the new coronavirus at fast speed all over the world, national capacities and policies to confront it are very different. Injustices and inequalities aggravate the impact of COVID-19 and without strong intervention from the State, the existing imbalances are reinforced. A few billionaires are getting richer while the slow-paced progress over decades to reduce global hunger and poverty is being reversed.
Civil society organizations around the world are monitoring the impact of COVID-19 and reclaiming the streets, with revitalized leadership and a rainbow of demands that combine old and new issues.
“Back to normal” is not possible nor desirable. The needed global changes are being incubated by a myriad of local hopes and actions. Read more

   
   
 

When the global housing crisis meets a global pandemic: a social tragedy

   
 

By Daria Cibrario
Public Services International (PSI)

Where they existed, public and social housing services have been scaled down or liquidated. Governments embracing neoliberal policies have encouraged housing market deregulation and the sale of public housing and land stocks of local governments by promoting - and in some cases subsidizing - their private purchase through tax breaks and low-interest loans. The generalized failure to address real estate speculation at a national and global level has further resulted in the sale of housing stock, leading to deeper urban gentrification, social segregation and inequality in many cities and metropolitan areas worldwide. In the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, Madrid sold over 1,800 social housing units to the private equity firm Blackstone for EUR 128.5 million. As of 2018, the value of those same apartments had risen by 227 percent. Read more

   
   
 

Local government strategies to provide emergency lockdown solutions in the COVID-19 crisis

   
 

By Daria Cibrario
Public Services International (PSI)

Although the legal frameworks underpinning housing policies and allocating resources are typically set at a national level, it is often local and regional governments which are responsible for the implementation of local housing development and manage public and social housing stocks and related services. As the global trends in urbanization widening inequality and mass displacements accelerate due to war, migration and the climate crisis, the role of local governments in housing policies is more important than ever. Yet, their resources, powers and institutional capacities are often inadequate to effectively curb real estate speculation and to uphold the right to housing in their territories. Read more

   
   
 

Re-empowering public services in a time of COVID-19

   
 

By Daniel Bertossa
Public Services International (PSI)

Around the world, frontline public service workers continue to receive praise and support for their vital role in responding to the COVID-19 crisis. Yet these underfunded public services and brutal working conditions are not inevitable. They are the result of decades of deliberate erosion of our public services through budget cuts, privatization and understaffing.
Undermining the quality and accessibility of public services has been part of a deliberate strategy to loosen the deep political commitment our communities have to protecting them. This has involved the creation and promotion of many myths: that public services are inefficient, wasteful, poor quality, harm economic growth and are protected by public servant elites for their own benefit. Read more

   
   
 

More than ever with COVID-19 we need strong public and social housing services

   
 

By Daria Cibrario
Public Services International (PSI)

While the promotion of market-led approaches to housing is still prevalent at a global level, some local governments are joining forces to swim against the tide.
Facing a 100 percent surge in rent prices since 2015, Berlin’s local government has frozen rent prices for the next five years at June 2019 levels and repurchased 670 apartments that were to be sold to real estate holding company Deutsche Wohnen, sparing tenants disproportionate rent rises due to superfluous renovations imposed by the company. In late 2019, the public Berlin’s Housing Association further remunicipalized 6,000 apartments in the Spandau and Reinickendorf districts. This makes sense when thinking of Vienna, one of the cities topping the world ranking for the quality of living, where 62 percent of the city’s residents live in publicly owned or subsidized housing. Surprisingly, these are not only the lowest income earners, as housing here is seen as social good, not as a market commodity. Read more

   
   
 

Redistribute economic power and resources

   
 

By Kate Donald and Ignacio Saiz
Center for Economic and Social Rights (CESR)

The imperative to redistribute economic power and resources was already urgent long before the COVID-19 pandemic. However, as with so much else, the pandemic has magnified existing trends, shining a harsh spotlight on how extreme and unjust the status quo has become, and also how the systems we have in place channel wealth and power upwards, even in the midst of a global health emergency.
The relief and recovery packages being put in place by governments and international institutions are a critical means for tackling the structural inequalities exposed and perpetuated by COVID-19. In designing and implementing these packages, governments have the chance to start disrupting the status quo and breaking up the concentration of corporate and elite power at the root of these inequalities. Read more

   
   
 

Redefine the measures of development and progress

   
 

By Roberto Bissio
Social Watch

Half a year after the eruption of the COVID-19 global pandemic, the comparison between the assessed “capability to prevent and mitigate epidemics and pandemics” and the actual impact of the new coronavirus, in terms of deaths per million inhabitants, is shocking: Among the fifteen countries better ranked in the GHSI we find many of those with the highest casualty rates, while among the ten deemed the worst prepared we find for example Algeria, which is one of fifteen countries considered “safe” and from which travel to Europe has been allowed since 1 July 2020.
Thousands of deaths could have been avoided if, instead of downplaying the risks, the perceived certainty of statistics had pointed to the dangers that even the richest countries were facing and thus press for earlier action. Read more

   
   

JOIN US TO ACHIEVE SOCIAL PROTECTION FOR ALL

GLOBAL COALITION FOR SOCIAL PROTECTION FLOORS - GCSPF

For comments, suggestions, collaborations contact us at:

anaclau@item.org.uy

To stop receiving this newsletter send a message with the subject "unsubscribe" to:

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e-GCSPF # 42 - September 2020
   
   
 

Civil Society Call for a Global Fund for Social Protection

   
 

In view of the global harm from the COVID-19 pandemic, with food insecurity, poverty and loss of livelihoods rising globally, it is essential that national social protection floors are made available to all people – through nation and international solidarity. While recognising that the foremost responsibility for social protection lies at country level, the pandemic puts a spotlight on the need for international solidarity. What is needed is the creation of a solidarity based Global Fund for Social Protection to support countries design, implement and, in specific cases, finance national floors of social protection. It is the adequate multilateral initiative needed to respond to Covid-19 and to build a better future.

   
   
 

Press Release. Over 200 civil society organizations and trade unions unite to protect the most vulnerable during COVID-19 and beyond

   
 

The GCSPF is calling on the world’s governments support low-income countries to expand and improve their social protection systems through the establishment of a Global Fund for Social Protection.
This Fund will enable low-income countries to implement national social protection systems that ensure income protection for all by providing temporary co-financing and facilitating access to technical support. Read more

   
   
 

Why a Call for a Global Fund for Social Protection?

   
 

Sharan Burrow (General Secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation, ITUC), Prof. Olivier De Schutter (UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights), Magdalena Sepúlveda Carmena (Executive Director of the Global Initiative for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights), Presiding Bishop Dr. Shoo (Evangelical Lutheran Church in Tanzania – ELCT), Joycia Thorat (Project Officer of the Church’s Auxiliary for Social Action) and Dr. Tavengwa M Nhongo (Director of the Africa Platform for Social Protection - APSP) guide us through different aspects of this new Global Fund explaining why we need the Fund and how it would work.

   
   
 

Sharan Burrow: “Covid-19 has exposed the global scandal of a world without social protection for all”

   
 

In expressing her support for the Call, Sharan Burrow, the General Secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) stressed the importance of social protection in protecting people from the impacts of this crisis and the next: “Covid-19 has exposed the global scandal of a world without social protection for all. 70% of the world’s people have no or inadequate social protection, no income protection, no guaranteed access to health, no child protection and many other vital areas that ensure people are resilient against global shocks. Unions and civil society groups are calling for a Global Social Protection Fund for the poorest and most vulnerable of people. Join us, make the call for a Global Social Protection Fund!” Watch the video
Sharan Burrow addressed the High-Level Event on “Financing for Development in the Era of COVID-19 and Beyond” on May 28 and she expressed that “today 70 per cent of the world’s people cannot count on the security of social protection. We need a global mechanism – GFSP – to help countries most in need to sustain and expand protection in times of crises and to build resilience.” Watch the video

   
   
 

Olivier De Schutter: “We need to support the countries by providing them the ability to be insured in times of crisis”

   
 

Olivier De Schutter, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, emphasized that “many poor countries are small and have a poorly diversified economy and they may be experiencing shocks, economic shocks, a loss of export revenues, a sudden increase of import bills, climatic shocks, droughts and floods, or indeed epidemics, as we have seen most recently. And these countries may be wary about committing to provide their populations with the support they need in the form of standing rights-based Social Protection Floors that people may claim as entitlements. So we need to support these countries by providing them the ability to be insured in times of crisis, to make sure that the Social Protection Floors they establish shall be affordable, even in times of crisis. There is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come, and I strongly believe that that is the case for the Global Fund for Social Protection.” Watch the video

   
   
 

Magdalena Sepúlveda Carmena: “The Global Fund should be at the center of our call for social justice and for the pursuit of the 2030 Human Development Agenda”

   
 

Magdalena Sepúlveda Carmena, Executive Director of the Global Initiative for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, reaffirms that “In 2012 we called on states to establish a Global Fund for Social Protection. Today, this goal is more important than ever. Despite being a basic human right, it is estimated that only 29 per cent of the world population enjoy access to comprehensive rights-based social security coverage. I welcome this new initiative by CSO to put the Global Fund again at the center of our call for social justice and for the pursuit of the 2030 Human Development Agenda.” Watch the video

   
   
 

Presiding Bishop Dr. Shoo: “No one is left behind”

   
 

Presiding Bishop Dr. Shoo (Evangelical Lutheran Church in Tanzania – ELCT) emphasized that this pandemic reminds us that “we have a moral obligation to ensure that during great disasters and challenges no one is left behind. It is time for the global human community to consider establishing a Global Fund for Social Security to which will ensure that even the most vulnerable, not only during pandemic like this, or natural disasters times, but even in their day-to-day lives have access to healthcare.” Watch the video

   
   
 

Joycia Thorat: “We can have another world, where everybody can live equally, safe and in dignity”

   
 

Joycia Thorat (Project Officer, Church’s Auxiliary for Social Action) tells us that “millions of people have lost their jobs and livelihood in India and around the globe due to the pandemic situation. It is very critical to have a Social Protection Fund to support the people who have lost their jobs, who are working in the unorganized sector, who are working as daily wage earners, as agricultural laborers, as housemaids. And mostly women are getting affected due to this Covid situation. It is important that we protect all of them through the Social Protection Fund, so we can have another world, where everybody can live equally, safe and in dignity.” Watch the video

   
   
 

Dr. Tavengwa M Nhongo: “We need a solidarity fund, to all citizens and for the common good of all”

   
 

Dr. Tavengwa M Nhongo, Director of the Africa Platform for Social Protection (APSP), expressed that “the Global Fund for Social Protection is a solidarity fund that will ensure the development and delivery of universal social protection programmes by all nations, to all citizens and for the common good of all.” Watch the video

   
   

JOIN US TO ACHIEVE SOCIAL PROTECTION FOR ALL

GLOBAL COALITION FOR SOCIAL PROTECTION FLOORS - GCSPF

For comments, suggestions, collaborations contact us at:

anaclau@item.org.uy

To stop receiving this newsletter send a message with the subject "unsubscribe" to:

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Civil Society Call for a Global Fund for Social Protection

Over 200 civil society organizations and trade unions unite to call for a Global Fund for Social Protection to protect the most vulnerable during COVID-19 and beyond.

Read the Call

SP&PFM Programme

The programme Improving Synergies Between Social Protection and Public Finance Management provides medium-term support to multiple countries aiming to strengthen their social protection systems at a national level and ensure sustainable financing. The programme aims to support countries in their efforts towards achieving universal social protection coverage.

This initiative is implemented jointly by the ILO, Unicef, and the GCSPF.

Read more

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