GCSPF E-Newsletter #5 - October 2017

The IMF's approach towards social protection "has been principally oriented around the desire to reduce social protection coverage and contain expenditure, rather than ensuring adequate levels of protection for all". The Global Coalition for Social Protection Floors (GCSPF) expressed its deep concerns about these IMF policies and sent a statement to Ms. Christine Lagarde (Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund - IMF) and the Executive Directors of the IMF in order to draw their attention on the issue and in the hope to influence a reconsideration of their position. Read more

A panel on “Financing Universal Social Protection in Developing Countries” was held at the Civil Society Forum at the Annual Meetings of IMF and World Bank Group last October 11, 2017.
Rachel Moussié (WIEGO) spoke on behalf of the Global Coalition for Social Protection Floors. Read more

BRICS Feminist Watch presented a letter to the top management of New Development Bank (NDB) expressing the need for the Bank to develop comprehensive commitments to gender equality in all its structures and operations. For this they recommend three steps: 1) Set up an external multi stakeholder gender advisory committee; 2) Develop a comprehensive, mandatory gender policy to guide all NDB’s structure, governance and operations and 3) Set up an internal gender unit with senior feminist experts within NDB to lead these processes.
The BRICS Feminist Watch (BFW) is a global South feminist alliance from emerging economies including the BRICS and other developing countries that brings the collective strength of feminist analysis and activism to promote gender responsive and inclusive economic development. Read the letter here

The regional report aims at defining the gender dimensions of informal labor in the 13 Arab countries covered by the report on informal labor, i.e. Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Mauritania, Egypt, Sudan, Iraq, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Yemen, and Bahrain. Therefore, the report on the gender dimensions of informal labor, written by Dr. Howaida Adly, Political Sciences Professor at the National Center for Sociological and Criminilogical Research (Egipt), will mainly focus on extracting a set of attributes and specificities that are common between all Arab countries in terms of labor and gender, and on highlighting the diferences among them. It will also expose the basic problems faced by women in the informal sector, along with their reasons, taking into consideration governmental policies' trends towards women's social protection in this sector if applicable, in addition to the roles played by the civil society in this regard according to national reports. It is worth noting that this report, being a regional one, counts mainly on national reports received from relevant Arab countries. However, the key problem is that data included in many national reports did not cover the gender dimensions of informal labor to a satisfying degree. Read more

Social Support Foundation (SSF) Ghana is joining the Global Coalition. Louis Acheampong (Executive Director) will be working with us. Their email addresses are: ssfghana@gmail.com, admin@ssfghana.org
SSF is an International Non-Governmental Organization and Civil Society Organization that is dedicated to improving the situation of marginalized Ghanaians. SSF recognizes the ideals enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and seeks to empower those who have fallen by the wayside through grass-roots initiatives aimed at education, counseling, community intervention, and economic training. The Social Support Foundation's mission is to contribute to the growth and development of deprived communities and to work toward achieving healthy living conditions for disadvantaged persons.
For more information visit their website at www.ssfghana.org