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In the face of a global catastrophe, it's not very difficult to see the urgency for social safety nets. But even before the COVID-19 pandemic, people knew: social protection rights are human rights that should not be yielded to market forces. As early as 2012, the member states of the International Labour Organization (ILO) committed themselves to establishing, maintaining and implementing universal and rights-based basic social protection systems (Social Protection Floors). This is intended to ensure essential health care and basic income security worldwide for children, people of working age who are unable to earn a sufficient income and the elderly. The Social Protection Floor Index (SPFI), which in 2020 will be published as an interactive infographic for the first time, measures the extent to which the respective governments fulfil this promise.
The SPFI provides an indication of the minimum resources that a country would need to invest or reallocate to close existing income and/or health protection gaps, expressed as a share of a country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP). It is conceptually based on the ILO Social Protection Floors Recommendation, 2012 (No. 202) that calls on countries to ensure that all in need have access to essential health care and to basic income security over the life cycle. The Recommendation also states that Members should monitor progress in implementing national social protection floors. Against this background, in 2015 the Global Coalition for Social Protection Floors developed the SPFI as an easily and widely accessible and understandable monitoring tool based on publicly available data that provides an indication of the current state and progress achieved for as many countries as possible.
The third edition of the SPFI compiles data for more than 160 countries over the time period from 2012 to 2015. The interactive tool allows users to compare country results for a given year (2012, 2013, or 2015) and for different definitions of what constitutes a minimum income level ($1.9 per day in 2011 PPP, $3.2 per day in 2011 PPP, or 50 per cent of median income (but not less than $1.9 per day in 2011 PPP), to monitor progress for a given country over time (keeping in mind some caveats outlined below), as well as to separately look at gaps in income security and access to essential health care. In this way, the SPFI can be a powerful advocacy tool for civil society organisations or social partners, and an entry point for more detailed studies at country level. This background note provides information on how the 2020 Index was calculated and which data were used. It is based on the discussion papers on the 2016 (Bierbaum, Oppel, Tromp, & Cichon, 2016) and 2017 (Bierbaum, Schildberg, & Cichon, 2017) editions where additional information and related literature can be found.
The Social Protection Floor Index is a composite index that takes into account gaps in access to basic income security and essential health care.
“Everyone, as a member of society, has the right to social
security and is entitled to realization, through national effort
and international co-operation and in accordance with the organization
and resources of each State, of the economic,
social and cultural rights indispensable for his dignity
and the free development of his personality.”
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), Art.22
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A proposal for the decade of action on the Sustainable Development Goals 2020-2030
More than two thirds of the world’s population are still denied a life in dignity and social security: the GCSPF calls for action on social protection financing to deliver on the human right to social protection and the international commitment to guarantee social protection floors for all (SDG 1.3) at a time when the world is richer than ever before.
1. Proposal
The central idea of this proposal is to create a solidarity based Global Financing Mechanism for Social Protection to support countries design, implement and, in specific cases, finance national floors of social protection. Social Protection Floors (SPFs) are a direct and fast-acting mechanism to reduce poverty that can save millions of lives and alleviate misery in further millions of cases.
2. Background
In June 2012 the global community of nations decided that all countries should ensure that all people have access to at least a floor of social protection. The members of the International Labour Organisation have adopted the ILO Recommendation No. 202 on National Floors of Social Protection. According to R.202 national social protection floors “ensure that all in need have access to essential health care and basic income security which together secure effective access to goods and services defined as necessary at the national level”. The Recommendation also puts the floors of protection into the context of wider social security extension strategies that countries are required to adopt.
In Agenda 2030 the international community reconfirms their commitment to “implement nationally appropriate social protection systems and measures for all, including floors, and by 2030 achieve substantial coverage of the poor and the vulnerable” (SDG 1.3).1
However, the gap is still large. 71 per cent of the world’s population are not, or only partially, covered by social protection.2 What is necessary at this stage is a dedicated financing mechanism that enables the global community of nations to systematically, consistently and sustainably support national efforts to reduce poverty, insecurity and inequality through social protection. This gap could be filled by a Global Financing Mechanism for Social Protection.
3. Mandate
A Global Financing Mechanism for Social Protection Floors should be accessible for countries that need support to introduce or complete social protection floors or to sustain and expand protection in times of crises. While generally the financing of national social protection systems has to come from national budgets, there are countries where the support for the set-up of national social protection floors and co-financing of the international community is needed due to the high relative cost in relation to their current tax revenues3.
The Mandate of the Fund should include:
The Global Financing Mechanism does not resemble a vertical fund. Its mandate consists in building up and strengthening universal national social protection systems. A global financing mechanism able to back up national social protection floor guarantees in exceptional situations allows states to adopt rights-based social protection systems without having to fear that adopting such systems might prove fiscally unsustainable in the face of shocks.4
4. Governance
The governance structure of a Global Financing Mechanism for Social Protection Floors should be based on the principles of the Global Partnership for Effective Development Co-operation as defined in the Busan Partnership Agreement of 2011 and its predecessor documents.5 This means above all that the principle of country ownership must be strictly adhered to. The decision as to what kind and with which priorities social protection programs are to be implemented has to remain the responsibility of the governments of the recipient countries. Moreover, wherever possible, existing structures in the respective country should be used for the administrative implementation of these programmes. It is therefore not advisable to provide the new facility with its own implementation units. In fragile states where the government itself has no means of implementing social protection programs, the Global Financing Mechanism will coordinate with development and humanitarian aid organizations active in the country so that the financial resources can be used effectively for the benefit of the population and contribute to build up sustainable national institutions.
Another key principle of the aid effectiveness agenda which needs to be observed when designing the governance structure of the Global Financing Mechanism is the principle of accountability. In this regard, it is important to ensure that not only the partners involved in the establishment of the new facility are mutually accountable, but that this accountability also exists towards the people who are to be covered by the social protection floors. This leads to the following two consequences: On the one hand, it must be ensured that donor and recipient states are adequately represented in the highest decision-making body of the organization, the board, and that civil society organisations representing the affected population are also included in this body. On the other hand, the establishment of effective control and monitoring procedures is necessary. These include both internal and external audits, as well as evaluation and complaint mechanisms.
In addition to the Board, committees can be set up to deal with specific issues relating to the activities of the Global Financing Mechanism. The administration is carried out by a secretariat which could for example be hosted by the ILO.
5. Financing
A number of studies have shown that most countries can afford to finance a national social protection floor by their own means. The most comprehensive information of the financial size of national social protection gaps - the absolute minimum of resources required to close gaps in the financing of social protection floors – comes from a recent update of the Social Protection Floor Index, a monitoring tool developed by the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung on behalf of the Global Coalition for Social Protection Floors (GCSPF)6. The study provides estimates of the financial size of protection gaps in form of an Index that indicates the total minimum necessary additional expenditure for social protection transfers in cash and in kind. These figures provide an indication of the dimension of the financial challenge that countries may face when seeking to close the gaps in their social protection floors. Importantly, the results indicate that some level of effective social protection is affordable everywhere. The Index shows that 107 countries studied could close the gap to a minimum income level of 1.9$ per day (2011PPP) by devoting less than 2 percent of their GDP to social protection. 133 countries could do so with less than 5 percent of GDP.
Presently only about 10 countries have gaps larger than 10 per cent of their GDP, and are deemed to require international assistance to finance minimum social protection. A global fund to foot about 50 percent of these countries’ social protection bills would need $10 billion to $15 billion annually. That is equivalent to about 0.9 percent of the about $1.7 trillion in annual global military spending, as calculated by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute - a solidarity investment that would yield a much higher peace dividend than the military spending.
The required resources could come from a combination of different sources. Some options are:
As national social protection budgets need to be fiscally sustainable to provide all residents with adequate social protection in all challenging situations over the life cycle, an international financing mechanism has to count on reliable funds and provide for crises situations.
6. Potential impact
The co-financing of the Global Financing Mechanism for Social Protection, if only channelled to the 10 countries that would need more than 10 per cent of their GDP to guarantee basic social protection to all,7 would help to pull about 132 million people out of abject poverty and social insecurity. Technical assistance in further countries which would lead to the set-up or completion of nationally financed social protection floors within a medium term timeframe will reduce poverty by many more millions of people. Social Protection boosts opportunities for inclusive economic development and social cohesion.
Furthermore, the Global Financing Mechanism for Social Protection would also have an important task in crisis situations. Even countries that already have functioning and adequately funded systems in place may be forced by external shocks to temporarily reduce or even completely suspend benefits. The need to extend programmes to additional groups or to increase benefits may arise. Such crises can, for example, be triggered by natural disasters or epidemics. A temporary weakening of social protection systems can also be caused by international economic crises. During humanitarian disasters some countries accept large numbers of refugees within a short period of time. This can be a further reason why a country's social protection system is not able to cope with the additional needs. In such situations, which would mean the loss of basic protection for many millions of people, the Global Financing Mechanism could stabilise social protection programmes in partner countries and cover the increase in the social protection gap caused by external shocks.
Effective Social Protection Floors provide access to essential health care and livelihood security in individual and collective crisis situations. Social protection thus protects the human rights of each individual, but at the same time has important impacts on society, in good times, but even more strikingly in times of crisis. In the case of Covid-19 for example access to health for all is essential to contain the pandemic within the country and globally. Only the access to social protection enables low-income groups (including those belonging to the informal sector) to stay away from work and thus contribute to reduce number of infections. It is also the only viable way to protect more vulnerable families with children, persons with disabilities and older people in such times of crisis. Counter-cyclical social protection measures reduce the depth and duration of economic recession. A world with social protection and access to health for all could face future crises in a different way.
It is time to act: found and fund a Global Financing Mechanism for Social Protection
The global pandemic caused by Covid-19 virus illustrates more drastically than ever before that there is an urgent need to set up an international financing mechanism that will enable the poorest countries to implement at least social protection floors (access to essential health care for all and income security for children, persons in active age and older people) and to maintain these services even in times of severe crisis.
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Notes:
2 International Labour Office (2017), World Social Protection Report 2017-19.
3 Neither on the national nor on the international level social protection can be financed without generating and safeguarding sufficient tax revenue. States offer competing tax incentives to foreign investors and contribute to a fiscal ‘race to the bottom.’ This often erodes national tax bases in those countries where resources to cover social protection floors are already scarce. To effectively protect and enhance national fiscal space, regulation and enforcement on international level is inevitable.
4 See for more details De Schutter, O. & Sepúlveda, M. (2012), Underwriting the Poor. A Global Fund for Social Protection, Briefing note, http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Issues/Food/20121009_GFSP_en.pdf
6 See Bierbaum, M. et al. (2020). Social Protection Floor Index – Update and Country Studies, FES Berlin.
7 According to Bierbaum, M. et al. (2020). Social Protection Floor Index – Update, FES Berlin these are: Benin, Togo, Niger, Guinea-Bissau, Malawi, Mozambique, Madagascar, Congo (Dom.Rep.), Burundi, Central African Republic.
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| e-GCSPF # 35 - April 2020 - COVID-19 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Download the Statement in English (pdf format). The Statement is also available in Arabic, Spanish, French and Russian.
We, representatives of UN system agencies, other multilateral and bilateral development agencies, donor governments, and civil society observers that make up the Social Protection Inter-Agency Cooperation Board (SPIAC-B), committed to the realization of SDGs 1.3 and 3.8, call for urgent social protection1 measures to respond to the rapidly evolving COVID- 19 pandemic. COVID-19 is a global health emergency with significant immediate as well as longer-term social and economic implications. It exposes some of the problems caused by inadequate social protection coverage, that prevent people from:
a) accessing adequate healthcare and adopting preventive behaviours;
b) taking time off work when ill (including health workers);
c) caring for children or other relatives when continuing to work in cases where schools have closed and alternative care arrangements (such as by extended family) are no longer possible; and
d) maintaining adequate living standards, including food security when unemployed or when forced to reduce economic activity.
We critically need to increase our efforts to protect and support all people throughout the crisis, both in its health dimension as well as its economic and social repercussions. For this, we can draw on the range of social protection policies and tools at our disposal and on lessons learnt from earlier pandemics and economic and financial crises.
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We call for urgent action to: 1. Ensure access to health services and support people in adopting necessary prevention measures2. Ensure income security and access to essential goods and services and protect human capabilities and livelihoods 3. Prioritize the most vulnerable 4. Mobilize substantial domestic and international financing to protect and enhance fiscal space for health and social protection in all countries 5. Ensure continued/scaled up and coordinated delivery capacities of social protection and humanitarian crisis response programmes 6. Design crisis response measures also with a view to strengthening social protection systems in the medium- and long term |
1. Ensure access to health services and support people in adopting necessary prevention measures
Access to good-quality health services is paramount in responding to this pandemic. Social protection plays a key role in enabling access to affordable health care and avoiding hardship. In addition, social protection can also support people in adopting the kinds of behaviour (hand washing, physical distancing, social isolation/quarantine) necessary to control the spread of the virus. This will also contribute to alleviating pressure on national health systems.
Depending on context, immediate responses may include:
2. Ensure income security and access to essential goods and services and protect human capabilities and livelihoods
Beyond protecting people from the short to medium term health impacts of the pandemic, it is vital to adequately protect individuals, households and businesses from the adverse social and economic repercussions of the crisis. This will protect human capabilities and livelihoods as well as provide counter- cyclical economic stimulus to support economic recovery. Actions to consider in addition to actions outlined above include:
3. Prioritize the most vulnerable
The Leave No One Behind agenda is a central promise of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the SDGs and should also guide response measures to COVID-19. With regards to the health dimension of the COVID-19 crisis, older people, those with compromised immune systems, underlying health conditions (including respiratory diseases, diabetes, lung disease and heart disease), face a higher risk of severe infection.
In addition to those who are medically vulnerable as outlined above, other groups are especially vulnerable to the socio-economic impacts of the pandemic.
These include older people, people already living with other underlying health conditions (including HIV), girls and women, persons with disabilities (physical and mental), workers who are self-employed or in non-formal employment (including rural and domestic workers), the homeless, those living in fragile contexts and protracted crises, forcibly displaced people, refugees, migrants (particularly those without documentation), care workers (paid and un-paid), ethnic/indigenous groups, chronically poor persons, children, young people, sex workers or prisoners.
Across contexts, women are disproportionately responsible for unpaid and informal care-work, and social protection responses must be sensitive to the gendered burden of care arising from the COVID19 epidemic.
Reaching these groups through response measures requires effectively cooperating with local civil society and workers and employers organizations. Moreover, gender-based violence typically heightens in emergency contexts and during times of high stress. This is of particular concern in the context of widespread self-isolation, reduced access to income and curtailed access to support services.
Depending on context, in addition to measures outlined above, immediate responses may include:
4. Mobilize substantial domestic and international financing to protect and enhance for health and social protection in all countries
Supporting a strong and rapid social protection response will require urgent allocation of sufficient resources. Governments and the international community are already increasing fiscal allocations in response to the growing awareness of the health, social and economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. Crucially, this must be done without placing excessive strains on national budgets or crowding out spending on other vital services. While some countries have the ability to create this fiscal space, others with debt and public health system distress and related challenges will need support from the international community. Actions to consider include:
5. Ensure continued/scaled up and coordinated delivery capacities of social protection and humanitarian crisis response programmes
The pandemic may disrupt the delivery of existing social protection programmes and services, for example due to staff illness, limited mobility for service providers and participants or other physical distancing measures. Countries need to quickly introduce coordinated measures that will allow social protection systems to continue to operate effectively during the pandemic. In settings where many steps along the implementation chain are carried out manually, COVID-19 mobility restrictions can severely impede benefit delivery. The following measures are thus recommended:
6. Design crisis response measures also with a view to strengthening social protection systems in the medium- and long-term
Countries that already have well-functioning social protection systems in place are in a much better position to respond to crises. Action taken in response to the COVID-19 crises should therefore not only aim to meet immediate short-term needs but build structures that contribute to early recovery and the extension of social protection systems also in the medium to longer-term; in line with SDG goal 1.3 of implementing nationally appropriate social protection systems and measures for all, including floors, and substantially increasing coverage of the poor and vulnerable. Actions to consider include:
The SPIAC-B will support global and national responses to the COVID-19 pandemic by monitoring and aggregating emerging evidence and practices from SPIAC-B members and their constituents. We will facilitate rapid learning from this response so that countries can apply those lessons and develop effective context-specific responses in the short and long-term. For example, SPIAC-B agencies have produced and will periodically update this COVID-19 online community. Learning is further facilitated by the range of social, political and international partners providing information on the latest challenges, crafting effective responses and supporting implementation. A list of materials already published is included in the Annex.
Annex to SPIAC-B Joint Statement on the Role of Social Protection in Responding to the COVID19 Pandemic
Key resources and links – by agency in alphabetical order:
Social Protection Interagency Cooperation Board. SPIAC-B is composed of 25 intergovernmental agencies and 10 government bodies. 11 civil society organizations act as observers. For more information see: https://www.ilo.org/newyork/at-the- un/social-protection-inter-agency-cooperation-board/lang-- en/index.htm
Notes:
2 In line with Recommendation (No. 134) on Medical Care and Sickness Benefits, which states that sickness benefits should also include persons “isolated for the purpose of quarantine.”
3 Convention 102 on minimum standards for social security details universal benchmarks and procedures for scaling-up family, old-age, sickness, employment and other programmes.
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| e-GCSPF # 34 - April 2020 - COVID-19 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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A Joint Statement on the Role of Social Protection in Responding to the COVID-19 Pandemic, SPIAC-B, on April 2020.
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.
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.
