GCSPF e-Newsletter # 67 - April 2022

By Markus Kaltenborn and Laura Kreft
LABOUR AND SOCIAL JUSTICE. In line with the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development international support for establishing and financing social protection floors must be organised within a partnership-based framework.
The authors therefore argue that if a new international financing mechanism is set up for this purpose, it should be designed in such a way that recipient governments retain full ownership of their social protection systems.
Moreover, it will be necessary that the recipient countries, as well as civil society actors be included in the decision making processes of the new mechanism and that effective accountability instruments are implemented. Read more

By Florian Juergens-Grant
Both savings and social protection systems are important, and, on some level, they respond to similar needs: they can help us navigate uncertain futures, stabilise consumption across financial peaks and troughs, and enable us to invest in all kinds of opportunities.
Yet, it is important to insist that they are not the same and follow very different principles. Emphasising one over the other has important consequences for equity and income security.
In this light, a recently launched report by the World Bank that provides guidance on how to expand Social Protection for the Informal Economy in Africa and beyond, requires a response. Read more

The Global Call to Action Against Poverty (GCAP) invites you to the side event on “SDGs and Migration in Europe” at the UNECE Regional Forum for Sustainable Development 2022, discussion on recommendations, listening to the views of refugees and migrants, and reactions of Governments, EU and UN.
Thursday, 7 April, 13:15-14:45 Geneva time (11:15-12:45 GMT).
Please register here: https://bit.ly/3Ltvgmc
The side event will discuss the report SDGs and Migration in the European Union.

By Carmelo Mesa-Lago
Four decades of privatization of pension systems in Latin America also translate into four decades of an ongoing debate on whether the well-being of a better society can be promoted through the market, based on competition and profit concepts, or rather than through a social welfare state committed to the social security and justice objectives, implicitly involving the notion of solidarity to ensure the participation of all citizens in the development of political and social life.
These countries have already experienced 40 years with privatized pension systems. Evidence is not optimistic, at least not from the perspective of most of the private system “clients”.
Clearly, the introduction of private systems has defined winners and losers. Discontent is growing; therefore, several countries conducted re-reforms or are discussing them, aimed at cushioning the effects of the logic of their operation in an environment of social segregation based on the labor market and on the concentration of income that translates directly into insufficient old-age pensions for the great majority of people. Read more Disponible en español aquí

Investing in care leave and services for a more gender equal world of work
Based on an ILO legal survey of 185 countries, the report reviews progress made around the world over the past decade while assessing the persisting and significant legal gaps that translate into a lack of protection and support for millions of workers with family responsibilities across the world. The report pays attention to the most frequently excluded workers, such as the self-employed, workers in the informal economy, migrants, and adoptive and LGBTQI+ parents. It concludes with a call for action to invest in a transformative package of care policies that is central to the broader international agenda on investing in the care economy – a breakthrough pathway for building a better and more gender equal world of work. Read more