e-GCSPF Newsletter #90 - August 2023 edition

A month of free learning sessions, featuring experienced speakers teaching about how international
financial institutions (IFIs) impact women’s rights, plus advocacy and mobilizing tactics to rise up against them.
The summer school is free to any activist, scholar and advocate interested in learning about economic justice
and IFI influencing – especially women’s rights groups!
The Gender IFI collective, a group of economic justice, women’s rights and IFI advocacy groups. Read more

Public sector trade unions have welcomed an announcement from the Philippines Government that recently approved social protection floors (SPFs) will cover precarious public services workers including community health workers, known as barangay health workers (BHWs). Read more

The Phenix Center for Economics and Informatics Studies held a panel discussion on improving working conditions for digital labor platform workers in Jordan and around the world. The panel discussion featured renowned experts from the global team of the Fairwork project, alongside experts from Jordan and the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. It looked into the role of digital labor platforms in the global economy, and overviewed strategies to promote sustainable and fair work environments in the MENA region and around the world. Experts also provided insights on how to best address pressing labor issues within the sector, including the inclusion of platform workers in social security schemes, and improving the “weak” regulatory framework of the sector. Read more

Lessons from relief for comprehensive social protection This paper by Laura Alfers and Florian Juergens-Grant considers the implications of COVID-19 relief measures for the building and extension of comprehensive and universal social protection systems. It highlights three key areas emerging from the crisis, which are likely to affect the shape of social protection systems moving forward.
These include the contested meaning of universality, the digitization of social protection systems, and the possibilities for informal worker participation in building a more inclusive social protection. In doing so the paper argues that the terrain of the social protection debate is shifting—it is increasingly uncontroversial that universal social protection is needed and that the state must play a role. Read more

The right to health ranked first among fundamental rights these past few years after COVID-19 caused severe economic and social repercussions worldwide. These repercussions affected the right to work and education. They highlighted the core deficiencies of health, education, and social protection systems and governments' inability to provide for their citizens basic services that are proper and fair. Hence, The Arab NGO Network for Development (ANND) took a significant interest in the right to health, adopting it as the topic for the 6th edition of its Arab Watch Report in an attempt to critically analyze health policies, or rather health systems, in both their institutional and structural dimensions on the one hand and their policy dimensions on the other. Read more

Podcast. International labour standards - Conventions, Recommendations and Protocols - are at the heart of the ILO’s mandate. They play an essential role in creating a level playing field for business and combatting the exploitation of workers. But the global economy is changing faster than ever, and changes in technology, migration and demographics are constantly creating new challenges for regulators. In addition, different countries, with different levels of development, economic systems and cultures, have a wide range of priorities and requirements. So how are international labour standards created and kept fit for purpose. What topics might they need to address next? Listen to the podcast