| Investing in a Social Protection Floor is investing in social justice and economic development. Social protection schemes are important tools to reduce poverty and inequality. They do not only help to prevent individuals and their families from falling or remaining in poverty, they also contribute to economic growth by raising labour productivity and enhancing social stability. The global financial and economic crisis proved how key a role social protection plays as an automatic economic stabilizer. What is a social protection floor? Social protection floors are nationally defined sets of basic social security guarantees that should ensure, as a minimum that, over the life cycle, all in need have access to essential health care and to basic income security which together secure effective access to goods and services defined as necessary at the national level. Social security is a human right as well as a social and economic necessity. Regardless, around 40% of the world’s population are under the international poverty line of 2 US dollars a day which suggests that they do not have access to a social protection floor. Concerned about these facts, the UN Chief Executives Board for Coordination (CEB), supported by its High level Committee on Programmes (HLCP) adopted the Social Protection Floor Initiative (SPF-I), as one of its nine joint crisis initiatives to cope with the effects of the economic crisis. | The SPF concept has become widely recognized and accepted at various international, regional and national conferences over the course of 2009 and 2010 including the G20 and Millennium Development Goals (MDG) summits (see international endorsement) Social security represents an investment in a country’s “human infrastructure” no less important than investments in its physical infrastructure. |
