Innovative Financing for Social Protection

The following workspace will host documents relevant to our upcoming roundtable discussion on innovative financing approaches for social protection. Please follow the hyperlinks to access the documents or alternatively click on the "Resources" tab on the right side of the page to access the entire list. 

Who are we? 

The International Labour Organisation (ILO) is a unique United Nations agency, bringing together governments, employers and workers to set international labour standards and foster social dialogue. These standards provide the legal framework and guidance for developing national social protection systems and floors. Find out more in our short informative brochure "Social Protection: a solution for sustainable development"

What do we do? 

The ILO, in cooperation with a global team composed of global, regional, and country experts, responds to the requests of countries providing technical assistance in the development and strengthening of sustainable social protection systems, including national social protection floors that provide access to adequate benefits to all to reduce vulnerability throughout the life‐cycle.

The ILO has active social protection projects in over 30 countries, working directly with ministries of labour, social affairs, community development, women and children, health, education, finance, planning and agriculture, often at the highest levels and with heads of state. Our work in Cambodia provides a concrete example of the progress made over the past few years, and the expected impacts of current projects. 

What do we need? 

Despite a global consensus on the importance of social protection, 55% of the world's population remains uncovered. This situation must and can be remedied: the funding of a social protection floor in 57 lower income countries is estimated to cost an average of only 4.2% of GDP. Although this is affordable for most countries, for others it goes beyond what they can realistically finance. 

One solution is a functioning global solidarity mechanism - a Global Fund for Social Protection Floors - which is built based on three pillars with different objectives, eligbility criteria, financing mechanisms, stakeholders and time horizons that complement each other: 

- Design branch: Provision of technical support for national efforts to design and implement rights-based national social protection systems, including floors, in line with ILO principles, and capacity building. Examples with potential for innovative financing include producing a joint proposal for the UN Joint SDG Fund, who will be putting out a call for proposals in November with a focus on innovative finance. 

- Sustainability branch: (Co-)Financing of national efforts in exceptional cases, based on national commitment to increase national investments in social protection

Risk Resilience Branch: Safeguarding of established and functioning social protection systems against covariate shocks

UN Secretary-General's strategy and 3 year roadmap (2019 - 2021) for financing the 2030 Agenda

 
23.07.2019
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