REGIONAL TRAINING ON FINANCING DECENT WORK
CONTEXT
The International Labour Organization’s (ILO) mandate to promote decent employment, is based on the principles set out in the Employment Policy Convention No. 122. The Convention calls upon State parties to declare and pursue an explicit and pro-active employment policy aimed at remedying employment deficits. With the support of the ILO, a growing number of countries around the world have taken steps to place employment at the heart of their national development plans, and to formulate autonomous national employment policies in order to provide a concrete response to the complexity and multitude of employment deficits. In the context of the post-COVID-19 pandemic, these policies are becoming more important than ever in linking crisis responses to longer-term, more structural objectives, while strengthening the resilience of labor markets to future negative shocks.
The public budget is the main instrument through which governments can help solve these problems, by maintaining a certain level of aggregate demand and funding interventions that promote job creation, improve job quality and help workers move from inactivity/unemployment to employment.
However, translating employment policy into budgetary terms can be a complex task due to the cross-cutting nature of employment, which has concrete implications when assessing budgets. It is not only about examining budget allocations that have an explicit and straightforward impact on employment, and which fall under the exclusive responsibility of the ministries in charge of employment (i.e. public employment services and active labor market policies), but all policies that also have an influence on decent job creation (such as education, social policy or fiscal policy). Therefore, it is a question of how the national budget, as a whole, can best contribute to the achievement of decent work objectives.
The complexity of developing a broad, encompassing and functional decent work system remains a challenge for the relevant institutions. Empowering policy makers to handle the complexities of their own employment and social protection systems must take into consideration their uniqueness and diversity in order to implement creative solutions suitable for their national contexts. Enabel in partnership with the Government of DRC, Government of Rwanda, and the Government Uganda is implementing a 5years Thematic Portfolio Social Protection in Central Africa 2022-2026.
The portfolio focuses on Social Protection and Decent Work across five strategic pillars inspired by International Labor Organization’s Decent Work, namely: -
i) Employment creation and enterprise development,
ii) Standards and rights at work,
iii) Social protection,
iv) Social dialogue, and
v) Policy development and learning at national and regional levels.
The Portfolio includes regional initiatives aiming at the development regional networking, learning and exchange of best practices across the region. Under a MoU signed between EAC and ENABEL, EAC Secretariat coordinates with ENABEL the implementation of the regional initiatives of the TPSP, and this training falls into this collaboration.
2.0 THE EAC DECENT WORK INITIATIVES
In Article 39 of the Protocol for the establishment of the EAC Common Market Protocol, the Partner States undertook to coordinate and harmonize their social policies to promote and protect Decent Work and improve the living conditions of the citizens of the Partner States for the development of the Common Market. One of the functions of the ILO is to provide opportunities for decent work for women and men in all countries.
The ILO defines decent work as productive work for women and men in conditions of freedom, equity, security and human dignity. Over the years, ILO has had fruitful cooperation arrangements with the EAC Partner States, the EAC Secretariat and Social Partners on matters of Decent Work. In January 2023, the EAC Secretariat concluded a cooperation agreement and an operationalization Plan, which provides for joint implementation of Decent work program. Accordingly, the EAC Secretariat in collaboration with ILO initiated the second Phase of the EAC Decent Work Program which is being finalized with the ILO Experts.
In this context, the ILO, together with Enabel – the Belgian Development Agency -, are organizing a regional Training on Financing Decent Work and Social Protection with national decision-makers from the EAC Partner States. The training will develop different thematic modules to build a common understanding of the fundamentals of decent work financing, as well as courses and exercises to establish a holistic understanding of the different stages of an employment-related budget, from its elaboration to its execution. Moreover, the curriculum will be adaptable to context-specific circumstances and needs of the Community. A sound understanding of national contexts and specificities will ultimately lead participants to develop roadmaps and identify potential reforms on their national decent work public expenditures.
3.0 OBJECTIVES AND EXPECTED OUTCOMES
The main objectives of the workshop are to:
(i) address specific challenges and opportunities of building decent work in Africa;
(ii) identify the benefits of decent work public expenditures;
(iii) fill the “implementation gap” of financing decent work by providing technical guidance to policy makers engaged in the administration and governance of social protection and employment-related programmes;
(iv) develop models that could be customized and applied to a specific country context and using examples and illustrations
(v) undertake a reflection and analysis of policy makers’s respective country situation in terms of financing decent work programmes (i.e. policy mapping and policy gaps, strategic planning, implementation, accounting and controls of public expenditures); and
(vi) develop national roadmaps that could improve decent work financing.
The main expected outcomes of the training are to appreciate the national contexts and challenges to finance decent work in EAC countries; and obtain consensus on the improvement of decent work financing.
4.0 PARTICIPANTS
The training will be attended by Experts drawn from the EAC Partner States’ representatives each drawn from the Ministries responsible for EAC Affairs; Finance, Labor/Employment and Social Protection. Also, to participate will be representatives of Employers’ and Workers’ organization from Partner States.
5.0 METHODOLOGY
The training will be delivered through the use a mixed-methodology of presentations and inputs by ILO/ ITC Experts and Group Work. A strong focus will be on country teams presenting their experiences in order to facilitate cross-country learning and exchange.