Pre-course - Module A

BASIC POLICY EVOLUTION.

FROM SOCIAL SECURITY TO SOCIAL PROTECTION FLOOR INTERNATIONALLY AND AT NATIONAL LEVEL.

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Key questions

What is social security and what is social protection?
Why social protection is needed?
The ILO standards to realize the right to social security
What are the major social protection trends of the past decades?
What is the current social protection coverage and what are the gaps?
What is the social protection floor (SPF) concept?
ILO's Recommendation No. 202
The basic social security guarantees
International commitments for the extension of social protection coverage

Objectives

The objective of this module is to make employers familiar with the concept of social protection and to illustrate the evolution of the sector in the last thirty years. The scope and the main principles of ILO’s Social Protection Floors Recommendation, 2012 (No. 202) are outlined together with the importance of this new concept at the global level.

Master Module A

Take away message

Social protection is the set of measures that a society provides for its members to protect them from general poverty and social exclusion, from a lack of income caused by sickness, disability, maternity, employment injury, unemployment, old age, or death of a family member, a lack of affordable access to health care, and insufficient family support particularly for children and adult dependents.
Access to social protection is a public responsibility which is typically provided through public institutions, financed from either contributions or taxes or both. However the delivery of social protection can be and is often mandated to private entities. Moreover, there exist many privately run institutions (of an insurance, self-help, community-based or mutual character) which may complement and largely substitute for elements of public social protection schemes.
The ILO has played a fundamental role in setting international labour standards guiding the development and extension of social security in its member states;
Despite the impressive progress in the extension of social protection coverage in the last century, only a minority of the world’s population is effectively protected and the human right to social security remains unfulfilled for a large group of people.
Based on the most recent data (from 2011), there has been a worldwide decline in social protection expenditure in terms of GDP, particularly for middle-income and high-income countries (see Figure 5). Only low-income countries have increased public social protection expenditure as a percentage of GDP;
With the adoption of the ILO’s Social Protection Floors Recommendation, 2012 (No. 202), the world has taken a significant step forward in the realization of the human right to social security. National social protection floors should comprise basic social security guarantees that ensure effective access to essential health care and basic income security to a level that allows people to live in dignity throughout their life cycle;
By addressing different dimensions of deprivation in an integrated and interconnected way, social protection floors have demonstrated to be a decisive tool for the achievement of MDGs and have been included as fundamental component in the post-2015 agenda;
In more recent years social protection has rapidly gained more importance as a human right and an economic necessity, receiving also the attention of other international organizations and regional bodies (e.g. ASEAN, African Union).