The SPF Advisory Group and its flagship report

The Social Protection Floor (SPF) Advisory Group was convened in August 2010 by the International Labour Office and the World Health Organization, under the SPF Iniciative, adopted by the United Nations System Chief Executives Board for Coordination (UN CEB) in April 2009, to enhance global advocacy and provide guidance on the conceptual and policy aspects of the social protection floor.

In October 2011, the SPF Advisory Group, chaired by Ms. Bachelet, former president of Chile (2006-2010), presented its flagship report “Social Protection Floor for a Fair and Inclusive Globalization" to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon. Several launching events followed in various countries around the world to present the report which was immediately welcomed by international leaders, as well as other prominent leaders in the world of work..

The report calls for the implementation of social protection floors in order to stimulate economic growth and increase social cohesion in light of the economic crisis and to accelerate progress towards achieving the MDGs. It outlines the SPF Advisory Group’s main conclusions, makes concrete recommendations to advance the extension of social protection coverage, and presents a set of implementation principles.

Composition of the SPF Advisory Group

Members:
  • Ms. Michelle Bachelet
  • Aurelio Fernández López
  • Ebrahim Patel
  • Kemal Dervis
  • Margaret Wilson
  • Martin Hirsch
  • Sudha Pillai
  • Zheng Silin

Ex-officio members
  • Juan Somavia (ILO)
  • Margaret Chan (WHO)

Implementation principles

The SPF Advisory Group in its report provides general guidance on the implementation of nationally determined social protection floors based on national experiences from around the world. It emphasizes that there is no “one size fits all” solution in implementing SPFs and that their design and implementation should be country-led and responsive to national needs, priorities and resources. However, a list of principles is provided to ensure SPF interventions reach their full potential.

Principles for the implementation of nationally defined SPFs:

  • Combining the objectives of preventing poverty and protecting against social risks (thus empowering individuals to seize opportunities for decent employment and entrepreneurship).
  • A gradual and progressive phasing-in process, building on already existing schemes, according to national priorities and fiscal constraints.
  • Coordination and coherence between social programmes (human development on a life cycle basis, address vulnerabilities and multidimensional causes of poverty and social exclusion).
  • Combining income transfers with human development objectives (educational, nutritional and health).
  • Combining income replacement functions with active labour market policies.
  • Minimizing disincentives to labour market participation.
  • Ensuring economic affordability and long-term fiscal sustainability (predictable and sustainable domestic funding sources; international solidarity to start the process).
  • Long-term sustainable development strategy (coherence between social, employment, environmental and macroeconomic policies).
  • Maintaining an effective legal and normative framework.
  • An adequate institutional framework (sufficient budgetary resources, well trained professionals, effective governance rules, participation of the social partners / stakeholders).
  • Ensuring mechanisms to promote gender equality.
  • Effective health-financing systems to ensure quality health services.

Recommendations

The SPF Advisory Group, in its report, makes several recommendations:

1. Implementation principles. While keeping in mind that the design and implementation of national defined social protection floors should follow country-specific dynamics, the Group recommends a number of implementation principles to be taken into account.

2. The role of the international community.

  • Promoting policy coherence and coordination. The SPF Advisory Group recommends the establishment of a mechanism for collaboration and coordination which should ensure the inclusion of experts from the relevant UN agencies, programmes, funds, regional commissions and international financial institutions involved in social protection-related issues.

    It recommends that international organizations join forces at national level to support a group of self-selected pilot countries, to establish a global social protection platform for knowledge sharing, and to set up a panel of appropriate indicators to monitor global progress towards extension of social protection.

    The Group further recommends that the G20 elaborate an “action plan” to implement its conclusions and put in place effective mechanisms to monitor and report on the implementation of SPFs and to map progress towards extending social protection coverage in low- and middle-income countries.

  • Committing donors and promoting innovative financing. The regular forums on aid effectiveness represent opportunities for in-depth discussions of trilateral international cooperation on social protection between new and traditional donors and partner countries.

3. The SPF can be used for future development commitments

  • International standard setting mechanisms:

- The SPF Advisory Group suggests that governments and social partners adopt the proposed ILO recommendation on SPFs.

- It also invites the relevant treaty bodies and committees to consider preparing a general recommendation on the contribution of the implementation of national social protection floors to the realization of the social rights under the different conventions.

  • Linking to the MDGs and beyond. The SPF Advisory Group argues that the SPF approach is a coherent policy tool in achieving MDG objectives by 2015 and beyond and it recommends that the floor approach is taken into consideration in the design of future development commitments.

Advancing MDGs

The SPF Advisory Group argues that the social protection floor approach would accelerate progress towards achieving the MDGs and beyond. The SPF approach can ensure a renewed and comprehensive focus of the MDG and post-MDG debate on poverty and income distribution with a sharper focus on social inclusion. It further provides a framework to develop coherent and coordinated approaches to social protection and employment policies. In addition, by promoting an overarching “whole-government” approach, national social protection floors are conceptualized in such a way as to avoid its dilution in the “silo” of social affairs.

  Explicit linkages and ways in which social protection accelerates MDGs
MDG1: Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
Reducing poverty and inequality
• Stimulating people to participate more actively in the economy
• Supporting the full utilization of productive entrepreneurial capacity and increasing labour market participation
• Improving food consumption and nutritional level of beneficiaries’ households, including children
MDG 2: Achieve universal primary education
• Improving educational attainment, higher school enrolment rates, fewer school drop-outs by removing demand-side barriers to education. Reduces the intensity of child labour
• Supporting inclusive education by introducing changes in the supply side to address the specific needs of children who are marginalized or excluded (such as girls) to ensure they can access and benefit from education
MDG 3: Promote gender equality and empower women (see point 8)
• Addressing barriers to gender equality and empowerment of women
• Encouraging increased participation of women in the economy and greater labour market participation
• Enhancing through social transfers women’s position in the household and intra-household resource allocation and reducing their domestic burden
MDG 4 and 5: Reduce child mortality and improve maternal health
• Removing financial barriers that prevent people from accessing health services and prevents deeper impoverishment caused by medical expenses
• Improving access to quality preventive and curative care for child and maternal health
• Reducing risk factors for diseases among disadvantaged populations
MDG 6: Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases
• Social transfers can directly mitigate the impacts of illness, specifically AIDS, and have helped mothers and children affected by HIV and AIDS
• Such cash transfers might prevent new infections, as they reduce the need for female and child household heads to resort to transactional sex to survive
• Social pensions enable grandparents in ‘missing-middle generation’ families to care more adequately for orphaned and vulnerable children under their guardianship
• There is evidence that social pensions also contribute to preventive health care for children
MDG 7: improved access to safe water, sanitation
• Improving access to safe water sources and basic sanitation facilities

 

Learn more about the SPF