Social protection – again
February 2012
2012 might bring a seminal new ILO Recommendation on social protection – one dedicated to the notion of social protection floors. These are defined as nationally-specified guarantees of a minimum income for cases of poverty, unemployment, accident, or other crises; of a proper health insurance; and of access to at least basic social services or public goods – education, health services, drinking water, sanitation, or others. In some ways, there is a link to the MDGs which also focus on poverty and the social sectors. It would be a remarkable achievement and a big step forward for social justice if the ILO’s tripartite constituency of workers, employers and governments adopted this Recommendation when they convene at the International Labour Conference in June. It could also become a policy contribution to or even a framework for tackling the MDGs after 2015, since the social protection floor ideas addresses all countries and could be part of an initiative to overcome the North-South division in “development” concepts.
But one should never rest, and instead already now recognise that a core element in the human development, human security and social justice agenda is that of decent work and employment. As the 2012 next big recession looms with job losses in the formal and informal sectors, employment needs to be at the forefront of considerations. It can provide incomes, inclusion, and dignity – if it is "decent" in the ILO sense: properly remunerated, with workers rights to organise and bargain collectively, with social security, and enabling social dialogue.
The social protection floors initiative needs full support, but one also needs to look beyond this initiative. It omits a crucial policy area: decent work and employment. This needs to be integrated into the thinking for MDGs post 2015, and for the year ahead. Some thoughts in this direction are laid out in my short piece in the very good “compendium” of ideas on social protection compiled by UNDP’s regional office for Asia and the Pacific. (visit www.snap-undp.org or download the compendium)
Rethinking “development”
January 2012
Does the notion ‘development’ and the distinction between developed and developing countries still make sense?
In 2011, we witnessed the Arab spring, a political softening in Burma/Myanmar, juxtaposed with pressures on freedom of thought or protest in locations as diverse as Thailand, Russia and the US. The reintroduction of economic austerity against a background of blatant income disparities in Europe and the US are juxtaposed with massive social protection efforts in Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Ethiopia, South Africa, India, Nepal, Bangladesh, China, Thailand. The group of 20 economically powerful countries – the G20 – appears to have unseated the G8. At the climate talks in Durban, a coalition of the EU and the Least Developed Countries emerged. Poverty, vulnerability, social exclusion, a precariat, are present and growing across the globe. The forms of social organisation and protest too are converging, with vocal and visible 99% movements in India, the US, Spain. More poor people now live in middle-income countries than in the least developed and lowest income ones. All this suggests that the notion of North and South, of developing and developed countries, has become obsolete.
As a re-thinking of the next international development decade commences, it is important to recognise the demise of old divides. The current MDG agenda “expires” in 2015 – the year by which, initially, the targets on poverty, hunger, health and education, the environment, and on ODA, are meant to have been met. Discussions have begun, at the UN, in NGOs and in academic circles across the globe, whether the MDGs should be extended, enhanced or simply scrapped to make way for a radical new design. One convincing approach is to think, in South and North, about a development agenda for all disenfranchised, vulnerable and economically and socially excluded individuals and groups, regardless of where they live, instead of one set of players designing a development agenda for the others.
It will be interesting to observe how the UN system rolls out its consultation process – there is a plan to have MDG discussions in 60 countries over the next year or so, and it would be important to situate these in low and in high income countries and to include the vulnerable in all countries. This would lead to a new meaning of development – human development and dignity and social justice for all.
Socio-economic security
September 2011
There are many ways to look at development – economic development, human development, human security, socio-economic security and subsets such as food security, or job security, or, less commonly used, education and health security. The greater depth of a human or socio-economic security approach is useful in countries riven by particularly stark income and wealth divides, and where social exclusion, political oppression and other human rights violations are met with impunity.
A paper that tries to use a socio-economic security approach is one I recently published as an IDS working paper, on Nepal since the end of the civil war. Nepal has come out very favourably on the human development index, and showed up as one of the star performers in terms of gains made, in the 2010 UNDP Human Development Report; it also performed well according to a recent national living standards survey. The paper tries to convey a more nuanced and critical picture. Please see www.ids.ac.uk/files/dmfile/Wp370.pdf.
Another approach is to look specifically at food security, and this has been done in a paper by Aniruddha Bonnerjee and myself on hunger - food and nutrition insecurity - in South Asia and related policy responses - and where they fail. This paper will be presented at the forthcoming EADI-DSA conference in York, UK, 19-22 September. See https://www.conftool.com/gc2011/index.php?page=browseSessions.
Comments and reactions on both papers would be very much welcomed at office@gabrielekoehler.net.
MDGs beyond 2015
June/August 2011
2015 is approaching rapidly and there is a need to revisit the MDGs adopted in 2000/2002 and see how to make them punchier and tougher,
intrinsically oriented to human rights, social justice and social inclusion. I therefore participated in a conference organised by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Latvia and the umbrella platform of development NGOs in Latvia, LAPAS, which brought together 80 academics, government officials, and CSO representatives (Baltic World Talks, Riga 16 June). It was an introduction to (re)thinking the MDGs beyond 2015, and built on research and policy work initiated earlier in Latvia – such as with the Human Development Report 2002/3, which introduced conceptual innovations into the notion of human security and freedom from fear and freedom from want, and proposed concepts such as securitability, security constellations and security thresholds. A group of Latvian academics continues to prepare biannual human development reports, and a team at Riga University is researching deeper into human security.
Human security is
akin to notions such as human wellbeing and human development, but has an advantage over these in that it is closer to policy because it defines areas of interventions, and describes the actors needed for policy change and human development progress.
One outcome of the conference is the human security and MDGs 2015 initiative. Another is a note by Richard Jolly, Des Gasper, Mara Simane and myself on deepening the MDGs using the human security concept.
More at
EU development strategy
June 2011
Many countries are currently formulating, updating or reshaping their development policies – the “new” donors from the South, many OECD and EU member states, and also the European Commission (EC). The Commission's recent draft is called “EU development policy in support of inclusive growth and sustainable development. Increasing the impact of EU development policy”, and some comments are included below
In this connection, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Latvia, and LAPAS, the umbrella organisation of Latvia's development NGOs, convened a conference on 16 June in Riga to brainstorm on ideas for development policy and cooperation which could reach beyond 2015, contribute to deepening the MDGs, and use Latvia's unique conceptual thinking on human security and the notion of securitability, and its operationalisation. See details of the conference on http://www.terveilm.net/uploads/files/HSConferenceinvitationJune16.pdf.
My reactions to the EC's green paper:
Overall, the EC Green Paper covers all the bases, and a focus on inclusive growth, sustainable development and policy impact is what one would be expecting from a document prepared to suit the interests of a range of European positions. However, the Green Paper as it reads is not visionary, and given the number of people living in acute poverty and facing systematic social exclusion what would very much be needed is an inspired vision of how to reach for social justice and dignity – principles the European community of citizens strives for for itself and needs to convey in its development policy.
In terms of income poverty, it is often celebrated that the number of people surviving on less than the equivalent of $1.25 per person a day has decreased from 1.9 billion in 1981 to 1.4 billion in 2005, but this was achieved in the span of a generation - in other words very slowly. And: it means that a quarter of the world’s population remain in direst poverty - $1.25 per person per day is minime. The number of people who in 2010 lived in daily hunger situations hovers between 900 million and 1 billion. The population with less than $ 2 per day has remained at roughly 2.4 billion over the past 25 years (UN DESA 2010, p. 14 based on World Bank data; FAO/WFP 2010).
Moreover: it is obvious that income is but a narrow and superficial measure of wellbeing and human development. A life in dignity is equally important. Other forms of deprivations – malnutrition, lack of education, ill health, lack of decent work – need to be integral to any notion of development. But again, we know that vast numbers of people are subjected to discrimination, social exclusion, hatred, and violence on the basis of their gender; their economic position; their ethnicity – expressed in language, religious practice, or even just their looks; their age; their geographical location; or their political views or sexual preferences. Many of the studies produced in connection with the September 2010 high-level panel of the UN General Assembly on the MDGs illustrated with ample evidence how intersecting inequalities lead to extremely uneven and unjust performance and outcomes in all the indicators used to measure MDG progress (see UN General Assembly 2010; Kabeer 2010; UN DESA 2009).
Therefore, a European contribution to development must , in its concept of inclusive growth, integrally feature and build on principles of equality and dignity and social justice, and spell out policies beyond simple growth triggers, if the goal of development policy is to tackle the roots of poverty and speed up progress on the MDGs (both cited as objectives on p. 4 of the Green Paper).
Policies for inclusive growth cannot blindly rely on an increase in GDP – we have witnessed at least a decade of jobless growth and a massive informalisation of the labour market; those who are economically excluded - from jobs, from assets, from income security and from predictable and adequate social protection - are in general the same individuals and communities who are socially, and politically, excluded. Therefore, access to decent work and remunerative employment, access to proper productive assets especially land, income redistribution, and policies for social inclusion such as universal social services of highest quality for all, regardless of their identity, and affirmative action, need to be integrated into the inclusive growth concept.
Two concrete proposals regarding the Green Paper then:
• Firstly, at the conceptual level, sustainable, equitable, inclusive growth needs to build on fundamental values as expressed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and in the many policies of the European Commission which are anchored in a concept of human rights and social justice. The approach as it reads in the Green Paper is upside down and needs to come right-side-up: inequality does not need to be addressed because of its adverse effects on economic growth or to enhance productivity and improve socio-political stability (p. 13 of the Green Paper) but rather growth and development more broadly need to create equality and social justice. Economic growth is a means, not an end.
• And secondly at the policy level, it may be useful to revisit the policy constellations proffered by the human security or socio-economic security approach. This refers to policies that span all the domains that affect human development and dignity: food security, health, the environment; economic, personal and community-level security; and political security. The notion of human security addresses, in one integrated concept, the entire spectrum of development concerns, including food insecurity, climate change and associated natural disasters, political strife and conflict, and human rights violations, as well as economic inequality, social exclusion and political disenfranchisement, in its objective manifestations and its subjective perceptions.
A human security policy framework could draw together a set of policy domains that could be connected for more impact:
o the MDG sectoral policies for food security, education, health, water and sanitation and related areas;
o broader macroeconomic policies including those to create and promote decent work, overcome poverty, which would include a combination of growth, income redistribution, and sector policies around equitable and sustainable trade and industrial strategies;
o policies addressing human security in the more narrow sense of the word which are so fundamental as conflict and natural disasters intensify;
o policies to address climate change and "green", environmentally sustainable growth;
o policies for "social justice" - addressing decent work, income equality, and universalising social protection;
o policies to create genuine gender equality and rights- based social inclusion, rights, participation, dignity, and a subjective sense of being secure, and
o policies to enable socio-economic transformation and empowerment.
Such a holistic, coherent policy vision, building on a notion such as human security, could genuinely help to move the EU development policy towards inclusive growth and sustainable development. It needs to be built into the Green Paper to make it responsive to the evidence bases of the past 20 years of development cooperation, and at the same time to make it a visionary, inspiring document.
Debates on the selection of a new managing director of the IMF
May 2011
It is obvious: there needs to be a transparent selection process for the next managing director of the IMF. Most commentators agree that technical qualifications must figure among the selection criteria, and pragmatists accept that country quotas will play a role in going for a national of a particular country.
However, what is really the issue is to face the far more controversial question of the managing director’s political and policy orientation. At this time of resurgent austerity politics, it is vital to discuss how to make the IMF an institution that puts poverty eradication, employment, decent work, and the regulation of global financial flows back as its overarching rationale (as conceived in 1944). It is vital to discuss how to change the “operating logic” of the IMF so as to enable governments – in South and North – to re-orient their fiscal budget expenditures towards expenditures on education, health, social assistance and social insurance, and care services, and to ensure that these services and transfers are of high quality and guaranteed for all citizens – and for migrants. It is vital for the IMF to use its commodity price stablisation mechanisms to enable food price regulation at global, regional or national levels. It is vital to deepen the timid IMF discussions on tax reform and to move these towards a tax reform for progressive taxation, which would enable countries to universalise high quality social services - promised since the 1940s - and to implement innovative ideas such as the global social protection floor. For all this to be possible, it is also vital to re-assess debt sustainability from a qualitative angle, rather than the prevalent quantitative approach fixated on artificially-pronounced debt ceilings.
The selection of a new IMF managing director is a good opportunity to advance such policy reorientations: many of the “emerging economies” – such as for example Brazil, Mexico, South Africa, India - have installed progressive socio-economic policies and illustrated how government deficits can be useful and sustainable if the expenditures are oriented to social goods and services, which have made a tangible difference for millions of people in their respective countries. They have also demonstrated how social expenditures, such as on social assistance, food price support, school meals, or employment schemes, can re-kindle post-crisis economic growth. Through the managing director, these countries could share their experience.
So, an IMF managing director from the South could help with policy advances - provided she, or he, is attuned to this emerging socially-oriented, rights-based discourse, and enables IMF members to think in new terms and values. Similarly, a managing director from the North or the East could prod the IMF towards the interests of the global South, and bring the IMF into the direction of progressive policy decisions, provided she is willing to learn from these new ideas.
On this topic, please connect to www.networkideas.org and to www.wdev.eu
Social protection for social justice
April/May 2011
The Centre for Social Protection Conference at the Institute for Development Studies – better known as the IDS Sussex – convened a conference on Social protection for social justice which brought together the “social protection community” - later dubbed the "SP-istas" - to move forward the agenda at a time where social protection has become one of the “fastest moving” development policy topics. Some reflections on this:
As adopted in 2002, the MDG agenda had a complacent ring to it – somehow assuming that a concerted time-bound investment into poverty eradication, nutrition, health, education, the environment, HIV-Aids, and gender equality would serve to achieve progress – without a clear and interactive policy orientation, and without addressing the structures producing inequality. It soon became obvious, however, that social exclusion; the violation of human rights; the deeply embedded inequity in incomes and assets; civil strife; and the impact of climate change were preventing the achievement of even the relatively tame MDG goals. The food, fuel and financial crises, and repeated natural disasters, one piling on top of the other since 2008, in many countries reversed or slowed down MDG achievements. Thus, in 2010, an estimated 1 billion people continue to live with hunger and malnutrition - the starkest form of poverty, and 1.75 billion people – one third of the global population – experience multidimensional poverty on a daily basis. Millions lack formal employment, and 75 percent of the world’s population have no proper social security.
Therefore, development discourse in the global South, in parts of UN, and in academic circles has become more radical and is reclaiming attention to the values of human rights, social justice, equity and social inclusion, and decent jobs (see for example Kabeer 2010. Can the MDGs provide a pathway to social justice? The challenge of intersecting inequalities. www.ids.ac.uk; UNICEF’s work on child poverty and disparities http://www.unicefglobalstudy.blogspot.com; UN DESA Report on the World Social Situation 2020: Rethinking poverty, www.undesa.org/publications; UNRISD Combating Poverty and Inequality www.unrisd.org; ILO World Social Security Report 2010/11 www.ilo.org; Voipio and Koehler, 2010 – A Year of Innovations in the Global Poverty Reduction Agenda www.networkideas.org).
Beyond conceptual rethinking, and a more outspoken analysis of the impediments to rights, inclusion and equity, the development community has increasingly begun using the notion of social justice as the overarching rationale to inform policies. In 2009, for example, the UN agencies and the International Financial Institutions across the board agreed on a system-wide response to the economic and financial crisis, articulating a set of joint initiatives for action at the global, regional and country levels (United Nations system Chief Executives Board (CEB) for Coordination. April 2009. UN. CEB/2009/1).. These merit spelling out:
· Additional financing for the most vulnerable;
· Food security: strengthening programmes to feed the hungry and expanding support to farmers in developing countries;
· Trade: fighting protectionism through the conclusion of the Doha Round and strengthening aid-for-trade initiatives and financing for trade;
· Green economy initiative: promoting investment in long-term environmental sustainability and putting the world on a climate-friendly path;
· Global jobs pact: boosting employment, production, investment and aggregate demand, and promoting decent work for all;
· Social protection floor: ensuring access to basic social services, and the empowerment and protection of the poor and vulnerable;
· Humanitarian, security and social stability: emergency action to protect lives and livelihoods, meeting hunger and humanitarian needs, and shoring up security and social stability;
· Technology and innovation: developing technological infrastructure to facilitate the promotion of and access to innovation.
Echoing this, the OECD DAC poverty group issued policy statements on the need to conceptualise social protection, employment and empowerment as three interdependent policy areas for MDG progress (see e.g. ACCELERATING PROGRESS TOWARDS THE MDGS THROUGH PRO-POOR GROWTH. POLICY MESSAGES FROM THE DAC NETWORK ON POVERTY REDUCTION (POVNET). The UN high level session on the MDGs in 2010 then building on these stepping stones placed social protection, social inclusion and decent work explicitly onto the global development policy agenda (Resolution adopted by the General Assembly. A/RES/65/1Keeping the promise: united to achieve the Millennium Development Goals. http://www.un.org/en/mdg/summit2010/pdf/outcome_documentN1051260.pdf.)
The global social floor (GSF) initiative has become a cornerstone in these policy innovations and seen remarkable traction over the past 2 years. It is anchored in a set of basic social rights, services and facilities derived from human right treaties. It assigns a clear responsibility to the state to deliver transfers and services. It is integrated with the objectives of the Global Jobs Pact. The GSF, led by the ILO and the WHO, brings together two interrelated elements:
Ø Ensuring the availability, continuity, and geographical and financial access to essential services, such as water and sanitation, food and adequate nutrition, health, education, housing and other social services such as life and asset saving information.
Ø Realizing access by ensuring a basic set of essential social transfers, in cash and in kind, to provide a minimum income and livelihood security for poor and vulnerable populations and to facilitate access to essential services. It includes social transfers (but also information, entitlements and policies) to children, people in active age groups with insufficient income and older persons. These social transfers – or social protection measures – have become a key policy element globally,
The GSF has been proposed to the G20 as a key policy element (see Michelle Bachelet, Executive Director of UN Women and Chair of the Social Protection Floor Advisory Group, Social Protection Floors as a Response to Demands for Social Justice. International Labour Office, 23 March 2011. www.ilo.org/global job crisis observatory), since the most successful among the G20’s developing countries - the “emerging economies” such a