JMBT Joint Statement: A social protection floor for everyone: a universal rights-based development goal

Well into the 21st century, the world remains an unfair, unequal, insecure and unhealthy place for the majority of people. At global level, four out of five persons do not have access to comprehensive social protection. About 80 per cent of the global population live in social insecurity and face a complete loss of income security when a personal or national economic crisis strikes. About half of our insecure population live in abject absolute poverty, the cruellest form of insecurity. Increasing levels of the feminization of poverty are recorded. About 30 per cent of the global population have no access to adequate health care. Every second child is poor and millions of children die every year of preventable causes. Millions of older persons face poverty, hardship and disease at the end. Inequality is increasing in many parts of the world. Social progress is uneven, unacceptably modest and slow.

The state of global social realities is not inevitable and can be changed by decisive action.

We, the Global Coalition for Social Protection Floors, a coalition of more than 70 civil society and trade union organizations, promote social protection floors as key instruments to achieve the overarching social goal of the global development agenda. Social protection is one of the foundations for inclusive, equitable and sustainable development. It can simultaneously address the economic, social and environmental dimensions of sustainability and preservation of livelihoods. It can have a transformative role in contributing to long-term inclusive and sustainable growth while also enhancing resilience against natural and manmade disasters, as well as economic and social crises. We subscribe to the fundamental goal of social justice upheld in the ILO Constitution and the Declaration of Philadelphia1 and its essential cornerstones as defined in Articles 22 to 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

We want the human right to social security2 , defined at least as guaranteed basic income security and access to essential health care, to be realized by 2030 – the next target date for the global development agenda. The Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights has elaborated the right’s normative content as well as the core obligations of States parties in respect of the right3 . 

The target date of 2030 is more than 80 years after the right to social security was first formulated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. There is already long experience with social protection systems that work, but largely in more developed countries. Now, recent encouraging experience in less developed countries demonstrates that without doubt some form of social protection is affordable and feasible nearly everywhere4 . 

We believe that as this world becomes significantly richer, no woman, no man and no child need live in social insecurity, poverty and apprehension. We believe that the International Labour Organization’s Social Protection Floors Recommendation No. 202 (2012), which emerged from the joint Global Social Protection Floor Initiative of the UN System, is a cornerstone to meet the objective to ensure security, to remove the fear of destitution, and to protect standards of living when people are sick, unemployed, disabled and old, or cannot work when having to care for infants or sick family members. It can help address inequality and discrimination that women experience in accessing basic social services, economic opportunities and resources. For men and women to benefit equally from social protection systems, the role of women as caregivers must be explicitly addressed by social protection programmes, as must be the differences in access to services, work, and productive activities between women and men. 

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