United Nations Headquarters. Photo: iStockphoto

The establishment of the Social Protection Interagency Board was agreed by the G20 in 2011, and is mandated to promote social protection as a top priority in global, regional and national development agendas, and to improve UN inter-agency coordination in support of country-led social protection measures, in close consultation with other international organizations that provide social protection financing and technical advisory services.

The first meeting of the Board follows soon after the adoption by the 101st International Labour Conference in June 2012 of an historic Recommendation on social protection floors (SPFs). The Recommendation calls on ILO member states to include SPFs as an element of their national social security systems, and to implement social protection floors within strategies for social security extension that progressively ensure higher levels of social security to as many people as possible.

The Social Protection Floor Initiative, coordinated by the ILO, seeks to introduce nationally-defined sets of basic social security guarantees,  which ensure basic income security and access to essential health care and other social services for all people.

Addressing the inter-agency meeting, the ISSA Secretary General, Hans-Horst Konkolewsky, outlined ISSA strategies to promote the extension of social security coverage, with an emphasis on strengthening the scope and administrative efficiency of social security institutions.

The Secretary General pointed to several recent initiatives of the Association in this area, including a comparative study of the extension of social security in the BRICS countries; a handbook to promote the protection of the self-employed; and a regional approach to improve the protection of migrant workers in Eurasian countries.

Among the participants at the inter-agency meeting were representatives of the ILO, the World Bank, UNICEF, UNDP, UNDESA, WHO and the OECD, as well as of several donor governments and international NGOs.

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