The
Philadelphia
Declaration (1944) sets out
ILO’s role with regard to social protection, an area in which the Organization
has been active since its inception in 1919, adopting several conventions
and recommendations. It was in 1952, however, when it adopted the Social
Security (Minimum Standards) Convention, which entered into force in 1955,
that it took decisive action. The convention allows derogations for
countries “whose economy and medical facilities are insufficiently
developed”, but it nevertheless marked a fundamental shift in international
social security law in that it introduced the new concept of a general
level of social security the
Member States should attain.
As Hector G. Bartolomei de la Cruz and Alain Euzéby recall (
L'OIT,
Que sais-je?, PUF, Paris 1997, pp. 87-90), the 1952 Convention, which the
Council of Europe took over almost word for word in its
European Code of
Social Security, is currently considered the standard of reference in this
field.