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Project Title: ILO Global Campaign for Social Security and Coverage for All As a means to reducing poverty in Africa and Asia
Social security is the protection which society provides for its members through a series of public measures against the economic and social distress that otherwise would be caused by the absence or substantial reduction of earnings resulting from sickness, maternity, employment injury, unemployment, invalidity, old age or death.
The ILO recognises social security as a basic human right and a means for creating social cohesion, thereby helping to ensure social peace and social inclusion. Social security is one of the constituent pillars of the ILO’s Decent Work Agenda
The International Labour Conference in 2001 mandated the ILO to launch the major Global Campaign on Social Security and Coverage for All. Achieving universal coverage of populations in developing countries, through at least a basic set of social security benefits, is one of the key objectives of the Global Campaign.
The project aims
The project aims at furthering the policy agenda of the ILO Global Campaign on Social Security and Coverage for All by exploring the feasibility of the provision of a basic set of social security benefits in concrete countries – Zambia and Tanzania including Zanzibar.
This will be achieved by undertaking simultaneously; detailed analytical work, engaging in tripartite social dialogue as a basis for broader social dialogue to ensure national ownership of the outputs and by being part of the existing national process of policy development linked to national development plans. The aim being to ensure national policy coherence and the identification of national policy space with particular reference to fiscal space.
The project strategy
The first stage of the strategy is to establish a baseline by conducting a diagnosis of national needs and opportunities by, if possible, building on existing research. This baseline will consist of the Social Protection Expenditure and Performance Review (SPER). The objective of the SPER is to identify all existing major social transfer programmes in order to identify gaps in social protection provision as well as efficiency gains in the existing system and to avoid duplication and incompatibilities with any new policy instruments. The diagnosis stage will form the basis of subsequent evaluation of the impact of extending social security coverage on poverty reduction as well as social and economic development. The methodological concept for undertaking the SPER developed by the ILO has been tested in several developing countries.
The second stage of the strategy will be based on the diagnosis from the SPER and will develop a Social Budget (SB) as a national medium and long-term budgeting tool to allow the assessment of current and future costs of potential or new social security schemes or benefits specific to Zambia using a macro-simulation model. A Social Budget model can simulate and forecast costs and effects of new or modified social transfers. The establishment of a national Social Budget requires an assessment of the financial status of all of the social security schemes in principle.
The third stage will involve identifying the reform priorities and packages suggested by the national social protection task teams and testing them in an iterative process of fiscal, financial, economic, administrative and political feasibility analyses. This will also include the testing of alternative resource mobilisation strategies. The social budgeting technique could be used to establish whether the resources identified can be better used to achieve a higher return in terms of poverty alleviation as measured by the overall poverty headcount index or closure of the aggregate national poverty gap.
A subsequent stage beyond the first year would enable the project to further develop the models and to undertake the necessary task to transfer the models to the project countries to enable them to maintain the data and conduct ongoing modelling of variations to their social protection programs. Apart from the technical issues in enhancing the models, training of suitable staff in relevant institutions would also be required. A natural progression would aim to provide a user interface to the model to allow national planners to undertake what if variations to the programs by way of variations in benefit, demographic selections and target groups etc. These options whilst highly desirable would require the project to be funded for a further two years.
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