SOCIAL PROTECTION Social security

Dynamic economics require dynamic systems of social protection. These should encourage adaptation to change, while ensuring that people have the basic social and economic security that will enable them to develop their human potential - at work, within their families and in society at large.

The priorities will vary around the world. Developing countries need mechanisms that extend social protection to those on the margins of survival and at the same time integrate these schemes into pluralistic national concepts of universal social protection. The transition countries need to build up systems that respond better to the realities of major structural change in their economies. And the industrialized countries need to look afresh at the coverage, adequacy and financial sustainability of many forms of social protection, so that they respond better to more flexible, more decentralized labour markets and to changing family structures.

Everywhere, countries will need to integrate different types of social protection into a coherent whole, supported by national consensus and continuously developed through social dialogue.