GENEVA (ILO News) – The Government of Brazil and the International Labour Office (ILO) have signed a new South-South Cooperation Programme on Social Security. The South-South cooperation initiative, was inspired by President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s commitment to support Latin America and Caribbean, African and Asian countries to promote Decent Work and Social Justice through peer horizontal cooperation and a spirit of solidarity between nations.

The Programme Document constitutes an annex to the Complementary Agreement signed by ILO Director-General, Mr. Juan Somavia, and the Brazilian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mr. Celso Amorim, on 22 March 2009. The current annex includes provisions for increasing the coverage and effectiveness of social protection in the framework of the Decent Work Agenda. The Government of Brazil would promote good practices and lessons learned in social security schemes in Latin American and Portuguese-speaking countries in Africa and Asia.

The Director of the Brazilian Cooperation Agency (ABC), Mr. Marco Farani, who signed the Social Security Programme Document, mentioned the importance of South-South cooperation for Brazil and its contribution for promoting the Decent Work Agenda, but in particular the Fundamental Principles in Rights at Work and social protection.

The signature took place in the presence of Mr. Carlos Roberto Lupi, the Brazilian Minister of Labour and Employment; Mr. Helmut Schwarzer, the Secretary of Social Security Policies, Ministry of Social Security, Mr. Assane Diop, the ILO Executive Director for Social Protection and Ms. Alette van Leur, Director of the ILO Partnerships and Development Department.

Through a triangular mechanism (ILO- Government of Brazil- Partner Developing Countries), the new Programme will support activities towards the development of studies, human capacity development and social dialogue promotion for enhancing social protection for vulnerable groups, in line with the ILO Declaration on Social Justice for a Fair Globalization.

As part of the Decent Work Agenda for the Latin America Hemisphere and following the recent development initiated by the Accra and Doha Conferences on Aid Effectiveness of engaging in greater ownership and national led processes, the Brazilian initiative expects to contribute to a 20 percent increase in the extension of social protection as well as to the elimination of the worst forms of child labour.

The South-South cooperation initiative includes features such as sharing of knowledge and expertise between developing countries on the field of Decent Work promotion, through inter-institutional agreements, such as the programmes led by the Ministry of Labour and Employment, Ministry of Social Development, Ministry of Justice, Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Minister of Social Security, with their counterparts in other Latin American and African countries. These activities will be done in close cooperation with workers and employers organisations.

The South-South cooperation initiatives reinforce the open platform for discussion between Brazil and other Latin American and African countries in the framework of some regional and sub-regional groupings and fora, including the Andean Pact, Community on Portuguese Speaking Countries (CPLP) and IBSA (India, Brazil and South Africa). It fosters the exchange of experiences and good practices in combating poverty among developing countries, including conditional cash transfer systems, programmes for combating child labour, the promotion of social protection through social security schemes for the promotion of youth employment and decent work for women and men.

The signing of this new South-South Programme on Social Security coincided with the signature by the Director-General of the ILO and President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of a Joint Declaration on the 15th of June 2009, which commits both parties to work to reinforce Decent Work worldwide, promoting the Global Jobs Pact through South South cooperation and to the deposit of the Convention 102 on minimum social security standards ratified by Brazil in September 2009.

For more information, please contact the Department of Partnership and Development, Secretariat +4122/799-7309, Fax: +4122/799-6872. pardev@ilo.org

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