Development partners adopted a “get it done” attitude in response to Covid-19. Countries and philanthropies mobilised USD 126 billion, with major vaccine support going to the least developed countries and Africa. But a new OECD report shows that these efforts didn’t reach all their goals. What lessons should partners draw from this crisis to improve preparedness for the next one? Continue reading What we learned from COVID-19
By Olivier De Schutter, United Nations Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights
Progress on poverty eradication is fading fast. We’re halfway to 2030, the deadline for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, and the number of people living in extreme poverty is higher than it was four years ago.
Continue reading “Social protection is key to ending poverty. So why is it so neglected in ODA?”
By Laura Alfers, Director, Social Protection Programme, WIEGO – Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing
Social contracts – the implicit agreements between citizens, the state, workers and enterprises on how to distribute power and resources in pursuit of common goals – are leaving too many workers around the globe without access to social or labour protections. And, while much of the debate about how best to provide these protections focuses on issues like financing, appropriate regulation and policy design – something central to the process of social contract formation is often left out or emerges as an afterthought. That is social dialogue.
Continue reading “Social contracts and social dialogue: A missing link”
By Dr. Nasser Saidi, Economist and former Minister of Economy and Industry of Lebanon
Since October 2019, Lebanon has been in the throes of a historically unprecedented economic and financial meltdown, simultaneously facing a humanitarian crisis, a debt crisis, a banking crisis, a currency crisis, and a balance of payments crisis. The numbers are staggering. Real GDP has declined for the fourth consecutive year by a cumulative 45% since 2018 making it the second most severe financial crisis in history. The Lira has lost 90% of its value, annual inflation is running at 150% and an 80% de facto haircut has been imposed on deposits.
Continue reading “Lebanon’s path back from the brink of collapse”
By Martin Wagner, Senior Policy Advisor Asylum, ICMPD, Caitlin Katsiaficas, Policy Analyst, ICMPD, and Benjamin Etzold, Senior Researcher, BICC
This year, we celebrate 70 years since the 1951 Geneva Refugee Convention was signed. While the Convention has aged relatively well since its inception and has remained relevant for so long, global developments have left their mark. Ever more protracted, mostly internal, conflicts make true solutions for displaced people scarce. As a consequence, UNHCR has sounded the alarm on the growing numbers of displaced persons, virtually every year for the past decade, on the occasion of World Refugee Day (20 June). As expected, the 2020 figures presented at this year’s world refugee day were no different.
Continue reading “Forced displacement in 2021: much to commemorate, little to celebrate”
By Mario Pezzini, former Director of the OECD Development Centre & Special Advisor to the OECD Secretary General on Development and Alexander Pick, Head of Unit, New Development Policies and Institutions, OECD Development Centre
The COVID-19 crisis is an opportunity for humanity to chart a new course and for societies to build forward better. The pandemic has shown that there is a need for change. However, as the new edition of Perspectives on Global Development warns, relying on the same voices, the same institutions and the same mind-sets that prevailed prior to this crisis to answer these questions is unlikely to produce an equitable, inclusive and sustainable recovery. A surge in discontent prior to the pandemic demonstrated that these approaches were failing billions of people around the world, as well as generations not yet born.
Continue reading “From protest to progress?”
By Paola Simonetti, Deputy Director, Economic and Social Policy Department, ITUC
“People are no longer coming to the kiosk to buy tea since the pandemic outbreak started. I am the breadwinner of a family of nine. On many days I don’t earn a single shilling and return home empty handed”. This is the story of Jamila, a tea kiosk holder in Mogadishu, Somalia. Her story is also the story of around 2 billion informal workers worldwide who have been left to cope with the crisis on their own.
Continue reading “A new social contract for a job-rich recovery”
By Silvia Cervellini, Founder and Co-ordinator of coletivo Delibera Brasil
Although we have talked about inequality and sustainability in Brazil for a long time (we held the Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit in 1992 and the first World Social Forum in 2001 in Porto Alegre), the COVID-19 pandemic struck us in the middle of a “quasi” economic crisis, a declining Gini Index and increasing evidence of biomass destruction in Brazil’s Pantanal, Mata Atlântica and Amazonia forests.1
Continue reading “Why we need radical democratic innovation post-COVID”
By Martha Chen, Senior Advisor, WIEGO and Lecturer in Public Policy, Harvard Kennedy School, Laura Alfers, Director, Social Protection, WIEGO and Research Associate, Rhodes University, and Sophie Plagerson, Visiting Associate Professor, Centre for Social Development in Africa, University of Johannesburg
Calls to renew the social contract have proliferated in recent years as the “standard” employer-employee relationship has ceased to be the norm, while traditional forms of informal employment persist and informalisation of once formal jobs is on the rise.1 However, there is a mismatch globally between traditional social contract models based on assumptions of full (male and formal) employment and the world of work today in which informal workers, both self- and wage employed, constitute over 60 per cent of the global workforce. Can the call for a new social contract really help to achieve greater recognition and a more level playing field for informal workers?
Continue reading “A new social contract for informal workers: Bridging social protection and economic inclusion”