Building on the process facilitated by ILO and International Disability Alliance (IDA) that led to the adoption of a joint statement on inclusive social protectionm and the current momentum on universal social protection, the UNPRPD funded project, implemented jointly by ILO and UNICEF in close cooperation with IDA seeks...

This joint statement reflects our shared commitment to inclusive social protection systems for persons with disabilities. The statement emerged from meetings and discussions between international partners working on the issues of disability and social protection. These meetings also contributed to the first report of the United Nations (UN) Special...

The ILO’s General Survey 2019 , compiled by the ILO Committee of Experts on the Application of Conventions and Recommendations (CEACR). The Survey (published under the title Universal social protection for human dignity, social justice and sustainable development) focuses on the ILO’s Social Protection Floors Recommendation, 2012 (No. 202), which calls for...

This report presents the findings of a recent study on social enterprises in Sri Lanka. The study used a combination of desk research, interviews with expert stakeholders and a survey of social enterprises, which engaged representatives from a diverse range of industries and sectors across the country. For the...

In Kenya, where the youth unemployment rate is 25 per cent, 65 per cent of all social enterprises seek to create employment opportunities and the sector provides significant leadership opportunities for young people and women. Moreover, one in ten Kenyan social enterprise operates...

Every person is inherently a rights holder “regardless of their nation, location, language, religion, ethnic origin or any other status”, citizen or non-citizen. This is one of the main principles derived from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which enshrines the right to social security (Art 22) and an...

The last four decades have been characterised by drastic changes in the distribution of income between wages and profits in both OECD countries and emerging economies. We have recently analysed the causes of the decline in the wage share in the developed and developing countries for a project titled...

The Aarhus Convention, which is open for global accession, offers powerful twin protections for the environment and human rights. It provides an effective model for ensuring public input in defining and implementing green economy programmes, in choosing the most appropriate road maps to sustainability and for increasing transparency and...

The United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-Making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters  was adopted on 25 June 1998 in the Danish city of Aarhus (Århus) at the Fourth Ministerial Conference as part of the “Environment for Europe” process. It...

In November 2005, Amazon launched Mechanical Turk (AMT), a website where “requesters” can post tasks, called “Human Intelligence Tasks” or “HITs”, for workers to complete for pay. Workers are required to agree that they are independent contractors, not employees, and that they are therefore not entitled to minimum wage...

This article assesses the validity of many of the assumptions made about work in the on-demand economy and analyses whether proposals advanced for improving workers’ income security are sufficient for remedying current shortcomings. It draws on findings from a survey of crowdworkers conducted in late 2015 on the Amazon...

As ever more policy-makers, governments and organisations turn to the gig economy and digital labour as an economic development strategy to bring jobs to places that need them, it becomes important to understand better how this might influence the livelihoods of workers. Drawing on a multi-year study with digital...

This paper examines challenges to freedom of association and the effective recognition of the right to collective bargaining for workers in the gig economy, and explores the broad range of strategies that gig-economy workers are using to build collective agency, and to promote effective regulation of gig...

This is the first judgment delivered by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights that recognizes the direct enforceability of economic, social and cultural rights (ESCR) under Article 26 of the American Convention on Human Rights. In this case, a labor leader successfully asserted a claim against Peru for violating...

The World Inequality Report 2018 relies on a cutting-edge methodology to measure income and wealth inequality in a systematic and transparent manner. By developing this report, the World Inequality Lab seeks to fill a democratic gap and to equip various actors of society with the necessary facts to engage in informed...

This Policy Research Brief presents some elements that should be carefully considered in the design of policies and programmes to overcome poverty, based on evidence from the field of behavioural economics. A growing number of international experiences point to the fact that, in many situations, government policies and programmes...

Social return on investment (SROI) is a concept to account for social value when evaluating investments. It goes beyond traditional economic evaluation tools, by considering value produced for multiple stakeholders in all three dimensions of development: economic, social and environmental. This discussion paper reviews the main features of SROI...

At the core of Rwanda’s social policy renaissance is the emphasis on the home-grown and grassroots centred generation of intellectual and material resources, utilized with the aim of ensuring a local population familiar with and favourably disposed to government social policy. In the past decade and a half, Rwanda...

The Civil Society Guide for National Social Protection Floors (SPFs) was developed by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, in close collaboration with the Global Coalition for Social Protection Floors. The guide is available in English, Spanish, French and Arabic.  ...

Fragmented Social Protection Systems and Shrinking Civil Society Space The rationale for social protection policies in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region varies greatly across countries. Countries such as Tunisia and Morocco have relatively a well-developed rights-based approach to social protection in national policies, while in Yemen...

This report includes a forecast of global unemployment levels, looking at the situation in developed, emerging and developing economies, with detailed charts and numbers. The report also focusses on the share of vulnerable employment as well as on the scale of the informal economy. It provides policy guidance to...

How does a rights-based approach support civil society organizations in their advocacy for universal access to social protection? In this video, Priti Darooka, founder and executive director of the Programme on Women’s Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (India) talks about the role of human rights frameworks in supporting the...

This paper systematically reviews the evidence on whether persons with disabilities in low- and middle-income countries are adequately included in social protection programmes, and assesses the financial and non-financial impacts of participation. Overall, we found that access to social protection appears to fall far below need. Benefits from participation...

The concept of social inclusion, also referred to as social integration or social cohesion, represents a vision for “a society for all”, in which every individual, each with rights and responsibilities, has an active role to play (Report of the World Summit for Social Development, 1995). While various definitions...

Five years since the “great recession” started, the failed policy of austerity has left a legacy of extreme levels of unemployment, rising inequality, the marginalisation of a generation of young people and the desperation of a growing informal sector where rules simply don’t apply. International institutions did not prevent...