Summary

This report recommends the establishment of a global fund for social protection as a means to close the financing gap faced by low-income countries to provide for social protection floors.

Such a fund is affordable, whether funding comes from official development assistance or from other sources, including unused or new special drawing rights. Moreover, social protection should be seen as an investment with potentially high returns, since it leads to building human capital, has significant multiplier effects in the local economy, and contributes to inclusive growth and to resilience in times of crisis.

The report argues that international support should be seen as launching a process that will allow recipient countries to gradually increase the levels of domestic resource mobilization: rather than creating a new form of dependency, it would ensure a predictable level of support to countries that are committed to establishing social protection floors and whose ability to finance social protection would improve in time. The global fund can be established building on the already existing structures that have developed on an ad hoc basis to provide support for the universalization of social protection floors.

Ten years after the Social Protection Floor Advisory Group recommended the universalization of social protection floors, the report calls on all States, international agencies, unions and civil society organizations, to contribute to making the global fund for social protection a reality.