Social protection

Tripartite Regional Meeting on Social Protection and Formalization

The event will discuss latest developments, challenges and opportunities for Asia and Pacific to deliver on the objective of achieving universal and integrated strategies to promote formalization as a way to promote decent work and achieve social justice.

Participants at the Tripartite Regional Meeting on Social Protection and Formalization. © ILO

Background

The economies of the Asia–Pacific regions and respective labour markets have been hardly hit by the COVID-19 pandemic. Poverty in general, but also working poverty increased for the first time after having trended downwards for decades. The crisis has exposed the significant social protection coverage gaps for many workers in a stark and unprecedented way, particularly those in the informal economy, placing social protection even higher on national and regional agendas as a core element of strategies to foster an inclusive and sustainable recovery, greater resilience, decent work and social justice.

The Global Call for Action adopted at the ILC in June 2021 called for joint action to achieve the objective of universal social protection and curb the spread of informality. Governments, workers and employers of the ILO’s Member States emphasized the need to “improve coverage of those not yet adequately protected, including by ensuring access to adequate social protection to workers in all types of employment”, fostering transitions from the informal to the formal economy and preventing the informalization of employment. It also recommends the development and implementation of “comprehensive, innovative and integrated approaches to curb the spread of informality and accelerate the transition to the formal economy, particularly for the creation, preservation and formalization of enterprises and decent jobs, paying due attention to the rural economy”.

This call for action is particularly relevant for countries in Asia and the Pacific, which together are home to 1.3 billion informal workers, most of whom work in poor conditions with no or very limited access to social protection. Aligned with the Call to Action, in September 2021, the United Nations Secretary General launched the Global Accelerator on Jobs and Social Protection for a Just Transition, which aims to increase the level and coordination of the multilateral system’s efforts to help countries create 400 million decent jobs, including in the green, digital and care economies, and to extend social protection coverage to the 4 billion people currently excluded.

In this context, countries across Asia and the Pacific have the conducive environment for significant transformation of social protection systems so they can deliver on the objective of achieving universal, comprehensive, and adequate protection for all workers and their families and that formalization is a key ingredient, not only to promote the extension of social protection, but to enable making decent work a reality for all workers.

Objectives

  • Enhance the exchange of experiences between national experts, including tripartite representatives, on the status and future of social protection.
  • Promote a regional tripartite joint reflection on the importance of linking efforts to extend social protection coverage with efforts to promote the transition towards formalization.
  • Promote a discussion on the role of ILO tripartite partners in accelerating the extension of social protection to all workers as proposed by the ILO Call for Action, the UN SG Global Accelerator on Jobs and Social Protection and the Recommendation 204 on transition to the formal economy.