Social Protection Floors: Are Governments Keeping their Promises?

A new index enables audits for Social Protection Floors worldwide

Illustration von Silhouetten, die mit einem Seil hohe Stufen erklimmen.

Image: Ausschnitt aus dem Publikationscover; Bild: FES

The ILO's Recommendation R202 on National Floors of Social Protection is a milestone and highlight for the international fight of establishing and expanding social security worldwide. 184 states have committed themselves to implement Basic Social Protection on a national basis. In order to audit the extent to which the governments have met their obligations, scientists from the Graduate School of Governance in Maastricht have developed an index, together with the FES and members of the Global Coalition for Social Protection Floors.

The Social Protection Floor Index (SPFI) calculates the gaps (in GDP percentage) of National Floors of Social Protection. It is supposed to support actors from politics and civil society in further analyzing of these gaps and developing steps to close them. The index is an important new instrument for auditing Social Basic Protection in a long-term and internationally comparable way.

Authors Mira Bierbaum and Michael Cichon answer five questions on the SPFI here:

www.merit.unu.edu/civil-society-social-protection-floor-index-five-qas.

Homepage of the Global Coalition for Social Protection Floors