The Future of Work Podcast

Good afternoon and welcome to our ILC Lunchtime conversation,

brought to you by the ILO Future of Work podcast series.

We are here coming to you from the International Labour

Conference at the Palais des Nations here in Geneva.

Each day we explore a key topic shaping the world of work

with guests from around the world who share their insights and experiences.

Today we are looking at what is at stake for the Second World Summit

for Social Development, and ILO's participation.

Now, 30 years after the Copenhagen summit, the second World

Summit for Social Development will take place in Doha, Qatar

on November four to six, 2025.

This summit is a unique opportunity to rally

the international community behind the common objective of advancing

social progress and social justice as a fundamental contribution

to achievement of sustainable development, peace and security.

Through this

conversation at the 2025 International Labour

Conference, you will learn more

about the interconnected themes of social development,

why it is in fact emphasizing the critical role of tripartite

collaboration in advancing the following actionable objective:

the best way to secure the Second World Summit for Social Development

as a tripartite solutions for social justice.

Let me now introduce you to our great

exclusive woman panelists.

We have our colleagues from the International Labour Organization

with Claire Courteille-Mulder,

who is the Senior Advisor for the World Social Summit at ILO.

We have Shahrah Razavi, who is the Director of the Social Protection

department at the ILO, which also goes by the acronym SOCPRO,

for those who know.

And we are also joined by a partner from Brazil,

Counsellor Adriana Rodrigues Martins,

Head of the Division of Social Justice of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Thank you, ladies, for being here.

Let's start with you, Claire. Shall we?

Why is the summit important for the ILO?

Thank you.

Thank you Khadija.

And thank you colleagues. Good afternoon.

Well, I think the summit is very important for the ILO, at least for three reasons.

The first one is that the topic of the summit social

development, is of direct relevance to the ILO's mandate.

As you know, employment and labour issues are part of social,

an important part of social development and productive employment.

And decent work is actually one of the three pillars of social development,

together with poverty eradication and social cohesion.

So that's really the first reason.

The second reason is, as you said, the first summit was thirty years ago

in Copenhagen and it was a very important summit for the ILO.

It is, by the way, as a follow up of the first summit that the ILO adopted

the Tripartite Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work.

But in 30 years, of course, the world has changed quite substantially.

We have, you know, major transformation going through our different society.

The world of work is getting transformed is getting,

you know, undergoing major changes.

So I think it's very important that at this stage,

the summit really be an opportunity to take stock of where we are

on social development, on the one hand, and on the other hand,

also look at the, you know, the gaps, where are the gaps

in terms of social development and what can we do together.

We, meaning the international community,

what can we do together to address those gaps?

And the third, maybe the third reason why this summit is important for the ILO,

it's also because it's really an opportunity for, to gather

the international community behind ambitious social development goals.

I mean, the world is complicated.

I'm sure you're very aware of, you know, the difficulties

that the multilateral system is going through.

So really having, trying to have a consensus, again,

with ambitious, an ambitious outcome in Qatar,

I think would be very important for the world today.

Thank you.

Absolutely. Great points. Thank you so much Claire.

And, Adriana,

what are Brazil's priorities for this summit, tell us?

Thank you.

Good afternoon everybody.

Thanks for being here.

So I'm going to talk about some of the priorities of Brazil. Yes.

We think that it's a chance for us to work

and to renew our faith in multilateralism.

And it's very important because this is going to be the last conference

that is celebrating the 30 years last year was the population development,

this year was Beijing 30 years, and now it's Copenhagen 30 years.

So I think that it's, it's a, so Brazil arrives at the summit

committed to a dignity-first agenda based on inclusion and justice.

We insist on racial and ethnic equity,

ensuring that Afro descendants, indigenous peoples

and traditional communities are clearly included in policies related

to education, employment, health and climate action, gender.

We defend gender equality and continue to push back against the global backlash

targeting gender and sexual and reproductive health and rights.

We support strong commitments that support the empowerment of all women and girls.

Then, we stand firmly for the rights of the LGBTQIA+ community.

We recognize that sexual diversity is essential to true inclusion.

Brazil will continue to speak up for the protection of the community

in all aspects of life,

Social, economic and cultural.

Especially since we're here at the ILO.

labour inclusion is one of the most important issues,

and it's critical because

because of discrimination LGBTQIA+

people, they have different access,

not the same opportunities as everybody else.

So, in terms of health,

Brazil calls for an urgent global action on neglected diseases

such as tuberculosis, malaria and HIV/AIDS.

And we urge awareness of social and environmental determinants of health.

We support local and regional production of health products

in line with our G20 initiative.

We advocate for inclusive social protection

systems tailored to informal and platform-based work,

and fair progressive tax systems to fund essential social programmes.

So let's tax the rich to have more money for all programmes.

And finally, Brazil is inviting all partners

to join the Global Alliance Against Hunger and Poverty.

That was our G20-started initiative to address

the root causes of hunger and extreme poverty in the world.

Finally, we align with the ILO's agenda of decent work,

meaning promoting rights at work, employment, social protection and social dialogue.

Absolutely. Those are very important priorities.

Thank you for walking us through that.

Shahra. What can

the summit concretely deliver on social protection?

Well, thank you for the question, Khadija.

And it's great to be joining here with Adriana and Claire.

I think both have already laid out some of the key issues

that are on the agenda of the summit.

I think social protection, we see it clearly, as a human right.

The right to social security,

this is very clearly laid out in human rights standards,

as well as in ILO Recommendations, Conventions.

So this is, this goes without saying.

However, what we also know is that investing in social protection

can be a catalyst for the achievement of all the SDGs.

In particular,

when we think of the three pillars that are part of the Social Summit,

when you look at poverty, for example, investing in social protection

can be very effective, not only in eradicating poverty,

but also in preventing people from falling into poverty in the first place,

if you have that strong right to social security.

When we think of inequalities, again,

social protection can be a very powerful tool

for reducing all kinds of inequalities, including gender inequalities,

as Adriana mentioned. And then when we think of social exclusion

and social inclusion, social protection can really be

the kind of platform that can facilitate the building of a social contract

between states and citizens and very critical for social inclusion.

Now, despite all of these benefits, I think we all know that social protection

in practice is not a right that is enjoyed by everyone.

ILO's

latest data shows that almost 48% of the global population has absolutely

no right to social protection, no matter what life cycle risk they face.

If they lose a job, if they don't have health care,

they're really left with nothing to fall back on.

So we have a long way to go.

And in terms of numbers, this is 3.8 billion people

with no protection whatsoever.

So what should the summit do?

I think we can really use this summit to renew the momentum,

with very realistic targets.

And here we hope that the target that many Member States have been

proposing of extending social protection by at least two percentage points

per year will be accepted and will make it into the declaration.

We think it's a realistic target based on data that we have.

We know that in the past eight years, already 42 countries have done it.

So it's not a target that's kind of pulled out of the sky.

It's achievable. It's doable.

It has been done.

So we really hope that this summit will push for it and make sure

that we have the social protection as a right for everyone by 2030,

in order to achieve all of the things that the summit has laid out

in its three pillars. Thank you. Absolutely.

Thank you Shahra.

Thank you so much.

And, Claire, let's come back to you.

What does the ILO bring concretely to the summit?

Thanks.

Hello? Yeah.

Thank you.

Well, I think, first of all, it's important

to have in mind that the summit is is a government-led process.

So the ILO, as a UN organization,

can support the process, share its expertise, its experience,

but it's really government that are in the driving seat for the summit.

So what the ILO has done is

bringing a tripartite contribution.

And this tripartite contribution is made of two parts.

We have adopted - the Governing Body of the ILO has adopted last November

some key messages to the summit.

So there is an, you know, range of recommendation I wouldn't do

justice to try to summarize, you know, the tripartite, the key messages,

but it's policy recommendation, you know, focusing on

the four pillars of decent work social protection, of course,

social dialogue, job creation,

an enabling environment for micro and medium-sized enterprises,

of course, international labour standards, the care economy.

So there is a number of recommendations there that, you know, the tripartite

constituents have decided to send to the summit.

So that's the first part.

The first document.

And then this afternoon, if you have the chance,

you can go to the plenary session because the conference

is due to adopt a resolution on the summit,

which you know, lay out basically what's, what

the tripartite constituent would expect out of the summit.

So really what the ILO is bringing

is the voice of workers, employers and government

and beyond the content of the of the recommendation themselves,

it's also bringing, you know, the, the value of tripartitism

and social dialogue to the summit. Because those documents,

those tripartite documents were really issued

or, you know, worked together out of a process.

There was a working party, a tripartite working party called the Working Party

on the Social Contract that came together to

end up with those recommendations.

Thanks. Totally. Thank you so much.

I'm going to come back to you, Adriana too,

in this particularly difficult context

for the multilateral system,

why is this summit critical for Brazil?

Khadija, it's really critical

and Brazil's really worried.

And diplomacy has a big part to play in this worldwide.

And we are focusing on, we have to -

we view the summit as a possible

turning point and we have to work hard towards it.

It has to agree on a strong, action-oriented final declaration

that re-centres people's rights and inclusion in global development.

Because we are now seeing growing political fragmentation

weakening international solidarity and a concerning backlash

against fundamental rights, especially in the areas

of gender, racial justice and sustainable development.

And it's unfortunately things that we are seeing right now in ILO negotiations.

So, we believe that multilateralism must also be a space for sharing

effective solutions like, we want to foster international

cooperation around good practices such as Brazil's Bolsa Familia.

It's a successful conditional cash

transfer that has become a global reference.

And also

we have a new law that enforces equal pay for equal work between women and men.

I think these are examples of how social policy can address

structural inequality in practical, measurable ways.

And finally, Brazil sees the summit as a space

to renew our shared commitment to social development

as a foundation of global peace and security, and also prosperity.

What includes supportive frameworks like the ILO agenda,

which reminds us that decent work, inclusion and social

justice are not separate from development, but its core.

Thank you.

Excellent.

Shahra,

you might and

all of you might know this, but the first Conference

on Financing for Development will take place at the end of June.

How will the outcome of that conference influence

the commitments made by the Summit on social protection?

Yeah.

Thank you.

There is, as you said, at the end of June, in Seville,

there'll be the, Financing for Development Conference.

And I think it, in terms of the timing of it, I again

want to highlight what Adriana said about this period of backlash and backsliding.

When we look at social protection, we had a lot of

new measures put in place during COVID.

But after that period, we've really had

quite a strong push for austerity.

Many of those programmes were short term, and they were wrapped up

and they disappeared.

And we are kind of we said COVID is a wake up call.

We need to build universal social protection systems.

But I think we all forgot.

And we got -

countries had problems with debt distress,

with fiscal space shrinking.

So now in the Financing for Development (FFD) outcome document,

the current version,

I think Member States, as Claire said, Member States are the drivers

and they have in the FFD process been pushing for having -

and I think this is quite a landmark, having a paragraph in the action

paragraphs of the summit, which includes

in para 22J, a mention of the need to extend

social protection by at least two percentage points per annum.

This is very important because prior to this, out of the Addis

conference, for example, and previous financing for development conferences,

the references to social protection were only in the preamble part

not in the action paragraphs.

So we now have this quite important indication in the in the action paras,

which should open the door for ministries of labour,

for institutes of social protection and social security

to really discuss the issue of financing for social protection

with ministries of finance, who've been the ones who have discussed

and negotiated the financing for development outcome document.

So if this para stays, and we hope that Member States

will make sure that it does stay, it will provide a really good bridge

to the Social Summit, because this provides the means of action.

And then in the summit, we can discuss all the important issues around

integrated policies, what the Global Accelerator is doing,

what the Global Alliance Against Hunger and Poverty is doing to make sure

that the policies are in place to really put in place decent work,

employment generation and social protection as a package.

And my last point is to say that the FFD outcome document

also includes important discussions around progressive taxation

that Adriana referred to around debt.

And I think if these issues are well addressed

in the FFD outcome document,

then I think it opens the space and creates the possibility

for Member States to create more fiscal space, especially for developing countries

that are in debt distress, to really make do

on the reality of all the policies that we know are very important

for the creation of decent work and social protection.

So let me end here. Thank you. Thank you so much Shahra.

I mean, thank you so much for all of you.

It was a very interesting conversation.

That's all for today's episode.

Thank you for listening.

We hope you will join us again for more conversations

on the key issues shaping the world of work.

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Until next time, take care and goodbye from all of us at the ILO.