A place for social protection in the Post-2015 UN Agenda

From MDGs to post-2015 agenda

The eight global goals of the MDG agenda related to poverty reduction, education, gender, child mortality, maternal health, HIV/AIDS and other commutable diseases, sustainable environment and global partnership for development have made a profound difference in people’s lives. Important progress has been made across all goals and some targets have been met. However, the MDG agenda also made clear that some gaps were left unattended and that more needs to be done.

The post-2015 Agenda must be an integrated agenda comprising the social, economic, environmental and development dimensions. The time is now : 2015 is a pivotal year. We have to establish the next steps and goals together and have to do it now.

Social protection at the heart of the discussions

During the last couple of years, social protection and its multidimensionality emerged not only as a success factor for progress on many MDGs but also as a core priority in various forums on the post-2015 agenda. The challenge is huge. As of today, three quarters of the world’s population still lack for adequate social protection.

Even in the poor countries is social security important. Providing modest basic incomes results in breaking of the cycle of poverty. That’s precisely what we want to achieve with the post-2015 exercise.

Social protection plays a major role in a lot of areas : fight against poverty and inequalities, macro-economic stability, increasing resilience to climate change, peace and security, health, gender equality,… The ultimate goal must be to cover everyone with a social protection floor and gradually build towards comprehensive social protection during the entire lifecycle to protect against various hazards of life (ageing, illness, invalidity,…).

High-level Conference to learn from each other

The conference will bring together more than 300 people from developing and developed countries, academic experts, social partners, civil society and national and international organizations. Together they will examine the role that social protection can play in itself but especially for other objectives of the post-2015 UN agenda and how social protection could be implemented in and through the post-2015 UN agenda.

Maggie De Block, Minister for Social Affairs and Public Health, will open the conference. Guy Ryder, Director General of the International Labour Organization, Helen Clark, Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme and Alexander De Croo, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Development Cooperation, Digital Agenda, Telecom and Postal Services, will participate in a High-level Panel discussion in the afternoon.

More information on the debates on twitter: #post2015 and @FODSZ.

More information ?

Els Cleemput | spokeswoman of Minister Maggie De Block
+32 475 29 28 77 | els.cleemput@minsoc.fed.be | @Maggie_DeBlock

Tom Meulenbergs| spokesman of Deputy Prime Minister Alexander De Croo
+32 473 73 33 12| tom.meulenbergs@decroo.fed.be  | @alexanderdecroo

Barbara de Clippel | spokeswoman of the FPS Social Security
+32 473 13 13 29 | press@minsoc.fed.be | @fodsz @spfsecu