A/HRC/47/36
United Nations
General Assembly
Distr.: General
22 April 2021
Original: English
Human Rights Council
Forty-seventh session
21 June–9 July 2021
Agenda item 3
Promotion and protection of all human rights, civil,
political, economic, social and cultural rights,
including the right to development
Global fund for social protection: international solidarity in
the service of poverty eradication
Report of the Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human
rights, Olivier De Schutter
Summary
The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the Social
Protection Floors Recommendation, 2012 (No. 202) of the International Labour
Organization, as well as targets 1.3 and 3.8 of the Sustainable Development Goals, require
that all individuals are protected from extreme destitution, by being provided with income
security when they cannot obtain an income sufficient to lead a decent life as waged or selfemployed workers. They also require that such income security be ensured in the form of
entitlements guaranteed in domestic legislation that individuals may claim before
independent bodies when they are denied support. The current economic and social crisis
further highlights the urgency of realizing the right to social security.
Low-income countries, however, may not have enough fiscal space to guarantee such
entitlements, since the social needs are typically high and public revenues relatively low.
Moreover, these countries may have a lowly diversified economy, particularly vulnerable to
various types of shocks – economic, climatic and sanitary – which may threaten the viability
of social protection schemes when they lead to a sudden increase in expenditures combined
with a fall in public revenue.
A global fund for social protection should be set up to increase the level of support to
low-income countries, thus helping them both to establish and maintain social protection
floors in the form of legal entitlements, and to improve the resilience of social protection
systems against shocks. 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.
International support, therefore, 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.
GE.21-05326 (E)