Social protection issues are getting more attention than ever as the international community attempts to pull people out of poverty, provide decent employment for the jobless, and protect the vulnerable from disaster and health risks through the Sustainable Development Goals. Appropriate social protection systems and policies figure strongly across five of the 17 SDGs.
“Social protection is a human right,” Tomoko Nishimoto, Asia-Pacific regional director for the International Labor Organization, told Devex during the Asia-Pacific Social Protection Week at the Asian Development Bank headquarters in Manila, Philippines, last week.
“It’s very important that we see this as a right which is applicable to everyone. The universality is a very important point,” she said.