The Technical Support Facility of the UN Global Accelerator on Jobs and Social Protection for Just Transitions held a side event on December 4, 2024, during the Second Preparatory Committee Session for the 4th International Conference on Financing for Development. The event highlighted the urgent need for integrated financing strategies to address global gaps in social protection and decent job creation. Bringing together governments from Global Accelerator pathfinder countries (Albania and Cabo Verde), development partners (Germany and Spain), public development banks (PDBs), social partners, and UN agencies, the event emphasized the importance of mobilizing resources, fostering multilateral cooperation, and promoting investments to support nationally driven roadmaps led by national governments, with the participation of workers and employers, and civil society organizations.
The following key takeaways and recommendations emerged from the discussions:
- Social protection and decent jobs are vital enablers of economic stability and sustainable development. Building on existing frameworks, such as the Addis Ababa Action Agenda (AAAA), integrated financing strategies to close the social protection and decent job gaps should be central in the global financing discussions including the FfD4 outcome document.
- To tackle global crises, drive inclusive economic transformations, eradicate poverty and address inequalities, there is a critical need for increased domestic resource mobilization, enhanced policy coherence, and strengthened multilateral collaboration.
- Through its three interlinked pillars, the Global Accelerator serves as a vehicle to support national priorities by combining financing and investment initiatives with appropriate policy measures on decent employment and social protection, that result in higher social returns and just transitions, thereby contributing to accelerated SDG implementation.
- Investments in infrastructure and sectors of the economy, combined with investments in social protection and employment policies and programs, can help countries tackle poverty, reduce inequality, overcome persistent informality, generate economic and fiscal returns, and facilitate just transitions to sustainable economies and societies.
- Leveraging innovative financing mechanisms is critical to scale up investments in social protection and decent jobs as proposed in several Integrated National Financing Frameworks (INFFs) and as implemented through the Global Accelerator. This can include fiscal reforms, reallocating government budgets including phasing out inefficient subsidies, performance-based budgeting, extending contributory social protection in tandem with the formalization of enterprises and employment, increasing the impact of PDB investments on the social SDGs, and issuing bonds linked to concrete results and impact in terms of decent job creation and extension of social protection.
- Initiatives like the Multi-Stakeholder Engagement to Implement the Global Accelerator (M-GA) bring the UN and World Bank closer together in joint country-level policy support and may help channel more financial resources to countries to help close the social protection and decent jobs deficits.
- PDBs play a key role in aligning financing with national priorities and in promoting more investments to support the social SDGs, notably in the context of the Finance in Common Summit (FICS) Coalition for Social Investments.
- Engaging workers’ and employers’ organizations is essential to designing inclusive policies that are based on a national consensus, are hence more sustainable, and leave no one behind.
- Commitments on increasing investments to extend social protection and to create decent jobs should turn into action through national ownership, innovative financing solutions, and inclusive partnerships.