HRC 53: Interactive dialogue with the Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty - 30 June 2023

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30-06-2023

Statements | OHCHR

HRC 53: Interactive dialogue with Olivier De Schutter, Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty - 30 June 2023

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Statement of Olivier De Schutter, Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights

Speaker: Olivier De Schutter, Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights

“Job guarantee” could address biggest employment challenges of our time: UN expert

GENEVA (30 JUNE 2023) – Job guarantee programmes – whereby the government guarantees a job to anyone willing and able to work – can protect workers from the biggest global employment challenges of our time, according to a new report by the UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, Olivier De Schutter.

“With miserable working conditions and low pay affecting the majority of the world’s workers, and disruptions and job losses in labour markets we can expect to see from the rise of AI, it is clear that the world of work needs an urgent rethink,” De Schutter said ahead of his presentation of his report to the 53^rdSession of the UN Human Rights Council.

“It is no longer enough for governments to merely try to create the right conditions for job growth,” the UN expert said. “Instead, they should guarantee a secure and socially useful job at a living wage for anyone who wants one. Properly understood, this is what the right to work is truly about.”

The International Labour Organisation puts the global jobs gap at 473 million people: 205 million unemployed and 268 million who would like to work but are not actively looking due to circumstances beyond their control such as a lack of childcare. Around two billion people, 60% of the world’s workforce, work in the informal economy, often in extremely low-paid, insecure jobs with little access to employment rights.

“For too long exploitative employers have had the upper hand, knowing workers will choose poorly-paid and insecure work over destitution,” the Special Rapporteur said. “A job guarantee would turn the tables, with workers being able to fall back on government jobs that offer decent conditions and wages.”

While job guarantee programmes in the past have tended to create jobs in infrastructure projects such as building roads or dams, De Schutter’s report highlights the alarming workforce gaps in the care, education and health sectors they could fill.

“The global employment paradox is that while there are too few decent jobs, there is certainly no shortage of work to be done,” De Schutter said. “Spurred largely by our obsession with economic growth at all costs, jobs in the care, education and health sectors are woefully undersupplied by the market despite being of immense value to society – no doubt because they don’t churn out obscene profits.”

“A job guarantee could fill the roles we so desperately need, but that the private sector has no financial incentive to provide,” the expert said.

“A job guarantee scheme should be strictly voluntary and sit alongside, not replace, social protection, as a permanent feature of the labour market,” said De Schutter.

“If designed in this way, it would play a hugely important role in wiping out unemployment, ending the race to the bottom on working conditions, and providing the income security and social inclusion millions urgently need to break free from poverty,” he said.

Read the report.

Mr. Olivier De Schutter (Belgium) has been the Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights since May 2020. He was appointed by the UN Human Rights Council and is part of the Special Procedures, the general name of the Council's independent fact-finding and monitoring mechanisms that address either specific country situations or thematic issues in all parts of the world. Special Procedures experts work on a voluntary basis; they are not UN staff and do not receive a salary for their work. They are independent from any government or organisation and serve in their individual capacity.

For more information and media requests, please contact Sakshi Rai (+41 22 917 4258 / sakshi.rai@un.org).

For media enquiries regarding other UN independent experts, please contact Maya Derouaz (maya.derouaz@un.org) and Dharisha Indraguptha (dharisha.indraguptha@un.org).

Follow the Special Rapporteur: @srpoverty

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REPORT: https://undocs.org/Home/Mobile?FinalSymbol=A%2FHRC%2F53%2F33&Language=E&DeviceType=Desktop&LangRequested=False

Teleprompter

Thank you, Mr.

President, Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, it is with great pleasure at the time addressing the Human Rights Council today.

Since last year's interactive dialogue, I've presented to the General Assembly a report on the prohibition of discrimination on grounds of poverty.

That report aimed to reflect the lived experience of people in poverty who face discrimination and ***** in their daily lives simply because they are poor.

What we call poverty ISM a scourge which we should take no less seriously than racism, sexism or homophobia, which is also a major factor perpetuating poverty in the number of FORA.

I have also continued to advocate for increased solidarity towards low income countries in support of the establishment of social protection flaws, in line with my June 2021 report presented before this Council on a Global Fund for Social Protection.

The scenario I'm now exploring, and that is gaining ground, is a debt for social protection scenario in which debt forgiveness and restructuring would be made conditional upon investing in social protection.

The need to increase financial support to developing countries seeking to establish social protection floors is broadly recognised.

But I need your support to ensure we build on the resolution adopted in June 2021 by the International Labour Conference and on the Our Common Agenda reports presented in September 2021 by the Secretary General, both of which refer to the need to establish the Global Fund for Social Protection.

This should be seen as part of a broader project towards a Global accelerator for jobs and social protection presented by the Secretary General and the ILO Director General in September 2021.

Since the last interactive dialogue with the United Council, the cost of living crisis has continued to rise, making recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic and it's induced economic crisis very difficult for low income households.

The items whose prices have increased the most, food and energy, are also the items that represent the largest part in the budgets of these low income households.

Moreover, many households are in debt, and the reactions of central banks to inflation, which is to raise interest rates, it will worsen the situation of these heavily indebted households.

Finally, as a result of this rise in interest rates, companies will invest less and layoffs may follow.

In other terms, the current context is 1, in which poverty is rapidly increasing with widening inequalities, despite the apparent jobs recovery since the pandemic.

Against such a background, it is, in my view, imperative that we use all the tools at our disposal to combat poverty and strengthen the resilience against economic shocks, both of households and of countries.

This is why I decided to focus my thematic report to this Council on the idea of a job guarantee.

In this report, I encourage all actors, including governments and human rights mechanisms, to take seriously the right to work as a human right.

The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the ILO employment Policy Convention of 1964 convention #122 recognise the right to work, but they do so imposing on governments little more than an obligation of means, basically to do what they can to create jobs.

Article 6 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Culture Rights refers to the duty of governance to take steps to achieve full and productive employment.

They showed, according to the ILO convention #122 adopt an active policy designed to promote full, productive and freely chosen employment.

I argue in this report that the right to work can become an enforceable human rights guaranteeing to any adult able and willing to work a right to paid public employment.

This is the idea of a job guarantee which obliges governments to act as employers of last resort.

Today, the most extraordinary and large scale job guarantee programmes are being led by countries in the global S.

The largest, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act in India directly benefited 76,000,000 households in 2020-2021.

In South Africa, the expanded Public Works programme created a million job opportunities in 2021-2022.

Smaller schemes are up and running in the global N, including Terry Trois 0 Schomer Lingerie in France, which targets long term unemployed in some 60 French municipalities, matching them with jobs that fulfil local needs.

Other pilot programmes are running in Austria and in Belgium.

Providing employment is about more than just ensuring economic security.

Decent work has been proven to support social exclusion, social inclusion, sorry building self esteem, and it has important mental and physical health benefits.

Unemployed people are about twice as likely to report psychological problems as those who are in work, suggesting that unemployment is not just correlated with distress but actually causes it.

A job guarantee can also help address the global employment employment paradox that sees persistent unemployment and underemployment coexisting with unsatisfied social needs.

While the IRO expects global unemployment to fall below pre pandemic levels in 2023 to 191 million people unemployed, corresponding to 5.3% of the working population, this recovery is not shared across all regions.

Unemployment is projected to be 11% in North Africa, with a similar picture in Arab and sub-saharan African countries.

And while in some countries official employment unemployment rates are falling, this is not a reason to ignore ongoing problems.

Indeed, official unemployed unemployment figures do not account for the countless people who disappear from employment unemployment statistics because of circumstances outside of their control, such as lack of childcare, which has meant having to give up the search for a job.

Moreover, an additional 470 million people will be looking for work in developing countries by the year 2035.

There are simply not enough jobs to go around yet.

And here is the paradox.

There's certainly no shortage of work to be done.

The greening of the economy and the growing care economy.

Care to dependent persons Education Healthcare will require substantial workforces.

According to the ILO, the health, education and care capacity needed to fulfil the Sustainable Development Goals in some 45 countries, representing 60% of the global population, will require 117 additional 117 million additional jobs.

These are areas of the economy that are undersupplied by the market, no doubt because they are not the source of massive profits, yet they are of huge value to society.

What jobs could be more important than those that care for others and steer us out of the climate disaster?

Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, in closing, I would like to thank the governments of Kyrgyzstan, of Bangladesh and of Ecuador for their engagement with the Human Rights Council.

I visited Kyrgyzstan from 23rd of May to 3rd of June and I was in Bangladesh from 16th to 19th of May of this year.

I also express my gratitude to the Government of Ecuador for hosting a visit to this year from 28th of August to 8th of September, despite the challenging political times in which the country which the country is experiencing.

These countries deserve our collective gratitude for their openness and for the collaborative spirit in which they engage in human rights multilateralism.

The report on Kyrgyzstan is part of the documents presented to this session, and I look forward to the continued dialogue with the Government of Kyrgyzstan In the future, I intend to put more emphasis on the follow up to the recommendations identified during country visits.

In that regard, I would like to thank very warmly the European Union and Nepal for the detailed responses they provided concerning the priorities identified following my visits to the EU and to Nepal respectively, in January and in December 2021, and I look forward to receiving similar responses from Lebanon and Kyrgyzstan in the near future.

I will regularly provide updates on such follow up on the website of the Mandate Excellencies.

I look forward to our interactive dialogue, the dialogue on the report I'm presenting today on the idea of a job guarantee and and how this idea can contribute to the fight against poverty.

I believe there are strong arguments in favour of introducing such such job guarantee schemes with great humidity.

I hope to contribute with such a report to expanding our toolbox against poverty.

Thank you.

I look forward to our dialogue.