Meeting with the UN Rapporteur Olivier De Schutter

A delegation of INSP!R Nepal met with the visiting UN Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty, M Olivier De Schuttter on the 30th of November.  For more details on his official visit, click here.

Since M De Schutter is a strong supporter of social protection, this being one of the four priorities during this visit, we felt this would be an excellent opportunity to transmit our recommendations from civil society and trade unions, so these can be included in his official report to the Nepali government.

Based on the social charter we drafted and published last year, we updated our recommendations through ITUC-NAC and SPCSN, which are compiled here in two documents on non-contributory and contributory SP here.

Over 100 stakeholders provided comments and feedback. The delegation was primarily composed out of SPCSN and the trade unions. M De Schutter listened carefully to our views and analysis related to the social protection in Nepal. Discussion topics included:

• Progress by the Nepali government in addressing key gaps in the social protection system, including access constraints, child poverty, informal workers, and data and evaluation gaps;
• Main obstacles to implement universal social protection in the context of the federalization of the country, including legal challenges brought to social insurance and devolution of social protection to lower levels of government;
• Fiscal space needed to make social protection universal;
• Main recommendations to government.

Much of our input can be found in the preliminary report of the UN Rapporteur released on the 9th of December here (social protection from page 13 onward). An extract: "The Government should ensure its skills and training programs reach the poorest families. While public works programs such as the Prime Minister’s Employment Program have considerable potential, in practice the program has yet to deliver on its promise of providing 100 days of work per person per year.

In the country, 80 percent of workers are informal, which exposes them to higher rates of abuse, largely because the Government lacks the ability to enforce minimum wage legislation in the informal sector. Although informal workers should also contribute to and benefit from the Social Security Fund, there is currently no plan to include them in the program.”

Local level Help desk

The Social Protection Civil Society Network (SPCSN) in coordination with our local partner Protection Nepal organized a help desk on social protection for two days in southern Nepal Kalaiya district. The objective of this helpdesk during the social protection week was to facilitate service delivery at the local level for the protection, upliftment and ensuring the rights of senior citizens, single women, people with disabilities, children, marginalized, poor and disadvantaged groups under social protection. An estimated 135 local community members were provided assistance regarding the legal provisions for social protection services.

Increasing awareness: articles published on social protection
As part of the National Social Protection week in Nepal, SPCSN ensured the publication in the national newspaper The Rising Nepal on 3 December 2021 of an article dealing with Social Protection in Nepal: Current Status & Major Concerns, written by Sandhya Thapa. The full article can be accessed here.

Other articles can be found here.