Jason Szenes via Creative Commons
U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres
As part of the opening of the seventy-sixth session of the General Assembly of the United Nations, several high-level U.N. officials are renewing calls for a new social contract that includes a major expansion of social rights.
Over the past month, U.N. officials have urged member governments to expand social protections such as income support, child benefits, social pensions, unemployment insurance, parental leave benefits, and universal health care.
Government leaders may have felt compelled to act during the early stages of the pandemic, but few of the world’s most powerful leaders now seem interested in creating stronger social protections and fairer global governance.
“I call for a New Social Contract with human rights at the core,” U.N. human rights chief Michelle Bachelet tweeted earlier this month. “That includes the rights to social protection, health, education, housing, water & sanitation, and the right to live free from discrimination.”
Since the start of the pandemic, U.N. officials have been making a major push for transformational change to avert a social and economic crisis. In July 2020, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres called for the creation of a “New Social Contract and a New Global Deal.”
Fearing that the pandemic was leading the world toward a bleak future where a privileged elite continue living in luxury while everyone else struggles to survive, Guterres viewed these protections as the best means of reducing growing inequality and averting social collapse.
“A changing world requires a new generation of social protection policies with new safety nets including Universal Health Coverage and the possibility of a Universal Basic Income,” Guterres said.
By that time, many world leaders had already begun implementing emergency measures to help ease the devastating economic impacts of the pandemic. Throughout 2020, just about every country took some sort of action. The United States, for example, provided three rounds of direct payments to eligible citizens that totaled $3,200 per person.
A recent report by the International Labour Organization estimates that more than 1,600 social protection measures were implemented worldwide. As Guy Ryder, the organization’s director, noted in the report, “The pandemic response generated the largest mobilization of social protection measures ever seen.”
While these emergency measures mitigated the worst economic effects of the pandemic for many people, their implementation has been uneven. Higher-income countries—such as the United States—used existing systems to strengthen existing programs and create new ones. Lower-income countries, meanwhile, struggled to implement emergency measures.
“In many countries, social protection measures, including income support, have been temporary or ad-hoc in nature, and now risk being rolled-back despite their positive impact on poverty mitigation,” warned a recent policy brief by U.N. Secretary-General Guterres.
The limited type of emergency responses that Guterres described are one reason why, as research from the International Labour Organization indicates, an estimated 4.1 billion people still lack any of the basic protections of a social safety net.
The inadequate global response to the pandemic has worsened global economic inequality. While the world’s billionaires saw their wealth increase by an estimated $3.9 trillion in 2020, an estimated 100 million people fell into poverty, reversing a trend of global poverty reduction that had lasted for more than two decades.
Several recent reports provide recommendations for how the world can address these growing inequities. Guterres’s policy brief, for example, argues for the implementation of social protection floors, particularly those concerning health care and income security. These could include pensions, unemployment insurance, universal child care benefits, and free access to health care.
“The policy window for embarking on . . . robust social protection systems will not remain open indefinitely,” Guterres writes. “Governments must seize upon the momentum created by the current crisis to make rapid progress towards universal social protection systems while preparing themselves for present and future challenges.”
It remains unclear whether governments will follow the latest U.N. guidance. Government leaders may have felt compelled to act during the early stages of the pandemic, but few of the world’s most powerful leaders now seem interested in creating stronger social protections and fairer global governance.
In the United States, President Joe Biden has remained silent on the U.N. push for a new social contract, even as members of his own political party are trying to expand the social safety net.
U.N. experts say that governments are unlikely to act without strong pressure from social movements, which historically have played a central role in pushing governments into expanding their social safety nets.
“We need to always bear in mind the key importance of social movements in all of this,” former U.N. special rapporteur Philip Alston remarked at a panel discussion last month. “The labor movement, broader environmental movement, and other social groups are the ones that will really bring government support for social protection.”
In the meantime, multiple crises continue to push the globe in a dangerous direction. The world faces several major threats, including the coronavirus pandemic, global warming, nuclear proliferation, and a declining trust in government.
Guterres believes that the world has reached a tipping point that could lead to a breakthrough or a breakdown. “It’s time to ring the alarm bell,” Guterres said in an interview last month. “We are on the verge of a precipice, and we are moving in the wrong direction.”