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Poverty Reduction Strategies and Decent Work. Valter Nebuloni ESD Programme, ITC-ILO Turin, 6 July 2007. The thread. Global goals (MDGs). National poverty reduction strategies. Decent work. Session topics. What are PRSs? Where do they fit? Progress on PRSs to date
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Poverty Reduction Strategies and Decent Work Valter Nebuloni ESD Programme, ITC-ILO Turin, 6 July 2007
The thread Global goals (MDGs) National poverty reduction strategies Decent work
Session topics • What are PRSs? Where do they fit? • Progress on PRSs to date • Integration of decent work into PRSs • ILO’s engagement with the PRS process
PRSs in the development context • Country strategies to address poverty • Key events: • WSSD, 1995 • First UN Decade for the Eradication of Poverty (1997-2006), proclaimed in 1995 • Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Initiative, 1996 • Millennium Declaration/MDGs, 2000 • Monterrey Consensus, 2002 (Finacing for Development) • Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative (MDRI), 2006
HIPC and MDRI • HIPC - Heavily Indebted Poor Countries Initiative: To ensure deep, broad and fast debt relief and thereby contribute toward growth, poverty reduction, and debt sustainability in the poorest, most heavily indebted countries. • MDRI - Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative: To provide additional support to HIPCs to reach the MDGs.
Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs) • Prepared by the member countries through a participatory process • Involving domestic stakeholders as well as external development partners • Describe the country's macroeconomic, structural and social policies and programs over a three year or longer horizon to promote broad-based growth and reduce poverty, as well as associated external financing needs and major sources of financing. • Updated every three years with annual progress reports
I-PRSPs, PRSPs • Interim PRSPs (I-PRSPs) summarize the current knowledge and analysis of a country's poverty situation, describe the existing poverty reduction strategy, and lay out the process for producing a fully developed PRSP in a participatory fashion. • I-PRSP(10 countries) Decision point (8 countries) PRSP Completion point (22 countries)
PRSPs – Key features • Country-driven, national ownership (public consultation) • Medium- to long term in perspective • Results- and partnership-oriented • Links to public expenditure • Links to development assistance • Prioritized public actions • Monitoring of poverty
Ownership (countries) Alignment (development partners and countries Harmonization (development partners) Development assistance - Harmonisation and alignment
MDGs and PRSs • MDGs = stipulate quantitative reductions in the various dimensions of human poverty by 2015 • Translating the MDGs into action requires national frameworks; targets must be tailored • PRSs = implementation vehicle to reach the MDGs
Q/A • To what extent are the main features of the PRS process reflected in your country? (slide 9) • What alignment issues do you consider most urgent? Why? (slide 10)
PRSPs - Overall lessons • PRS papers are not nice neat little documents • Producing PRS papers is taking longer than expected (averaging 26 months). • PRS papers are now implanted into the international development architecture as key tools for national planning and development assistance. • PRS papers are burdened with multiple and sometimes contradictory objectives • Public consultations are proving a challenge in PRS processes; it is not always clear how the dialogue influences policies and implementation.
PRSPs - Country level • Both service delivery and growth are vital to strategic approaches to poverty reduction and must be addressed in PRS papers. • Social-sector public spending is increasing, especially in health, education and rural development. • Sectoral ministries have often felt excluded, although they are increasingly feeling the need to engage. • Ministries of finance (MoF) must be engaged. Decisions tend to be more connected to public expenditure; this is vital. • Parliaments and elected officials are beginning to take a growing part in the process. • Organized labour should engage. This is a major challenge as often it has not happened. • Verbal recognition of the need for development-agency coordination is prevalent, but putting it into practice is proving tough. There has been minimal progress in removing agency flags.
PRSPs - Tensions • Accountability and monitoring. The challenge is to shift PRSs closer to national structures (such as parliaments) that are accountable to the public for public expenditure, away from being mainly accountability to development partners. • Everyone wants to engage with PRSs – all stakeholders want their interests included in the documents. Prioritization is however vital. • Inconsistency between the problem identification sections of PRS papers (poverty status chapters) and the proposed strategies to address them. • Most growth projections have proved over optimistic and required downward revision.
Q/A • What focus is needed in further effort on poverty reduction?
“Give me a fair chance at a decent job” – that is what women and men are demanding. Every policy-maker seeking to combat poverty should answer the people’s test: how will your policy advice improve the quantity and quality of jobs? This is one of the best steps we can take to eradicate poverty once and for all. Juán Somavia, ILO Director-General, 2004 …..
Working out of Poverty : the decent work agenda • Rights: people in poverty need voice, representation and participation • The principal route out of poverty is work. Make employment central to economic and social policies • Integrate socially excluded communities in the labour market, and overcome discrimination • Raise the productivity and incomes of poor people (support to the informal economy) • Poor people are unprotected people. Social protection for all • Social dialogue: build partnership and integration • Empower people – economically, socially and politically.
PRS cycle and DW Ensuring that the Decent Work objectives are reflected in the cycle
PRS cycle and DW - Analysis • Clear understanding of poverty and its determinants; PRSPs need to include a more thorough analysis of employment and other aspects of decent work • The social partners need to be more systematically integrated into the PRS process, from this early stage onwards
PRS cycle and DW - Design • PRSPs need to pay more attention on the impact of growth on poverty; choice of public interventions with a high poverty reduction potential • Entitlements and equity: improve the distribution of income and assets • Decent work contributions
PRS cycle and DW - Funding • National budget: pro-poor public investment • Donor countries must include in their funding priorities issues related to employment, social protection, rights, representation and dialogue.
PRS cycle and DW - Implementation • Constant dialogue with national/international stakeholders • Capacity building • Sound operational systems and simplified administrative procedures
PRS cycle an DW - Poverty monitoring • Poverty monitoring systems need to be strengthened, including their statistical capacity and MDG reporting. • Country ownership of indicators is key • DW indicators
Q/A • Given the existing development strategies and related institutional arrangements in your country, what are the most strategic points of influence to promote decent work?
ILO’s engagement - Indonesia • Actions: • Capacity bldg. for constituents • Technical contributions to PRS drafting process • Awareness raising • Results: • Final draft of PRS adopted a rights based approach including the right to employment • PRS integrated into the new five year national development plan
ILO’s engagement - Ghana • Actions: • GDWPP inputs into GPRS revision process (focus: improving productivity and competitiveness through DW) • Results: • Tripartite recommendations on productivity • A policy paper reflecting the views of workers and employers • Ministry of Manpower, Youth and Employment accessed HIPC funds to finance vocational training programmes
ILO’s engagement - Lessons learned and challenges for the future • There is evidence to suggest that the national ministries concerned and the donors who influence PRSPs are increasingly receptive to some aspects of the Decent Work Agenda. • It is essential to empower and build the capacities of the ministries of labour to add value to national policy dialogues on poverty reduction. • There will also be a need – as part of DWCP processes – for developing with constituents more country-specific advocacy strategies which reach out to a broad platform including academics, parliamentarians, donors and civil society.
…lessons and challenges (cont.) • In addition to identifying synergies between existing ILO activities and PRS processes, it is also beneficial to identify where the Decent Work Agenda can add value to particular sector-wide strategies and public expenditure frameworks. • The dividends on the ILO investment accrue in the medium run, in terms of orientation of policy and resources towards decent work goals.
