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Featuring the Asian Roundtable on Social Protection (AROSP) Network

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The COVID-19 pandemic did not only challenge the way of life and work of the people around the world, but it also test the resiliency of many social organizations and trade unions. Many movements and organizations all over the world maximized their resources to support their communities and recipients, even while they tussle for their continued existence. The same with AROSP, many planned activities in the previous years were either postponed or suspended.

 

It was only in 2023 when AROSP started itself to put back on track again focusing on its delayed plan of actions. The network expansion is always the top priority agenda. It encourages its active network members to invite new members to join AROSP. To this date, it has 51 members and associates from 14 countries with 34 country organizations as members, 10 national-level individual associates, and 7 regional/ international-level organizations as members and associates.

Among members, some are NGOs, others are trade unions or associations, and others are networks, scholars, or activists. Several of them organize and/or support specific groups of workers, including those within the garment, construction, plantation, street vending, and homebased, platform, and entertainment sectors as well as women workers as a group. Some members focus on health, gender, culture, or labor rights, but all share a focus on social protection.

The next AROSP biennial meeting this year 2024, is a good opportunity for the network to take up the issue of governance and carry out elections. Below are the current members of AROSP.


Sector of Action of the Network and of various member organizations

1.     Social Protection Campaign

- Universal Social Protection for All, Transformative social protection, and Gender responsive Social Protection

- Just Transition for Adaptive Social Protection, Social Protection Floors, or Universal Basic income.

- Social protection or social security for specific groups, such as casual workers, informal workers, street vendors, migrant workers, young people, the urban poor, teachers, or children.

- Maternity Protection including Childcare, Maternity Leave Benefits, Unemployment Protection, Universal Pension and Old Age Benefits, Universal Child Allowance, Social Protection for Young People, Active Aging for Social Protection, Pension Funds for Informal Workers, or Retirement Protection for Unpaid Family Care Workers.

 

2.     Health Care and Public Services

- General health protection, the expansion of healthcare for family members of workers, providing better health services for all citizens, primary healthcare, air pollution and healthcare in urban areas, occupational health, health and safety of workers, gender-sensitive public services, public childcare, free childcare and free education for working people, general education and the provision of free educational facilities for all, and strengthening existing schemes for better service and better quality

 

3.     Labor Rights/ Decent Work

- Labor union rights, migrant workers’ rights and safe migration, ethnic minority workers’ rights, women workers’ rights, gender justice and prevention and response to gender-based violence, preventing violence against workers, labor issues of the informal sector, and the issue of forced labor.

- Organizing and campaigning for freedom of association.

- Topic on wage issue, such as: wage increases for workers, the living wage and implementing a living wage for all workers, occupational health, workplace accidents, and a safe working environment, compensation to accident victims and workers compensation in general, healthcare and accident funds, severance pay for workers faced with factory closure, or superannuation including gratuity.

- Job creation, microcredit for the urban poor, the solidarity economy, and decent employment, employment for migrants and the urban poor, or food security.

 

4.     Capacity Building

- awareness-raising among workers and skills training, awarenessraising activities to spread knowledge about social protection (especially the voluntary social security laws and healthcare social security for the general public), designing popular education curricula to disseminate the concept of universal, transformative social protection, especially for adult learners, capacity building for staff on social protection issues, leadership capacity building for women, supporting national networks on social protection, nurturing new generation of social protection activists, and strengthening the network’ gender mainstreaming.

 

5.     Research, Advocacy, Campaigning and Networking

- Research and engagement in strategic planning on social protection, disseminate reference information on the problems and needs of informal workers in order to improve social protection policy, or study existing social protection for informal workers.

- Analysis of sustainable financing for social protection, analysis of social protection laws, or analysis of the links between the violation of the right to social protection and of children’s rights.

- Campaigns for universal social protection at the national level responding to public need and covering informal workers and the other vulnerable groups.

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