United Nations published this video item, entitled “Jobs and Social Protection for Poverty Eradication – Press Conference (28 September 2021)” – below is their description.
Following the announcement of the creation of a new Global Accelerator on Jobs and Social Protection for a Just Transition, which aims to create at least 400 million jobs by 2030, the Executive Secretary of the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), Alicia Bárcena today (28 Sep) said, “there is growing inequalities and asymmetries between the developed and developing countries in terms of vaccines, of wealth, of financing, and we are confronting a divergent recovery” from the COVID 19 pandemic.
Speaking to reporters following the High-Level Meeting on Jobs and Social Protection for Poverty Eradication, that gathered, virtually, world leaders, heads of major international organizations, finance institutions, civil society, private sector and academia, Bárcena said, “the idea is to create 400 million jobs. That’s what we are looking for. And to extend social protection coverage at least to 4 billion people. And we are talking about doing this by 2030 by the way.”
The aim of the Accelerator is to create at least 400 million jobs by 2030, primarily in the green and care economies, and extend social protection floors by 2025 to 50 percent of people currently not covered.
Also briefing reporters, Guy Ryder, Director-General of the International Labour Organization (ILO), said, “the social costs, the human costs let me say, of this pandemic have been immensely magnified by the fact that the majority of the global population today is not covered by social protection of any type whatsoever. That applies to 53 percent of our fellow human beings. You know, and if we are talking seriously about resilience, building back better, that is a status quo and a reality that simply cannot be allowed to continue.”
Ryder said, “what we are responding to here is something that should not go unnoticed in the context of this pandemic. This health emergency has generated the biggest economic and social crises, and I would say development crisis, in the memory of any of us. The impact in economic and social terms has been four times more severe than what we lived through in the great financial meltdown of 2008-2009.”
Bárcena said, “Latin America and the Caribbean has been the developing countries most hardly hit by the pandemic, with 8.4 percent of the world population and 32.2 percent of deaths. That’s the amount of the problem. And we have been the largest contraction in terms of jobs. Has been in our region and has been terrible. And we have an unemployment of 9 percent, and the world’s average is 3.5 percent. So, it’s the sharpest job losses in the world.”
Latin America and the Caribbean is the most indebted region in the developing world, with the highest debt service, representing 59 percent of its exports of goods and services.
United Nations YouTube Channel
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