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Social security
Policy dialogue, advisory services, financial support
Germany, together with its partner countries, has been actively promoting social security for many years. Germany is working actively in some 30 countries to strengthen social security systems. In 2007 commitments for German activities in this area amounted to some 65 million euros.
Promotion takes place within wide-ranging programmes in the priority areas of health, sustainable economic development, and democracy, civil society and public administration.
The German engagement in this field is set to expand still further in the years ahead. Social security has already been identified as a cross-cutting theme in the BMZ’s new Asia strategy paper. A sector strategy paper will be drawn up by 2009.
Bilateral development cooperation’s approach to promoting social security principally involves policy dialogue, advisory services delivered by experts, training for local experts and financial inputs. A focus of the BMZ’s engagement is currently the provision of advice on social and community-based health insurance schemes in sub-Saharan Africa. In addition, social development and basic insurance funds are being promoted in Latin America, as are micro-insurance projects in Asia. Preparations are currently under way to extend German support in the field of basic insurance and to other areas of risk insurance such as provision for old age, accidents or harvest losses.
Involving civil society
In cooperation with its partner countries, Germany takes the position that it is the core task of every state to ensure that the population has adequate social protection. At the same time, no state should intervene except when private and individual security systems designed to ensure the minimum subsistence level have failed. The task of the state is, above all, to create suitable frameworks to attenuate basic social, economic and ecological risks. The state should also create sufficient scope for private initiatives. Participation and direct responsibility on the part of civil society are important principles when it comes to designing a decentrally structured social security system.
Close cooperation with other donors
Over and above bilateral cooperation, Germany also supports the development of social security systems in international forums such as the International Labour Organization (ILO), the OECD, the World Health Organization (WHO), the EU and the World Bank.
The German government is particularly active in its support of the Providing for Health Initiative (P4H), which was expressly welcomed at the Heiligendamm G8 Summit during the German G8 presidency. Together with France, Norway, WHO, ILO and the World Bank, Germany is assisting its partner countries in their endeavours to develop the area of social security within health systems and place its funding on a sustainable footing. The aim is to prevent impoverishment resulting from health-related expenditure and to create health services that are accessible to all, especially the poor.
