Background

The COVID-19 pandemic had large and persistent consequences worldwide. The Latin America and the Caribbean region was severely affected, resulting in a prolonged economic and social crisis. Between 2020 and 2022, the region accounted for 27% of COVID-19 deaths despite having only 8.4% of the world's population[1]. This crisis had a cross-cutting impact on various dimensions of well-being, leading to a drop in child development indicators, an increase in mortality and an unprecedented drop in labour participation linked to a deepening care crisis, among other key areas. Between 2019 and 2020, poverty increased by 2.6 percentage points and extreme poverty by 1.9 percentage points[2]. Faced with a further increase in extreme poverty in 2021, ECLAC estimated a 27-year setback in this indicator in Latin America and a decade-long setback in social security coverage, with implications for the present and future social protection situation of people[3].

Despite the significant efforts implemented by countries in the region, the pandemic highlighted the limitations faced by social protection systems in containing the impacts of the crises. The lessons learned from the response to the pandemic show, as several previous analyses had identified, that these limitations are linked to the structural deficits and inequalities that these systems have in the effective and legal coverage, adequacy, and financial sustainability of key entitlements to protect the income and well-being of the population. These limitations also account for the various challenges that social protection systems face in terms of their design to confront new and multiple crises. Latin America and the Caribbean is facing a cascade of crises manifested in uncertainty in the face of economic, climatic, technological, geopolitical and other ongoing transformations, in addition to the dynamics of food and energy insecurity, rising costs of living, and deepening care crises and gender inequalities[4].

Social protection systems will have to cope with a risk structure that is being reconfigured and made more complex by the interaction and simultaneity of various changes and transformations that account for structural and emerging nodes of inclusive social development. These nodes include demographic, epidemiological and nutritional transitions, the climate crisis and the increase in disasters, changes in the world of work and technological transformation, as well as various forms of violence[5]. Social protection systems will be conditioned by these transformations. In this context, the urgency of advancing towards a new social contract that allows us to confront the challenges of the present and the future with solidarity and sustainability becomes clear. This social contract must make progress in identifying the levels of well-being that can be universally assured, deepening the thresholds required to contribute to the eradication of poverty and the reduction of inequalities in the face of the transformations underway, leaving no one behind in this process.

The strengthening of universal, comprehensive, sustainable and resilient systems is imperative in this route. Their consolidation is key to enable the development and expansion of human capacities adapted to a new scenario and the achievement of labour inclusion, with impacts on inclusive social development, productivity, economic development, and environmental sustainability. In this sense, social protection systems face a triple challenge: reversing the impacts of the pandemic, closing existing gaps and preparing for a more complex and transforming future in the field of social protection. Moving in this direction requires, on the one hand, identifying the contents and strategic policies that must be designed, implemented, and promoted in the countries of the region to strengthen social protection systems. On the other hand, it requires a fiscal and intergenerational pact that makes it possible to make the necessary commitments and investments in the present, taking advantage of the window of opportunity that still exists for shared well-being[6].

Learning from comparative experience with these objectives is essential in a world that must increasingly face global challenges within the framework of international cooperation and dialogue between different regions. With a view to transforming crises into opportunities for structural change, and in the framework of the discussions on the agenda for the future that will be taking place in 2024 and 2025, this seminar seeks to create a space for interregional dialogue and exchange to identify key milestones and strategic areas in the design of social protection policies to address the future of social protection.

Objective

In the framework of the ECLAC-BMZ/GIZ project "Recover Better: Overcoming the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic in Latin America and the Caribbean", the seminar aims to identify and highlight the advances and challenges in the global and regional reflection and in the efforts of the countries to strengthen social protection systems, in a context of cascading crisis. It is expected to be a space for exchange in the technical discussion in this field between actors from Latin America and the Caribbean, Europe and globally. Its purpose is to contribute to the identification of possible ways of addressing institutional challenges and the design of transformative social protection policies in the face of the various factors that will condition the future of social protection that may be systematised as a result of this event. In this context, one of the seminar's priorities is to reinforce awareness in the region of the urgency of strengthening universal, comprehensive, resilient and sustainable social protection systems to achieve a better recovery, following the crisis of the COVID-19 pandemic and the consequent crises that the region and the world have experienced. This seminar also seeks to close the project "Recover Better: Overcoming the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic in Latin America and the Caribbean" and to present the main reflections accumulated during its implementation.

[1] Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), Social Panorama of Latin America, 2021 (LC/PUB.2021/17- P), Santiago, 2022

[2] Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), Social Panorama of Latin America and the Caribbean, 2023 (LC/PUB.2023/18-P), Santiago, 2023.

[3] Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), Social Panorama of Latin America, 2021 (LC/PUB.2021/17- P), Santiago, 2022.

[4] Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), Social Panorama of Latin America and the Caribbean, 2023 (LC/PUB.2023/18-P), Santiago, 2023.

[5] Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), Nudos críticos del desarrollo social inclusivo en América

Latina y el Caribe: antecedentes para una agenda regional (LC/CDS.3/3), Santiago, 2019.

[6] Robles, C. and R. Holz (eds) (2023), "El futuro de la protección social ante la crisis social prolongada en América Latina: claves para avanzar hacia sistemas universales, integrales, sostenibles y resilientes", Serie Políticas Sociales N° 246 (LC/TS.2023/163), Santiago, Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC).