The first Social Protection Week in Malawi was organised
Outcome achieved
The Malawi Government through Ministry of Finance, Economic Planning and Development organized the first ever Social Protection week in June 2018 aimed at creating awareness on social protection. The social protection week was attended by 216 participants among them government officials, social partners, development partners, civil society, media and students. The social protection week increased knowledge and understanding of social protection among key stakeholders. The second social protection week to be held in October 2019 is aimed at improving coordination and financing of social protection programmes in the country.
ILO's contribution to the outcome
With support from the project financed by the Government of Ireland, the ILO increased constituents’ knowledge and understanding of social protection concepts through a series of activities held during the Social Protection Week (June, 2018) including; orientation of key stakeholders through trainings and workshops targeted at Government and social partners and covered 30 representatives from civil society Organization, 16 media houses. In addition, ILO facilitated the discussion of four research papers with attendance of 30 people.
Gender equality & non-discrimination
The ILO is actively promoting gender equality in its training activities, by advocating for equitable participation of women in trainings and by mainstreaming gender issues and non-discrimination in its contents. TRANSFORM sensitization meetings advocate for the participation of women in trainings and the inclusion of partners at district level engaged directly with inclusion initiatives.
International Labour Standard
TRANSFORM trainings promote rights based social protection, with direct reference and content to inform participants on Recommendation 202 (2012) on the Social Protection Floors. Furthermore, in the awareness and training activities related to the Universal Social Pensions, the ILO is promoting the principles of universality, equality and rights based social protection.
Social dialogue
The 2018 Social Protection Week proved to be a remarkable catalyst for dialogue, bringing together government, development partners, academia, and civil society to discuss the advance of social protection in Malawi. The TRANSFORM package has dialogue as one of its principles. This was further amplified by close consultations between partners and government to ensure the relevance of the programme to Malawi, but even more with the recipients of the trainings, through sensitization and follow-up meetings with the selected Districts.