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Only the Beginning:

Asian Dialogue on Social Protection for Informal Workers

WIEGO (Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing) and HomeNet Thailand organized a regional dialogue on Social Protection for Workers in the Informal Economy May 5-7 at A Prime Rose Garden Resort near Bangkok

Sponsored by the Ford Foundation, the dialogue brought together about 50 participants, consisting of a mix of members of organizations of informal workers, trade unions, policy makers, academics and researchers from eight countries in Southeast and South Asia, including representatives from Homenet Philippines and Homenet Indonesia.

The dialogue program was designed to provide participants with the opportunity to:

1) understand more about the nature of the informal economy and the process of informalization in different countries;
2) to learn about the social protection priorities of informal workers, how similar and how different they may be across countries;
3) to learn from successful (as well as not-so-successful) social protection schemes in different countries; and
4) to identify promising points of entry for policy intervention in the region.

The dialogue featured brief country presentations on informal work; case studies on informal garments workers in Thailand, SEWA’s child care and social insurance for working women in India, and social protection for infor-mal workers in China. Health insurance models such as the 30 baht scheme in Thailand and the ORT Health Plus Scheme in the Philippines were also discussed.

There were animated workshops on “organizing around social protection – the contribution of different partners,” and on “practical actions in building policy research networks as well
as organizations.”

After the dialogue, representatives from Homenet Thailand, Philippines, Indonesia , and South Asia stayed behind to hold a two-day meeting on the progress of the two-year Ford-funded action research on extending social protection to homebased workers, a collaborative effort of Homenet Southeast Asia and Homenet South Asia. The survey phase involving 1000 respondents each in Thailand and the Philippines had been completed and the initial results were discussed. Case studies and life stories are in the process of being collected . Target period for completion and research sharing at the subregional was April 2005, and at the regional one, May 2005.