CO-CREATION WORKSHOP ON JOB CREATION AND SOCIAL PROTECTION IN RWANDA

Social protection as a key pillar of decent work is an important consideration for the sustainable creation of quality jobs. Social protection systems allow enterprises and workers to be more productive by helping to manage life cycle risks, access health care and have greater income security; they are investments with positive returns on the economy. By supporting a healthy, skilled workforce, social protection, including health protection, can enhance and maintain the productivity of workers. Social protection provides the resources and time that people need to develop skills, enhancing their employability and helping them to manage work and life transitions. Promoting decent employment creation with social protection reduces inequalities and the risk of social disruption by renewing the social contract between people and governments, building solidarity across society and between generations, and secures the resilience of workers and enterprises, communities, and people. The co-creation workshop on job creation and social protection was organized in the framework of Invest for Jobs – the Special Initiative “Decent Work for a Just Transition” – of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) within the partnership between the International Labour Organization (ILO) and the Deutsche Gesellschafts für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH. The International Training Centre of the International Labour Organization (ITCILO) implemented the workshop, which was structured to enable collaborative creation, involving participants in actively identifying and evaluating challenges, as well as potential solutions or prototypes, for expanding social protection coverage to employees and beyond. The activities combined the generation of knowledge with the exchange of international, regional, and national best practices related to decent work and social security. It focused particularly on the context in Rwanda and on strategies that have demonstrated effectiveness in promoting adherence to international social security standards and extending coverage. OBJECTIVES Through this training participants were be able to : - Identify the factors that contribute to enhancing the quality of existing jobs and analyse the role of comprehensive social protection in the Rwandan context; - Further evaluate the institutional and policy changes necessary to facilitate the social protection extension and adapted solutions implemented by employers, including with the involvement of social partners; - Increase awareness and knowledge of the obstacles and opportunities for enterprises to facilitate access to, implement and strengthen social protection system in Rwanda; - Explore methods to transform social protection measures into positive investment criteria and commitments for multinational and local enterprises; - Formulate strategies to increase the number of decent jobs, contribute to formalization, and support economic growth; - Examine the process of translating best international practices and social protection strategies into national actions, including methods to involve enterprises and workers in implementing these strategies within the Global Accelerator on Jobs and Social Protection for Just Transitions; - Build on the previously formulated measures, or prototypes, to complement, elaborate on and further distil concrete solutions to be piloted at the enterprise level in order to provide improved coverage to their workers, in compliance with national social security law as well as international social security standards. CONTENT - Participatory methodology: working in three work-streams for the co-creation process; - Practical outputs: discussions, case studies and exchanges on ideas, initiatives and approaches aimed at concluding the co-creation process with tangible outputs, solutions and prototypes to be tested in practice at the national, sector or enterprise level; - Continuous co-creation and exchange: post-training follow-up on the launch and realization of the created solutions, or prototypes; continuous online exchange via technical forums on eCampus to stay in touch with peers on practical and specific aspects of the co-creation content; - Continuous work with ILO and GIZ: identifying solutions, or prototypes, in need of subsequent support and follow-up on the realization. NUMBER OF HOURS: The Co-Creation Workshop on Job Creation and Social Protection in Rwanda took place in Kigali over a period of three days (18h).