Two years after it was signed in August 2014, SATUCC reports that no Member State has ratified the SADC Employment and Labour Protocol as of June 2016. The SADC Employment & Labour Protocol was developed to serve as legal framework for the cooperation of SADC Member States on matters concerning employment and labour in line with Article 22 of the SADC Treaty which provides as follows: “Member States shall conclude protocols as may be necessary in each area of cooperation, which shall spell out the objectives and scope of, and institutional mechanisms for cooperation and integration”. This Protocol was then finally endorsed by nine Member States during the SADC Heads of States Summit held in Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe in August of 2014. These are: DRC, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Seychelles, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe. However, for this Protocol to enter into force, it is required that at least 10 Member States representing two-thirds ratify it. Since then, no single Member State has ratified the Protocol. It is against this that the SADC Ministers of Labour and Social Partners during their meeting on 12th May 2016, directed the SADC Secretariat with support of the ILO to conduct a study to establish the problems and challenges underlying the non-ratification of the Protocol and further explore ways how to promote its ratification by Member States. SATUCC is conducting a regional campaign on the ratification and implementation of the SADC Employment and Labour Protocol.
Values, Policies and Rights
In May 2016, the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Ministers of Labour and Social Partners at their meeting in Gaborone, Botswana, considered and approved two regional policy frameworks pertaining to employment and labour as part of the milestones for the SADC Regional Decent Work Programme (2013-2019). These are: SADC Youth Employment Promotion Policy Framework and the Cross boarder Portability of Accrued Social Security Benefits Policy Framework. The SADC Youth Employment Promotion Policy Framework guides SADC Member States on a harmonised, integrated and coherent approach to realising decent, secure and sustainable employment and entrepreneurship for the youth in the SADC region. The SADC Cross boarder Portability of Accrued Social Security Benefits Policy Framework responds to the fact that non-citizens are quite often discriminated against when it comes to access to social security. Portability of social security benefits is limited because SADC countries do not have a common regional policy framework on the matter despite that a few countries had already concluded bilateral labour and social security agreements. The main aim of the SADC Cross boarder Portability of Accrued Social Security Benefits Policy Framework is thus to provide mechanisms to enable workers moving within the SADC region to keep the social security benefits which they might have acquired under the legislation of one Member State or to enjoy corresponding rights under the legislation of the other Member State.
This study determined whether laws and regulations in Botswana, South Africa and Zambia – three countries with a high tuberculosis and HIV infection burden – address elements of the World Health Organisation (WHO) policy on tuberculosis infection control. An online desk review of laws and regulations that address six selected elements of the WHO policy on tuberculosis infection control in the three countries was conducted in November 2015 using publicly available domestic legal databases. The six elements covered: (i) national policy and legal framework; (ii) health facility design, construction and use; (iii) tuberculosis disease surveillance among health workers; (iv) patients’ and health workers’ rights; (v) monitoring of infection control measures; and (vi) relevant research. The six elements were found to be adequately addressed in the three countries’ laws and regulations. In all three, tuberculosis case-reporting is required, as is tuberculosis surveillance among health workers. Each country’s legal and regulatory framework also addresses the need to respect individuals’ rights and privacy while safeguarding public health. These laws and regulations create a strong foundation for tuberculosis infection control. Although the legal and regulatory frameworks thoroughly address tuberculosis infection control, their dissemination, implementation and enforcement were not assessed, nor was their impact on public health. The authors argue that future research should assess the implementation and public health impact of these laws and regulations.
This study examines health’s evolving location in the first-phase of the next iteration of global development goal negotiation for the post-2015 era, through the synchronous perspectives of representatives of key multilateral and related organizations. As part of the Go4Health Project, in-depth interviews were conducted in mid-2013 with 57 professionals working on health and the post-2015 agenda within multilaterals and related agencies. Using discourse analysis, this article reports the results and analysis of a Universal Health Coverage (UHC) theme: contextualizing UHC’s positioning within the post-2015 agenda-setting process immediately after the Global Thematic Consultation on Health and High-Level Panel of Eminent Persons on the Post-2015 Development Agenda (High-Level Panel) released their post-2015 health and development goal aspirations in April and May 2013, respectively. Although more participants support the High-Level Panel’s May 2013 report’s proposal—‘Ensure Healthy Lives’—as the next umbrella health goal, they nevertheless still emphasize the need for UHC to achieve this and thus be incorporated as part of its trajectory. The final post-2015 SDG framework for UN General Assembly endorsement in September 2015 confirmed UHC’s continued distillation in negotiations, as UHC ultimately became one of a litany of targets within the proposed global health goal.
This paper provides a theoretical and political critique of how the concept of resilience has been applied to places. It is based upon three main points. First, the ecological concept of resilience is conservative when applied to social relations. Second, resilience is externally defined by state agencies and expert knowledge. Third, a concern with the resilience of places is misplaced in terms of spatial scale, since the processes which shape resilience operate primarily at the scale of capitalist social relations. The authors argue that resilience is fundamentally about how best to maintain the functioning of an existing system in the face of externally derived disturbance. Both the ontological nature of ‘the system’ and its normative desirability escape critical scrutiny. As a result, the existence of social divisions and inequalities tends to be glossed over when
resilience thinking is extended to society. Ecological models of resilience are thus argued to be fundamentally
anti-political, viewing adaptation to change in terms of decentralized actors, systems and relationships and failing to accommodate the critical role of the state and politics. In place of resilience, the authors offer the concept of resourcefulness as an alternative approach for community groups to foster.
A judgment handed down in May 2016 in the South Gauteng High Court in the case of Bongani Nkala and 68 Others v Harmony Gold Mining Company Ltd and 31 Others is reported an important step toward providing just compensation for the many thousands of miners who contracted silicosis or tuberculosis on South Africa’s gold mines. The court certified two classes. The first and larger is gold miners and former gold miners who have contracted silicosis and the second is those who have contracted TB. The class requires that a person has worked underground in the mines for at least two years since 1965 and contracted either disease. The lawsuit, unless settled, will now proceed into trials in which common issues relevant to all class members will be determined. The court confirmed that for mineworkers, “it is class action or no action at all. Class action is the only realistic option open to mineworkers and their dependents. It is the only way they would be able to realise their constitutional right of access to court bearing in mind that they are poor, lack the sophistication to litigate individually, have no access to legal representatives and are continually battling the effects of two extremely debilitating diseases.” [para 100] The judgment is also important for all vulnerable people in South Africa. A class action is a powerful mechanism by which poor or vulnerable people can access justice. It is however not commonly used in South Africa. This judgment is argued to help those who do not have resources on their own to pool efforts in order to access justice. The authors argue that it recalibrates the balance of power to give the poor a better chance of holding the powerful to account.
Member States of the African Union endorsed in 2015 the milestones for the establishment of a single medicines regulatory agency in Africa within the context of the African Medicines Regulatory Harmonization programme. Concerned that the proliferation of Substandard/Spurious/Falsified/Falsely- labelled/Counterfeit medical products on the continent poses a major public health threat and noting that regulatory systems of many African countries remain inadequate the states called for legislation relating to medical products through Regional Economic Communities and the African Union to ensure access to medical products that are safe, efficacious, and of assured quality to the African population. They called for the adoption and domestication of a model law on medical products regulation in Africa for the creation of a harmonized regulatory environment on the continent; and adopted the African Union Model Law on Medical Products Regulation.
The population of older people throughout the world is increasing rapidly, with Africa projected to have about 210 million older people by 2050. In addition to the usual physical, mental and physiological changes associated with ageing, old people in Africa are argued to be particularly disadvantaged due to lack of social security for everyday social and economic needs. This policy framework binds all AU member countries to develop policies on ageing and is being used as a guide in the formulation of national policies to improve the lives of the continent’s older people. The authors argue that advocacy efforts need improve the adaptation and domestication of the policy and encourage appropriate consultations with older people in these processes, including to ensure the allocation of resources for the implementation of commitments. Notably, the International Plan of Action on Ageing agreed upon in Madrid during the Second World Assembly on Ageing in April 2002, borrowed significantly from the AU Policy Framework.
UNRISD director Paul Ladd shares his reflections on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). He argues that social development means keeping people at the centre, and recognising the contributions that can be made by all people, regardless of gender, age, race, ethnicity, physical ability, sexuality or any other characteristic. Enhancing well-being means that processes, relationships and institutions need to be transformed into ones that are based on equity and justice. This is critically shaped by how governments are run, how technology is used, how people adapt to demographic change, and how economies are structured, all of which depends on the political agenda. He argues that the 17 SDGs have many welcome innovations, including the aspiration to not tackle issues in silos, to leave no one behind and the recognition that all countries have problems. This presents a more political agenda than the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) that preceded them, with solutions largely found in policy change and doing things differently, rather than solely spending more money on technocratic 'solutions' that, while well-meaning, ignored the power dynamics that determine who benefits from them and who is left by the wayside. Finally he observes that UNRISD’s three research programmes—social policy, gender and development, and the social dimensions of sustainable development—intend to make a critical contribution to debates on which policies and institutions, in which contexts, will make the most progress towards achieving the SDGs.
Universal Health Coverage UHC is a critical component of the new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) which include a specific health goal: “Ensure healthy lives and promote wellbeing for all at all ages”. Within this health goal, a specific target for UHC has been proposed: “Achieve UHC, including financial risk protection, access to quality essential health care services and access to safe, effective, quality and affordable essential medicines and vaccines for all”. In this context, the opportunity exists to unite global health and the fight against poverty through action that is focussed on clear goals. For WHO, “UHC is, by definition, a practical expression of the concern for health equity and the right to health”; thus promoting UHC advances the overall objective of WHO, namely the attainment by all peoples of the highest possible standard of health as a fundamental right, and signal a return to the ideals of the Declaration of Alma Ata and the WHO Global Strategy for Health for All by the Year 2000. Yet some argue that the “current discourse on UHC is in sharp contrast with the vision of Primary Health Care envisaged in the Alma Ata declaration of 1978”. The underlying assumption of this paper is that efforts towards achieving UHC do promote some, but not necessarily all, of the efforts required from governments for the realisation of the right to health. While this publication explores how efforts to advance towards UHC overlap with efforts to realise the right to health, its main focus is the gaps that exist between UHC efforts and right to health efforts.