Dear friends,

Internet technicalities do not allow me to send a newsletter at this moment. Allow me to give you some reflections on the past year and send you my best wishes for 2014.

Global Social Justice has been doing rather well. We were at the World Social Forum in Tunis in March, where we also co-organised a Social Forum on Health and Social Protection. We were at different conferences on social protection and on poverty, in Europe, Africa and Asia. We also were at the WTO social movements gathering in Bali.

Our website gets more and more visitors and also positive feedback. Feedback is particularly important since  we can only survive if we offer something that people want and want to read. What is still lacking, is contributions from our members.

We are convinced that Global Social Justice can play an important role in this very difficult period. Social protection is now on the international agenda, everywhere, but however positive this may be, it is not the social protection we want. We need policies that go beyond the Washington Consensus, we need policies that give real protection, economic and social security to people and societies.

Three major tragedies of 2013 convince us that we have to work in another direction:

The Rana Plaza factory in Bangladesh, costing more than one thousand lives of underpaid workers, shows us that labour conditions remain extremely important and have to be at the core of every social protection effort.

The Lampedusa tragedy in which hundreds of migrants drowned in the Mediterranean,  shows us that so-called development policies miss their target and do not give new perspectives to people.

The ‘natural’ catastrophe in the Philippines shows us that nature cannot be ignored, that we need strong climate policies in order to avoid tragedies and protect people.

What these three examples also show, is the close linkages between social, economic and climate policies. They have to be developed in parallel, they cannot be dissociated, in the same way as human rights are indivisible.

That is why we think about social protection in terms of ‘social commons’, because we all share the same needs, wherever we live and in whichever political or economic regime we live. We think of social commons because this is a collective responsibility, of all nations, of all governments, of all people and of all international organisations.

The ILO social protection floor can be a good starting point, but we have to go beyond.

We need ambitious programmes for fighting poverty and inequality, for real development policies,  for tax justice, away from neoliberal globalization. This is perfectly possible, and 2013 has also shown that people all over the world are getting a voice, are claiming their rights. Yes, there are setbacks, but we strongly believe that in trying to work together, we are able to achieve major victories. Global social commons can be a tool for systemic change, and this alternative has to be developed.

Let me all wish you a very happy 2014, lots of love and solidarity, and good cooperation.

Francine