International Conference on Universal Social Protection and Labour
Organised by :
Asia Europe People’s Forum, Social Justice Cluster and Nepal Partners
Kathmandu, 4-6 April 2019

We, the participants of the International Conference on Universal Social Protection and Labour held in Kathmandu from 04 to 06 April 2019 to review and reflect on the current situations prevalent in our societies and develop strategies for the future course reaffirmed our vision, mission to establish society ensuring social protection, social justice, security and peace.

Realizing that socio-political circumstances and the level of wealth accumulation and development in Europe and Asia are very different, as well between as within our respective sub-regions,

Understanding the fact that it is one ‘capitalist logic at work, free trade agreements, neoliberalism and austerity’ worsened by right-wing populism and declining democratic principles, with similar consequences in both regions,

Recognizing that despite that Asia being the most dynamic region in the world with two decades long strong economic growth, rising productivity and high employment ratios, deep rooted structural challenges remain, still, half a billion workers live in abject poverty, a billion are faced with vulnerable conditions of employment, two of every three workers are stuck in the informal sector and weekly hours worked are the world’s highest,

Acknowledging the rising protests as response to growing nationalism, slowing of economic growth, high unemployment, rising inequality and fear of robotization, rising non-standard employment and declining job quality, decoupling wages from productivity due to the pushback of trade unions and collective bargaining, deregulation of labour markets and liberalisation of capital markets,

Realizing the challenges of the digital revolution which will fundamentally alter labour markets, threat to livelihood by the digital economy because of the platformisation of the whole economy, merger of manufacturing and the internet (industry 4.0) at the national level and growing attacks on trade unions,

Acknowledging that without social justice and peace humanity can’t stay inside the planetary boundaries and the world will turn into a hothouse, without a truly sustainable and earth friendly metabolism of our societies there can’t be peace and social justice,

Appreciating the efforts of people in Asia and Europe to make the society with equity, justice, peace and harmony,

Re-enforcing our trust in Global Charter for Social Protection Rights, for all and by all, as a guideline to work on the implementation of all economic and social rights, including public services, as the gateway to environmental rights and requires democracy and popular participation making links to all important progressive social movements,

We urge to,

1. Re-define labour and to ‘free’ it from capital, since the logics of accumulation and profit maximisation are not compatible with the transition towards a more sustainable way of life,
2. Generate a new economic thinking based on the priority of reproduction, a crucial issue in order to connect different struggles and movements,
3. Counter emergence of rentier classes by democratisation of economic life, a condition of social justice,
4. Establish and promote regional and global learning centres for education and generation of new knowledge needed to enrich our social movements based on empirical evidences,
5. Establish and strengthen campaigns and networks among the people of the regions, engage in the political and social dialogue, based on strong trade unions, on discussion on how to create the changes we need and want, for greater solidarity for united struggles, movements, people to people cooperation and coordination,
6. Fight against climate warming, the crossing of the planetary boundaries. We struggle in favour of the Global North paying its climate debts to the developing world. We must build bridges with the climate justice movement as climate destruction will be the most important political factor for the future, therefore, we must link our arguments with this movement. The climate debt can be said to be the biggest social injustice to emerge in the future, and the term “climate debt” builds a bridge to this on going struggle.
7. Realise and materialise the global charter for social protection rights.

We believe that any move towards social justice is social protection, to be understood in an emancipatory and transformative way.