Workshop: Promoting informal workers’ member-based organizations participation in the development of social security systems for all workers.

Informal workers face several challenges in accessing social protection. Most workers are self-employed, which means that they cannot receive social protections through the employment relationship, and so fall outside of work-related social security schemes. In Togo advances towards extending national social security schemes to informal workers were made with the adoption of the Social Security Code in 2011. A pilot scheme was initially set up in which informal workers participated. Since then, however, the government has stalled on implementation, and there has been no coherent response from worker organizations and civil society.

In 2018, FES Zambia under the RBSP in Africa Project and Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing (WIEGO) worked with StreetNet International, the global alliance of membership-based street vendor organizations, the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) – Africa, and the African Labour Research Network (ALRN) to develop a set of proposals for concrete national actions aimed at achieving the project indicators.For Togo, StreetNet International affiliates, Faitiere Nationale des Travailleurs du Secteur Informelle(FAINATRASIT), an organization with a membership of 25 000, worked with representatives from Danish Federation of Trade Unions, LO-FTF to develop a set of activities design to establish a coherent civil society push for the implementation of the Social Security Code. This September workshop in Lome is one of the activities planned for this cause for the year 2019. This workshop will enable participants and actors in the informal economy to develop a strategy to advocate successfully for effective access to social protection on the one hand, and on the other hand, to develop advocacy strategies to push for the implementation of the revised social security code.