The Government of Timor-Leste, with support from the ILO, conducted a two day Seminar for the Development of the National Social Protection Strategy in Timor-Leste from 19-20 October. This second phase seminar was the follow-up to the previous seminar under the same title in last June, and happened in the same week as the National Parliament of Timor-Leste passed the law for the creation of the country’s first contributory social security schemes.

The seminar was officially opened by Isabel Amaral Guterres, Minister of Social Solidarity, António da Conceição, Coordinating Minister of Social Affairs and Francesco d’Ovidio, Country Director of the ILO for Indonesia and Timor-Leste.

This second seminar aimed to assess if the results to date were adequate to advance the social protection floors (SPF) and to improve the knowledge of national stakeholders in Timor-Leste regarding the implementation of the SPF. The seminar also aimed to establish priorities and ways to implement the National Social Protection Strategy 2017-2030 and to further discuss possible ways to enhance coordination and efficiency of Timor-Leste’s social protection system.

Francesco d’Ovidio, Country Director of the ILO for Indonesia and Timor-Leste, emphasized that social protection has now been an implicit target within the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and this has been in line with the priorities of the Government of Timor-Leste.

“The ILO constituents in Timor-Leste selected social protection as one of the three priorities under its Decent Work Country Programmes, showing the importance of social protection for the country socio-economic development. The ILO appraised the commitment shown by the Government of Timor-Leste to improve the social protection system country through the effort to develop a National Social Protection Strategy,” added Francesco.

Attended by around 50 participants from various, relevant stakeholders in the country, this seminar is part of the effort to move forward with the development of the National Social Protection Strategy for Timor-Leste. The development of the strategy is based on consultations and discussions conducted under these two events and the work of specialized technical groups that have been meeting since last March, using a participative development methodology created by the ILO – the Assessment Based National Dialogue. As the development phase of the project enter its final stages, the process is expected to be concluded early 2017.

These two social protection seminars are part of the activities under the project ACTION/Portugal to Timor-Leste and is financed by the Ministry of Labour, Solidarity and Social Security of the Portuguese Republic. ACTION/Portugal, implemented by the ILO and the ILO’s International Training Centre (ITC), aims to strengthen Timor-Leste’s Social Protection Systems and in other Portuguese-speaking countries (PALOP), within the framework of the World Programme of the ILO Social Protection.