WIEGO Blog

Social distancing and staying home are real possibilities for middle-class office workers covered by social security. They are much less achievable for unprotected informal workers who fall between the cracks, excluded from formal work-related protections as well as from state social assistance programmes that target the very poor and those outside the labour market.  “I am afraid of the coronavirus,” said an informal worker in Mexico, “but I am more afraid of dying of hunger if there is no work.” 

Few public investments will have as transformative an impact on present and future generations, and on equality between women and men and across social classes, as the investment in childcare. In a new policy brief series, the International Labour Organization (ILO) and WIEGO reveal why childcare for informal workers is so critical to addressing gender equality.

We’ve all seen the pictures: heaping trash mounds with men and women sifting through the discards. This challenging situation has increased international pressure over environmental and public health concerns from these dangerous sites. Open dumps, unlike sanitary landfills, are not engineered to protect the environment and human health. But there is one major issue: the response does not take into account that these sites are important sources of economic survival for expert recyclers – the world’s waste pickers.