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- The ILO participated in the Summit, reaffirming the role of the social and solidarity economy in advancing social innovation, consistent with its tripartite mandate and relevant international resolutions.
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LUXEMBOURG CITY, (ILO News) – The International Labour Organization (ILO) took part in the first Global Government Summit, held from 9 to 11 April 2025 in Luxembourg City. Hosted by the ministry of labour of Luxembourg, the Summit brought together government officials, multilateral institutions, and other stakeholders.
Representatives of governments, the ILO, other UN entities and intergovernmental organizations welcomed these developments and reaffirmed the role of the social and solidarity economy (SSE) in social innovation. Participants underscored the importance of grounding the work on social innovation in existing international and regional resolutions, recommendations, strategies and action plans on the SSE. These include the UN General Assembly resolutions on promoting the SSE for sustainable development (2023, 2024), and the ILO resolution, strategy and action plan concerning decent work and the SSE. These frameworks are supported by international coordination through the UN Inter-Agency Task Force on Social and Solidarity Economy (UNTFSSE).
Rie Vejs-Kjeldgaard, director of the ILO’s Sustainable Enterprises, Productivity and Just Transition Department (ENTERPRISES), contributed to the high-level panel at the opening of the Summit. She highlighted that the ILO is a century-old social innovation, created in 1919 with a tripartite governance structure. This structure brings together real economy actors—workers, businesses, and governments—come together to shape international labour policies and standards.
Vejs-Kjeldgaard noted that with its 187 Member States, including those present at the event, the ILO recognizes the social and solidarity economy as driver of social innovation for addressing deficits in decent work and social justice. Kjeldgaard pointed out that ILO’s long-standing efforts in promoting cooperatives and the wider SSE have been instrumental in fostering diversity, resilience, and sustainability among enterprises while advancing a just transition towards environmentally sustainable economies and societies for all.
Simel Esim, head of the ILO’s Cooperative, Social and Solidarity Economy Unit (COOP/SSE) and Chair of the UN Inter-Agency Task Force on Social and Solidarity Economy (UNTFSSE), emphasized the importance of shared terminology, robust statistics, and coordinated public policy in advancing social innovation. She highlighted that the definition of the social and solidarity economy adopted by the International Labour Conference in 2022—and reaffirmed by subsequent United Nations General Assembly resolutions—has become an important reference point for developing shared terminology across legal, policy and statistical frameworks.
Esim also noted that the ILO is leading global efforts to strengthen statistical visibility through two technical working groups—one with the Committee for the Promotion and Advancement of Cooperatives (COPAC) on measuring the economic contribution of cooperatives, and the other with the UNTFSSE on developing methodologies for statistics on the broader social and solidarity economy.
Esim underscored that what makes social innovations meaningful—and worth scaling—is the extent to which their agents, means and ends are social. Social innovations, she noted, are more transformative when they are collectively and democratically generated, when they reorganize societal relationships to expand capabilities and reduce inequalities, and when they are oriented towards the common good of present and future generations. She reiterated the ILO’s commitment to supporting member states and social partners in building conducive environments grounded in the ILO’s normative foundations.
In reflecting on the Summit, Esim noted that different entities engage with the SSE and social innovation from distinct institutional perspectives. While their strategies and action plans are grounded in different mandates and constituencies, she observed that shared values, principles, and priorities form a common foundation across their efforts. This alignment, she suggested, presents potential opportunities for synergies and pathways for complementarity and collaboration in advancing their collective objectives.
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