(Source: ISSA)

Ninety years ago, the International Social Security Association was created.

In 1927, the delegates of 17 sickness insurance and mutual benefit societies representing some 20 million insured persons from nine European countries came together in Brussels at the initiative of the International Labour Organization (ILO) and its first Director-General, Albert Thomas.

Albert Thomas was seeking to widen support for workers' protection, based on ILO Conventions. As a result, the International Conference of National Unions of Mutual Benefit Societies and Sickness Insurance Funds (Conférence Internationale des Unions nationales de sociétés mutuelles et de caisses d’assurance-maladie) was born. The International Labour Office offered to host the secretariat of the new body.

In 1936, the International Conference changed its name, to become the International Social Insurance Conference (Conférence international de la mutualité et des assurances sociales– CIMAS), which, in 1947, would become the International Social Security Association.

In 1944 in Philadelphia, the International Labour Conference produced historic recommendations that would come to be known as the Declaration of Philadelphia. The Declaration, which would subsequently become the first Annex to the ILO Constitution, was the ILO’s first international assertion of the human right to social security and affirmed the role of the state in orchestrating the realization of this right. In practical terms, the ILO was called upon by its constituents to promote international administrative and technical cooperation among experts and institutions to promote social security. Accidently or otherwise, this was an agenda tailor-made for the CIMAS.

Three years later the CIMAS was renamed the International Social Security Association (ISSA). Over the ensuing decades, the Association has grown, with membership covering all branches of social security and representing all regions, to become a truly global organization. In 2017, the ISSA counts more than 320 members providing social protection to more than 3 billion persons around the world.

With the evolving and complex challenges that remain in the path of realizing the human right to social security, the ISSA’s commitment to promoting cooperation and excellence in social security administration will remain an essential condition to ensure social justice for all.

International Social Security Association