Michael Cichon (1953–2022) “How to walk the talk”

Michael Cichon was an exemplary international civil servant in the best sense of the term. A forceful advocate for social justice, he was an honest man with a clear vision and sharp intellect who genuinely cared for every human being. Being dedicated, principled and generous with his time, he was a role model, teacher, mentor as well as a friend to many of his colleagues and students. Michael was always ready to help those who needed support. He believed in converting words into actions and urged others to do the same.

Initially trained as a mathematician and actuary, he complemented a Master’s degree in Pure and Applied Mathematics from the Technical University in Aachen, Germany, with a Master’s degree in Public Administration from Harvard University in the United States and a PhD in Health Economics from the University of Göttingen, Germany. He joined the German Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs as an actuary and health economist, and eight years later, in 1983, moved to the Social Security Department of the International Labour Office (ILO). Michael joined the ILO Budapest Office at the time when its multidisciplinary advisory team for Central and Eastern Europe was established to support the countries in the sub-region, which were starting their transitions from centrally planned to market economies. He served in Budapest, between 1993 and 1995, as the senior social security specialist. In 1995, he returned to Geneva as Chief of the Financial, Actuarial and Statistical Branch of the ILO’s Social Security Department and, in 2005, he was appointed Director of the ILO’s Social Security Department. He retired from the ILO at the end of 2012, just six months after the International Labour Conference had adopted a new landmark social security standard, the Social Protection Floors Recommendation (No. 202). His leadership and dedicated commitment and efforts across nearly three decades had culminated with this visionary outcome that provides guidance to countries to improve the lives of billions of people around the world.

Michael was an ardent promoter of the values and principles enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, on the right to social security for all, and the ILO’s normative framework. He was the visionary strategic policy planner who led the ILO’s work in the field of social security and social protection over 17 years. Michael was a not just a leader, but also an agent of change with a long-term vision of the goals to be achieved. He had a unique talent in touching people’s hearts and minds. He has left a rich legacy that will have an enduring positive impact. As a manager, even when fulfilling time-consuming bureaucratic duties, he never ceased to be fully engaged in departmental research, technical cooperation work and authoring.

As Chief of the Financial, Actuarial and Statistical Branch, he focused essentially on helping social security institutions around the world to ensure financial sustainability and sound financial governance. However, he quickly realized that, in the Global South, those institutions predominantly covered those working in the formal economy, while the majority of the population remained excluded. Thus, while improving the functioning of these institutions was of great importance, he was convinced that more work was required to extend social protection and create fiscal space for social protection in all countries, to bring the world closer to achieving the objective of “social security for all” – as was prominently highlighted by the International Labour Conference in 2001.

He believed ardently that social insurance was a core element of comprehensive social protection systems and an indispensable mechanism of social solidarity as well as for horizontal and vertical redistribution. Despite this, he realized that going beyond contributory schemes and expanding tax-financed social assistance programmes, which were at that time largely non-existent across low-income countries, was essential to close existing coverage gaps and to build at least minimum levels of protection for all in need. Such expansion was necessary to achieve the aims and purposes highlighted in the Declaration of Philadelphia of 1944, and in ILO Recommendation No. 67 on Income Security and ILO Recommendation No. 69 on Medical Care, both also from 1944. The concept of a “socio-economic floor for the global economy” was introduced by the World Commission on the Social Dimension of Globalization in 2004 and further spelled out in the 2004 follow-up report by the ILO Director-General to the International Labour Conference, to which Michael certainly contributed.

He challenged the prevailing doubts on the affordability of social protection for low-income countries with a series of strategically important papers developed by his team under his leadership. These costed a basic social protection package and estimated its potential impact on poverty reduction. Simulations confirmed that “nobody is too poor to share” and that social protection was indispensable for building decent societies. However, they these also showed that some countries would require international solidarity-based financing to start building their social protection systems. Subsequent ILO simulations showed that only a small proportion of global GDP was required to eradicate extreme poverty.

At the same time, while convincing policy makers and decision makers of the need for and the affordability of a basic level of social protection, Michael embarked on a further challenging and daunting task to develop a concept to concretize international solidarity for low-income countries. Michael was a firm believer, promoter and active supporter of international solidarity to eradicate poverty worldwide. However, he also believed that international solidarity should complement domestic efforts and that national political will and commitment, and national institution building and strengthening, were essential for achieving sustainable long-term positive social outcomes. He thus spearheaded, with colleagues within and outside the ILO, the development of a proposal for the “Global Trust Fund”, which sought to match the efforts of low-income countries to alleviate poverty and extend social security coverage. The concept was piloted in Ghana with financial support from a Global North trade union and other members of civil society. Michael not only preached international solidarity – he practiced it. Until the end of his life, he was an active member and advocate of the “1% Fund for Development” collecting funds to finance small projects proposed by NGOs active in the Global South. 1

Having formulated arguments backed by concrete figures on the affordability of a basic level of social protection benefits, as well as developing a concept for international solidarity financing for low-income countries, the next step was to convince the naysayers, both inside and outside the ILO, those who were opposed to promoting an approach that went beyond contributory schemes. Thus, the need arose to provide further evidence and stronger arguments and to engage in broad dialogue with all stakeholders to forge a coalition of support.

The consultation paper proposed that the poorest countries could start with an initial package of basic social benefits and services.

It is in this paper that, for the first time, the concept of social security “floors” and the need for a new international standard was spelled out publicly by Michael and his team. This concept was further developed in an article published in the International Social Security Review in 2007, to not only explain the need for the international community to agree on what a set of basic social benefits (“the global social security floor”) would comprise, but also “to assume some responsibility in helping the poorest countries to achieve this”.

The task of developing a new standard required intensive dialogue with all stakeholders, both inside and outside the ILO, at the national as well as global level. Michael, an excellent leader and technician, also had the rare skill of being able to speak convincingly with ease, yet with humility, to any audience. He was more than capable of using solid, fact-based arguments and evidence to convince even the most reticent. The list of those he would have to convince was daunting. Among those to persuade were social security specialists in the ILO, and elsewhere, that the floor concept would not weaken contributory social security schemes; experts in other ILO technical areas that the extension of social protection would ensure more and higher quality employment; and ILO constituents – governments, workers and employers – that adopting a new social security standard on the extension of social security was necessary and would not dilute the provisions of ILO Convention No. 102. In a determined manner, Michael and his team tirelessly engaged in necessarily intensive dialogue. It would take a number of years before a consensus was reached, just before the crucial discussion on “Social security for social justice and a fair globalization” at the 2011 International Labour Conference. This was achieved largely due to Michael’s diplomatic skills. The International Labour Conference agreed on the key elements of a possible Recommendation and decided to move into a standard-setting discussion the following year. This decision was taken against the backdrop of the repercussions of the global economic and financial crisis of 2008–09, which had spurred the establishment of the UN-wide Global Social Protection Floor Initiative, co-led by the ILO and the World Health Organization, and of the Social Protection Floor Advisory Group under the leadership of Michelle Bachelet, as well as a further intensification of interagency work, in which Michael also played a crucial role.

The Social Protection Floors Recommendation (No. 202) was adopted unanimously in June 2012 by the governments, employers and workers of the ILO’s then 184 member States. Michael’s long-term vision had thus become firmly embodied in the international normative framework. Although non-binding, the Recommendation asserted the commitment to guarantee at least a basic level of social security for all, while aiming at higher levels of protection and adequacy of benefits in line with other more advanced social security standards. For Michael it was certainly a very important breakthrough and achievement, but it was never a final goal. He never allowed himself, or those working alongside him, to celebrate the achievement for long. As always, his question was – so, what comes next?

Michael knew about the importance of international standards as a cornerstone of a global policy consensus, as a key instrument in realizing the human right to social security for all. He worked untiringly for this goal for more than a decade. However, in an article published in 2013 in a special issue of the International Social Security Review, he asked whether a six-page document can really change the course of social history. The answer was, of course, that to achieve the objectives of the Recommendation many things must also happen. The global coalition of international organizations and civil society had to be expanded to effectively push for: a) social protection to be included into the international accepted development goals agenda (this was achieved in 2015, when social protection, including floors, became part of the SDG goals and policy toolkit), b) a global social protection fund or similar international funding mechanism to be agreed and implemented, c) a binding international instrument in the form of either a UN or ILO Convention (still debated) to be adopted, and d) at the country level, trade unions and civil society should build national coalitions and use the Recommendation to actively fight for establishing social protection floors and achieving universal coverage.

Michael retired from the ILO at the end of 2012 and continued his work for the global social justice agenda, but now doing so “unchained” from UN bureaucracy. That said, he unceasingly and generously always made time to provide advice for as well as support the ILO’s social protection work. Engaging with civil society organizations, he served as President of the International Council on Social Welfare (2013–2016) and continued to be one of the leading and most active figures of the Global Coalition for Social Protection Floors.

Deeply committed across his career to capacity building as a long-term objective and vision, Michael led various efforts to build capacities for the sound financial governance of social security bodies and for quantitative policy analysis in national governments, along with social partners and international organisations. For him, capacity building was indubitably linked to the objective of extending coverage to all.

He achieved this goal through leading the development work for the quantitative models (actuarial and social budgeting) of the ILO, accompanied by a textbook series on Quantitative methods in social protection, published jointly with the International Social Security Association, as well as through intensive cooperation with the ILO’s International Training Centre in Turin. The ILO’s flagship World social protection report series also bears his signature. Together with the University of Maastricht, Michael, working closely with another prominent figure in the ILO Social Security Department – the late Wolfgang Scholz – and other ILO colleagues, established and shaped a Master’s degree programme on Social Protection Financing, which evolved into the Master of Science in Public Policy at UNU-MERIT, as well as further joint academic curricula for social protection specialists with the University of Mauritius and the University of Lausanne. He trained more than a generation of social protection specialists who now occupy important decision-making positions in ministries, social security institutions, academia, civil society organizations and international organizations, and who carry his critical spirit and policy vision forward.

Following his retirement, he accepted a professorship at the University of Maastricht and devoted his time and energy to what he liked and enjoyed the most – sharing his knowledge with young people and involving them in the research agenda devoted to social goals. As Michael’s former student and friend, Zina Nimeh, evoked: “Michael Cichon had a long-standing relationship with UNU-MERIT as an honorary professor and as the driving force behind the establishment of the Master’s programme in Social Protection Financing (SPF) … Michael often said that this was the most impactful endeavour he undertook in his career.”

At the sessions of the International Labour Conference in 2011 and 2012, several of his former students represented national delegations at the two social security discussions. How proud he was to see his former students in those important decision-making roles.

Regrettably, the COVID-19 pandemic and the advancement of his medical condition put an end to those ambitions. He devoted the last years of his life mainly to his family: his wife Irmgard, his children, Barbara, Bernadette, Rebecca and David, and his grandchildren. Unfortunately, he did not finish writing what was planned to be his second novel, after the UN-based thriller “Mission Creep” of 2018, which can be found published on his website: writings-with-convictions.com.

It now remains for all of us to live up to his expectations.