Objective 22: Establish mechanisms for the portability of social security entitlements and earned benefits

Members of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), have an Agreement on Social Security (CASS) that protects pension rights for workers moving between CARICOM member states.

Sweden has entered into social security agreements with 11 countries that mainly cover retirement, disability and survivors pensions and contain coordination and aggregation rules in addition to regulating the portability of benefits. 

The Multilateral Social Security Agreement is an instrument for coordinating the Social Security legislation on pensions of the different Ibero-American countries. The Ibero-American Multilateral Agreement on Social Security is a pioneering experiment with the objective of guaranteeing the rights of Ibero-American migrant  workers and their families to a contributory old-age, disability or survivors’ pension within a common area, the Ibero-American Community, formed by 22 countries of Latin America and the Caribbean and the European Union.

The programme objective is to strengthen the capacity of policy makers and social partners to adopt and implement gender-sensitive labour migration policies, legislation and administration. This will be done by promoting:

i) the adoption and implementation of policies, legislation and administration for better regulation of labour migration flows;

ii) strategies to enhance social security coverage of migrant worker and their families, and;

iii) the improvement of skills’ matching between sending and receiving countries and reducing de-skilling.

Ghana operates a threetier social security system. The first two tiers are mandatory and the third is voluntary. Social security contributions are portable, that is they can be transferred from one social security scheme in one country to that in another country, and are to be paid in respect to both local and expatriate staff. The guidelines issued by the Social Security and National Insurance Trust exempt the following categories of expatriates from contributing to Tier 1: