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reviews or analysis to establish the financial branches of social security.

equilibrium of individual

15. The ILO employs three main methods in fulfilling its operational activities to provide technical co-operation; notably:

(1) the assignment of experts, including regional

advisers, to the country

concerned;

(2) the granting of fellowships for training abroad;

(3)

the organisation of regional seminars or training Courses participants to study various aspects of social security with the help of international and national experts.

to

enable

2.

INTRODUCTORY REMARKS ON SOCIAL SECURITY

(by Tomio Higuchi)

1.

I. Historical introduction to social security

Social security may be defined as the protection furnished by a society to its members in prescribed contingencies or circumstances, the purpose of which is, in So far as possible, to prevent the occurrence of contingencies involving a loss or substantial reduction of income, and to provide medical care and/cr financial guarantees against the economic consequences of those contingencies when they do occur, and benefits for the maintenance of the children. The contingencies normally dealt with by social security include

(1) the need for medical care;

suspension, loss or substantial reduction of income due to

(2)

(a)

sickness;

(b)

maternity;

(c)

industrial accidents and occupational diseases

(hereinafter referred

to

as employment injury, covering both accidents and diseases);

(a)

old age;

(e)

invalidity;

(f)

death of the breadwinner;

and

(g) unemployment;

responsibility for maintaining children.

(3)

2.

For the great majority of workers who have nothing to live on but their Own earnings, any one of these contingencies is liable to plunge a worker and his family into extreme poverty. Thus he wants to be certain not only of his next meal, but also of his subsistence for the rest of his life and the subsistence of his dependants as well. This aspiration has always been in existence, but only this century has it been seen by the mass of people to be within their reach. The mechanism of social security which is a new name given to the old aspiration, consists in counteracting the blind injustice of natural and economic forces by rational and planned measures.

Forerunners

3. From the beginning of the nineteenth century, notably from the time when industrialisation began in Europe, various steps were taken on a statutory basis to

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