As we step into a new year, I want to pause and reflect on the year just passed and what it has asked from all of us at WIEGO.
It has been a demanding year marked by a deepening crisis in the development sector, adding to an already challenging set of intersecting global crises, including the climate crisis on which we have been documenting impacts (but also the solutions!) in cities in Brazil, India and Thailand.
It has, however, also been a meaningful year which has reflected WIEGO’s core purpose: to challenge the systems that reproduce low incomes, poverty and inequality, and to help ensure that workers in informal employment can participate in shaping the rules that govern their working lives.
Recentering the informal economy in economic and climate policy debates
To that end, a key focus of the year has been on insisting on the central importance of the informal economy in global economic debates. Together with UNU-WIDER and SEWA, we challenged the persistent framing of the informal economy as inherently unproductive - an assumption that continues to bias economic policy against appropriate support for informal enterprises - by interrogating the assumptions, concepts and measurements that underpin productivity calculations.
We led a WIEGO Network solidarity-building coalition to the We the 99% People’s Summit, held alongside the G20 meetings in Johannesburg. There, we made the case that efforts to reduce inequality must place serious attention on the needs of the informal economy, highlighting that this remains a blind spot in much economic thinking, both orthodox and heterodox. The WIEGO Network was also present at COP30 in Belem this year. The International Alliance of Waste Pickers (IAWP) celebrated the final outcome document, which states that countries must ensure broad and meaningful participation to ensure just transition pathways - including for workers in informal employment. This is critical considering that workers in informal employment, such as waste pickers, are at the forefront of building sustainable economic alternatives.
From taxation to social protection and collective bargaining: Advancing rights-based formalization
Policy attention to the informal economy often comes in the guise of formalization initiatives. And although ILO Recommendation 204 on the Transition from the Informal to the Formal Economy lays out a clear set of guidelines for such initiatives, formalization - which encompasses an array of policy concerns from dialogue to social protection and taxation - remains contested terrain.
During 2025, we focused on better articulating and supporting the struggle for a bottom-up, rights-based, progressive approach to formalization. This included working with IAWP, StreetNet International, the International Domestic Workers Federation and HomeNet International to influence the International Labour Conference discussions on formalization, and through the Brazilian government’s official recognition of the Parliamentary Front in Defence of Workers in the Informal Economy, an initiative supported by WIEGO and the Central Workers Union (CUT), which will monitor and improve federal legislation on informality.
Drawing on both human rights law and labour law, we produced groundbreaking conceptual work towards a legal framework for collective bargaining for self-employed workers in the informal economy, presented at the ILO’s bi-annual Regulating for Decent Work Conference.
The struggle for progressive formalization was also a thread holding together our work on social protection and taxation. WIEGO has throughout the year supported workers in the informal economy with data and capacity building to negotiate for fairer tax regulations, working particularly closely with the International Centre for Taxation and Development. Our training for workers on the financing of social protection was rolled out regionally in Southeast Asia, and we saw the Federation of Informal Workers of Nigeria draw on collaborative research from WIEGO, ITUC-Africa and the ILO and knowledge from a previous training to advocate for subsidised financing of the Nigerian micro-pension at the High Level National Dialogue on Social Protection Extension to the Informal Economy. The provision of child care services for workers in informal employment - an often overlooked aspect of R204’s formalization agenda - has been given a significant boost in Ghana with the integration of the Guidelines and standards for day-care centres in and around markets into the country’s new national ECCD policy which passed in June 2025.
A year of reflection, change and renewal for WIEGO
There have been many external-facing achievements, but the past year was also a year of internal reflection for the WIEGO team. With all four global networks now established and increasingly exercising leadership in their own right, we are in the midst of a period of change. The movement we are part of is growing in strength, confidence, and complexity and that requires us to think carefully about how our role evolves alongside it. The year ahead will ask us to listen closely, to be honest about what we do best, and to adapt where needed so that WIEGO continues to support the movement in ways that are relevant and useful.
I am deeply grateful to the WIEGO team for the care, commitment, and integrity they bring to this work. What we have achieved is all the more impressive when considering the deep uncertainty that has characterized non-profits this year. I thank our partners and funders for their solidarity and trust. And above all, I thank the workers and organizations who walk with us, challenge us, and continually remind us why this work matters. I look forward to continuing and supporting this collective work into 2026 - it is now more vital than ever.
In solidarity,
Laura Alfers
International Coordinator, WIEGO