BIEN Collaboration with the UN Special Rapporteur

by Diana Bashur | Jun 11, 2026 | News

Since 2025, BIEN has had the pleasure of collaborating with the UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, Olivier De Schutter. Together with our partner, Equal Right, we have submitted inputs on how Basic Income can contribute to the Special Rapporteur’s landmark initiative, Eradication Poverty Beyond Growth, inputs which were endorsed by 62 of BIEN affiliates and partners across 32 countries around the world. Mr. De Schutter’s office subsequently invited BIEN for an additional deep dive in the form of a policy profile on basic income, presenting objectives, design features, implementation steps and expected benefits, challenges and illustrative examples of existing practices and showcasing basic income’s key advantages. T

his policy profile produced jointly between BIEN, EqualRight, University of Bath and the UN Special Rapporteur’s office is now published on the Roadmap’s website [additional link], and represents a reference document on emerging policy proposals towards the eradication of poverty beyond growth. Thanks to this collaborative work, basic income is a policy instrument now part of the Roadmap for Eradicating Poverty Beyond Growth, which was adopted at the International Labour Organization in Geneva on April 22.

Over this short period, BIEN’s engagement with the office of the UN Special Rapporteur also translated into joint events at two major UN conferences. Mr. De Schutter generously accepted BIEN’s invitation as keynote speaker at the side event organised by Equal Right at the UN Conference for the Financing for Development, held in Seville in July 2025. De Schutter also joined BIEN’s event at the UN Second World Summit on Social Development, which took place in Doha in November 2025. 

BIEN highly appreciates this collaboration with the UN Special Rapporteur’s office advancing Basic Income a step further into the policy space of international development. Basic Income can indeed be a game changer at a critical time for global aid and the urgent need for making leaps towards the SDGs. BIEN looks forward to expanding this engagement with Mr. De Schutter’s office toward our shared objective of eradicating poverty. 

Basic income as an innovative social protection tool

by Diana Bashur | Aug 13, 2024 | News

As a tool that speaks to 7 out of the 17 SDGs, basic income pilots have shown transformative effects in communities. This blog post calls for a systematic consideration of this tool in social protection schemes across humanitarian, development and peacebuilding settings.

Basic income, aka universal basic income, is a periodic cash payment unconditionally delivered to all usual legal residents in a given territory on an individual basis, without means-test or work requirements, over a prolonged period of time. It is different from traditional cash transfers, which are often targeted according to vulnerability thresholds, can be conditional, are not always regular, and can take forms other than cash. These distinctions are behind the transformative effects basic income has had in communities where it was tested.

To read the full article, click here

BIEN Members: Register for the August 30 General Assembly!

by Diana Bashur | Jul 5, 2024 | News

We have the pleasure of inviting you to our annual General Assembly (GA), scheduled for 30 August at 1pm British Summer Time (UTC+1), taking place online and on the sidelines of BIEN’s Annual Congress.

We kindly ask you to register online through Eventbrite to be able to attend the meeting: Eventbrite registration link

This registration is required to ensure only members participate in the voting procedures. Once registered, an access link will be emailed to you a few days before the GA.

GA participation is for BIEN members: to register as a BIEN member go to the membership page.

To see the full invitation, click here.