Introduction

The International Federation of Social Workers (IFSW) provides a worldwide framework for formulating, supporting and disseminating professional standards on social work ethics and human rights. It can provide support for countries where social work is developing as a profession. It can help the profession to respond with policy, advocacy and programme initiatives when social workers are responding to the impact of wars, natural disasters and pandemics, and it can articulate desirable economic and social policy directions that are faithful to social work's commitment to redress social and health inequalities.

This chapter is a personal reflection on the capacity of social work to contribute to national and international practice and policy development, arising from my time as President of IFSW between 2000 and 2006. First, I briefly outline the roles which IFSW plays and the structures through which it represents social work in global institutions. Second, I indicate some of my first-hand experiences of the globalising trends and forces influencing inequalities in health. Finally, I present a specific example of IFSW contributing to action on health inequalities, action which incorporated the construction of an alliance between residents of a Kenyan slum, some of whom were also social workers, national and international social work organisations and UNHABITAT (United Nations Human Settlements Programme).

The International Federation of Social Workers

As of 2008 the IFSW represents social workers in 85 countries across the globe. Eighty years previously in Paris, its forerunner, the International Permanent Secretariat of Social Workers, as it was called, was established, operating until the outbreak of the Second World War. It was not until 1956 that 12 national social work organisations came together in Munich to re-establish what is now known as the IFSW. The current membership comprises an estimated 500,000 social work practitioners across five regions: Africa, Asia and Pacific, Europe, Latin America and Caribbean and North America. While changes in communication and travel between 1928 and today are profound, and understanding of global conditions is greatly improved, cooperation through close relationships is the hallmark of IFSW's operations.

It places particular emphasis on professional standards, values and ethics, and on recognition, training and working conditions.