Building long-term and sustainably financed social protection systems can make an important contribution to combating extreme poverty and inequality which are two key demands of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. There is a strong case for setting up an international financing mechanism for this purpose - a "Global Fund for Social Protection". But its governance structure would need to be based on a partnership-based framework. In particular, it should be designed in such a way that recipient governments retain full ownership of their social protection systems.