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Protecting the Right of Access to Social Security Benefits

Expert commentaries - Date: 15 April 2014 / Author: Stephen Kidd

States must ensure the right to social security for all without discrimination of any kind. Article 2(1) of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) and Article 26 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child oblige States Parties to take effective measures, within their...

Using Human Rights in the Courts to Broaden Social Protection—The South African Example

Expert commentaries - Date: 19 September 2014 / Author: Beth Goldblatt

Human rights have an important role to play in supporting the objectives of social protection which include the prevention of poverty and inequality, ensuring solidarity and inclusion, and creating economically and socially fairer societies. They offer a normative basis and a legal imperative for requiring that states realize the...

Finding Synergies between Political Support, Legal Frameworks and Funding for Sustainable Social Protection Programmes in Latin America and the Caribbean

Expert commentaries - Date: 3 April 2014 / Author: Simone Cecchini

Implementing social protection policies and programmes (SPPPs) in the absence of clear and specific legal and institutional frameworks entails a number of risks, not only in terms of their continuity, but also of scope, legitimacy and the protection of human rights standards (United Nations, 2009). Legal and institutional frameworks...

A Rights-Based Approach to Social Protection: The Case of Tunisia

Expert commentaries - Date: 18 September 2014 / Author: Mehdi Ben Brahman, Seynabou Dia

Tunisia today is at an important stage in its thinking about a new development model that combines optimal allocation of resources and social equity, welfare being an essential factor in the success of the democratic transition and at the core of the 2011 popular uprising. However, structural reform cannot...

The Role that Civil Society can Play in Ensuring Accountability in Social Protection Programmes

Expert commentaries - Date: 14 April 2014 / Author: Felipe J. Hevia

Civil society and accountability in social protection programmes The experience of the last 20 years suggests there are four obstacles to ensuring accountability in social protection programmes. The first obstacle has to do with social protection’s contested status: is it a right or only a service or a favour?...

Good Practices for Effective Participation in Social Protection Design and Implementation

Expert commentaries - Date: 27 March 2014 / Author: Robert Chambers

The tendency for programmes intended for those who are poor and marginalized to be distorted and captured by local elites is widely recognized. Men appropriate what is intended for women; local power holders distribute benefits to their relatives, caste, class, ethnic, factional, religious or even age groups. Notoriously in...

Improving Representation in the Design and Implementation of Social Protection Programmes through Women’s Organizations

Expert commentaries - Date: 25 April 2014 / Author: Markus Kaltenborn

The role of women’s organizations Due to the high relevance of women’s participation for the success of social protection programmes it is, in my view, necessary to give at least the most important women’s organizations of a country a statutory right to take part in the respective processes of...

A Rejoinder to ‘Pro-Poor and Pro-Development Transparency’

Expert commentaries - Date: 15 Apr 2014 / Author: Charles Lwanga-Ntale

Charles Lwanga-Ntale is the Regional Director and Special Adviser for East & Central Africa at Development Initiatives. A Rejoinder to ‘Pro-Poor and Pro-Development Transparency’ Issa Luna Pla’s article Pro-Poor and Pro-Development Transparency Laws and Policies makes well-founded points about the limited use of access to information laws by poor...

Pro-Poor and pro-Development Transparency Laws and Policies

Expert commentaries - Date: 15 Apr 2014 / Author: Issa Luna Pla

You many also be interested in the rejoinder to this commentary by Charles Lwanga-Ntale from Development Initiatives. Access to information laws are not being effectively utilized by the poor—the most technologically marginalized population—to exercise their rights to social protection. Across countries we learn that sectors using these laws are...

Realizing Rights in Practice: ‘Minimum’ Level of Social Security in Relation to an ‘Adequate’ Standard of Living

Expert commentaries - Date: 8 April 2014 / Author: Bob Deacon

Realizing rights in practice ILO Recommendation 202 (R202) asked that all countries lay down Social Protection Floors (SPF) to provide at least the following basic social security guarantees: “(a) access to a nationally defined set of goods and services, constituting essential health care; (b) basic income security for children,...

Access to information about beneficiaries to ensure social accountability of state decisions

Legal depository - Country: Argentina / Body: Argentina - Supreme Court (Corte Suprema de Justicia de la Nación), Supreme Courts / Year: 2014

Summary: CIPPEC (Centro de Implementación de Políticas Públicas para la Equidad y el Crecimiento ) has been denied access to information concerning the beneficiaries of subsidies and social cash transfer programs in 2006 and 2007. The Supreme Court considered that accessing such data has a clear public interest, since it enables...

The role of civil society in keeping vigil over the human rights implications of states’ social protection policies, programmes and activities

Expert commentaries - Date: 14 April 2014 / Author: Letlhokwa George Mpedi

Keeping vigil over the human rights implications of states’ social protection activities One of the fundamental roles that civil society organizations play is to ensure that states, particularly in emerging economies where social insecurity is rife, respect and promote the fundamental right to social protection (Samad 2009) and provide...

Ensure Transparency and Access to Information

Transparency, accountability and reliability have become universally recognized key operational principles for the good governance of public administration. In effect, transparency and access to information are essential components of a rights-based social protection system. To effectively guarantee transparency, information should be available, accessible and disseminated among the population. In...

Adopting Comprehensive, Coherent and Coordinated Policies in Social Protection: A View from the Americas

Expert commentaries - Date: 27 March 2014 / Author: Alexandra Barrantes

In the context of the principles of social protection, through the Social Charter of the Americas,1 the countries of the region acknowledge they have “a responsibility to develop and implement comprehensive social protection policies and programs, based on the principles of universality, solidarity, equality, nondiscrimination, and equity that give...