Menstrual Hygiene Management: Behaviour and Practices in Kye-Ossi and Bamoungoum, Cameroon
This report examines a range of issues, from women and girls lack of access to sanitation and hygiene services to their strategies for dealing with menstrual hygiene management while playing their roles in families, communities, at work, at school, etc. The study also addresses the impact of perpetrated beliefs...
Read MoreThe Decade of Adjustment: A Review of Austerity Trends 2010-2020 in 187 Countries (Extension of Social Security Series)
This paper: (i) examines the latest IMF government spending projections for 187 countries between 2005 and 2020; (ii) reviews 616 IMF country reports in 183 countries to identify the main adjustment measures considered by governments in both high-income and developing countries; (iii) applies the United Nations Global Policy Model...
Read MoreWho Cares? The Economics of Dignity
At the centre of the HIV/AIDS response are the 12 million people who need care and treatment. Those who are ill require support from carers who provide physical, social and psychological support. Yet these carers – essential actors in the response – are often invisible to the system that...
Read MoreThe Right to Sound Education in the City of New York
Nature of the Case Challenge against state school funding system on the basis of the Education Article of the New York Constitution (Article XI § 1). The case addressed a range of issues including, the constitutional right to a sound basic education, adequacy of school funding, budgetary allocations, and...
Read MoreSocial Protection Topic Guide
This guide provides an overview of social protection concepts, approaches, issues, debates and the evidence. It primarily focuses on longer-term developmental social protection, rather than humanitarian responses, and on low-income countries, drawing on other contexts where appropriate. The aim is to provide an overview of issues, a selection of...
Read MoreMaking Social Policy Work for Women
Watch human rights and policy specialists quit their silos and dialogue productively across disciplines in the third panel, entitled Making social policy work for women, of the research-advocacy-policy workshop Substantive Equality for Women: Connecting Human Rights and Public Policy organized by UNRISD, UNWomen and OHCHR on 15 June 2015....
Read MoreWomen Workers and the Politics of Claims-Making in a Globalizing Economy
The paper analyses the evolving politics of claims-making by women workers in the Global South in the context of a globalized economy. It addresses the following questions. What kinds of claims are prioritized in relation to women workers? Who is making these claims? To whom are they addressed? What...
Read MoreThe Sustainable Development Agenda: From Inspiration to Action
The SDGs stand a chance of hitting the ground running. Even before they are put before the UN General Assembly, politicians, policy makers, civil society, business and the media have been reacting positively to the new sustainable development agenda. The agenda is indeed to be welcomed. It responds to...
Read MoreSocial Inclusion, Poverty Eradication and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development
The concept of social inclusion, also referred to as social integration or social cohesion, represents a vision for “a society for all”, in which every individual, each with rights and responsibilities, has an active role to play (Report of the World Summit for Social Development, 1995). While various definitions...
Read MoreTackling Social Exclusion
It is argued that social protection can reduce the extent to which marginalized people and groups are socially excluded. This paper investigates this thesis by considering what causes marginalization in the first place and what is needed to change the dynamics of exclusion. Using examples from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India...
Read MoreCan Emergency Cash Transfers ‘Piggyback’ on Existing Social Protection Programmes?
This background note focuses on the current discussion among actors in the humanitarian and social protection sectors regarding the use of existing social protection programmes to provide an emergency response. It outlines the overlaps between social protection and humanitarian responses, considers a range of recent examples from low- and...
Read MoreHow Does Nepal’s Child Grant Work for Dalit Children and Their Families? A mixed-methods assessment of programme delivery and impact in Bajura and Saptari
This study examines the delivery and impact of Nepal’s Child Grant, so as to identify implementation barriers and recommend ways to improve effectiveness. The cash transfer is targeted at all households with children aged up to five years in the Karnali zone and at poor Dalit households in the...
Read MoreNepal’s Child Grant – How is it Working for Dalit Families? (Briefing Paper)
Social protection has become an increasingly prominent public policy tool in Nepal over the past two decades. Since the insurgency’s end in 2006, the government, with the support of development partners, has explicitly integrated social protection programming into its broader post-conflict development and reconstruction agenda (Holmes and Uphadya, 2009;...
Read MoreEliminating Discrimination and Inequalities in Access to Water and Sanitation
Patterns of marginalisation and exclusion are present all over the world, with stark and persisting inequalities in access to water and sanitation. Progress made in the water and sanitation sector does not always benefit those who are most in need of these services, in particular the poorest, people living...
Read MoreHIV-Sensitive Social Protection: What does the evidence say?
Social protection increases the resilience of households to shock and reduces barriers to essential services. When done well, it is based on a comprehensive assessment of risks and vulnerabilities, including those related to HIV and AIDS. A social protection strategy and its constituent programmes are designed to reduce, mitigate...
Read MoreMutual Reinforcement of the Human Right to Social Protection and the Human Right to Water and Sanitation
The rights to social protection and water and sanitation can and should be mutually reinforcing, particularly if the linkages are made explicit. Such linkages include both consideration of access to water and sanitation in the design of social protection systems, as well as explicit recognition of the human right...
Read MoreRealizing the Right to Social Security and the Right to Food (ESS Working Paper No. 51)
This paper identifies conceptual synergies and dissonances between food security and income security. It considers the contribution of mainstream social protection instruments, such as cash transfers, to food security. The paper presents specific food security policies that would strengthen the ability of national social protection floors to address food...
Read MoreWater Supply, Sanitation and Hygiene: Human Rights That Are Crucial to Health and Development
This brief explains the importance of water supply, sanitation and hygiene in post-2015 sustainable development...
Read MoreEnabling Aspirations, Realizing Rights: Social Protection for Adolescent Girls
Adolescent girls’ rights and their power to drive social change and achieve inclusive are crucial to sustainable human development. This recognition comes at a time of increased global interest in understanding and offering solutions to the challenges girls face as they enter the second decade of their lives. Aspirations...
Read MoreThe Right to Adequate Food (Fact Sheet No. 34)
According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), more than one billion people are undernourished. Over two billion suffer from a lack of essential vitamins and minerals in their food. Nearly six million children die every year from malnutrition or related diseases, that is about...
Read MoreInter-American Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Persons with Disabilities
Inter-American Convention on Protection the Human Rights of Older Persons (Draft Resolution)
Article 17: The Right to Social Security All older persons have the right to social security to protect them so that they can live in dignity. State Parties shall progressively promote, within available resources, the provision of income to ensure a dignified life for older persons through social security...
Read MoreThe Right to Adequate Housing (Fact Sheet No. 21)
International human rights law recognizes everyone’s right to an adequate standard of living, including adequate housing. Despite the central place of this right within the global legal system, well over a billion people are not adequately housed. Millions around the world live in life- or health-threatening conditions, in overcrowded...
Read MoreRight to Adequate Housing in Peru
Nature of the Case Constitutional remedy filed against a lower court decision of March 21, 2013 (resolución de fojas 394, Sala Especializada Civil de la Corte Superior de Justicia de Cajamarca), which dismissed a complaint by a citizen of Cajamarca against the Ministry of Energy and Mines, and Minera...
Read MoreProgress on Sanitation and Drinking Water: 2015 Update and MDG Assessment
In 2000 the Member States of the United Nations signed the Millennium Declaration, which later gave rise to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Goal 7, to ensure environmental sustainability, included a target that challenged the global community to halve, by 2015, the proportion of people without sustainable access to...
Read More