Children represent over half of the Senegalese population and a large portion of them remains poor and vulnerable. Health, education and poverty indicators suggest that many children are in critical situations, in urgent need of social protection and that significant disparities are found across location and wealth. Nationwide, 5%...

The Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) Thematic Guideline is a reference document targeting the wide ranging internal and external stakeholders in social protection. The purpose of the Guideline is to provide basic information and knowledge about social protection such as an overview of social protection around the world, trends...

This report examines the economic crisis’ effect on child social protection in...

This document explains the social security entitlements for all persons in...

This publication provides an up-to-date overview of Austria’s welfare services and benefits. It highlights the basic aspects and benefits of individual systems catering to families, old age, health, unemployment, social distress as well as the development of social spending and its funding....

This paper provides background information and analysis on the relevance of rights-based approaches (RBAs) to development for the provision of social protection (SP) in developing countries, supported through international development assistance. This background paper does not purport to serve as programmatic guidance; it only identifies key arguments and some...

The aim of this report is to provide these policy constituents with a comprehensive mapping and analysis of the key issues which can be used to identify the most important social and economic issues that need to be addressed and act as a guide for the development of social...

UNESCO strives through its intergovernmental programme on Management of Social Transformations (MOST) to make a stronger linkage between social science research and public policy making. Social science policy research fed by dialogues among policy makers, practitioners from civil society, beneficiaries and participants of specific policy and programme interventions and...

This briefing paper addresses the state of social protection for children in...

Over the past two decades, Africa’s strong economic growth has paved the way for poverty reduction. Between 1995 and 2008, the percentage of the African population living in poverty fell from 58 percent to 48 percent (World Bank 2011). Nevertheless, high poverty levels persist, especially in rural areas, and...

This paper was prepared in the context of the United Nations Inter-Agency Support Group (IASG) on Indigenous Issues, which aims to strengthen  cooperation and coordination among UN agencies, funds, entities and programmes on indigenous peoples’ issues and to support the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, and to promote...

This publication summarizes existing knowledge on the impact of cash transfers on women. These transfers are of relevance for gender equality, first, because as a group, women spend fewer years in paid employment than men, receive lower wages, and live longer. All three differences increase women’s risks of poverty....

As the data in this new edition of the Innocenti Report Card series show, in the past five years, rising numbers of children and their families have experienced difficulty in satisfying their most basic material and educational needs. Most importantly, the Great Recession is about to trap a generation...

The first section clarifies the theoretical evolution of the concept of the “care economy” in the English-speaking literature, the ways in which it has been used and understood in the region, and its intersections with “care” and with “the economy.” The second section reveals the limits that the construction...

The meanings of care are contested – the approaches to care in the development and feminist literature have varied greatly. At the same time, care is a common word, loaded with moral meanings concerning notions of duty and love, and care is commonly associated with women. These associations are...

The 2014 Human Development Report – Sustaining Human Progress: Reducing Vulnerabilities and Building Resilience provides a fresh perspective on vulnerability and proposes ways to strengthen resilience. According to income-based measures of poverty, 1.2 billion people live with $1.25 or less a day. However, according to the UNDP Multidimensional Poverty Index,...

How can social protection best be achieved in situations of fragility? This paper argues that while the objectives for social protection in fragile states are essentially the same as in development contexts, social protection instruments, financing and delivery need to be adapted. In order to scale up social protection...

This paper reflects on the methodological implications of operationalising an expanded framework for evaluating social protection programmes. It specifically discusses the combination and integration of methods as part of the expanded evaluation framework, and does so by using an ongoing evaluation of a cash transfer pilot programme in Tigray, Ethiopia as...

This report summarises a workshop which brought together representatives from various organizations active in social protection. It presents a mapping of existing, comparable, internationally collected data and related indicators on social protection (and more specifically its contribution to ensuring basic income security throughout the life cycle) and a reflection...

Ghana’s National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) is an innovative attempt to extend social protection to informal workers, and, as such, it may hold important policy lessons for other countries where the informal economy is large and growing and where informal workers are excluded from existing social protection mechanisms. Few...

This paper focuses on the analysis of experience in creating fiscal space for the extension of social protection. It presents the results of studies conducted in eight developing countries (Bolivia, Botswana, Brazil, Costa Rica, Lesotho, Namibia, South Africa and Thailand) that successfully extended social protection including floors for national...

The aim of this research is to identify good and bad practices of Single Window Services around the world, by looking at the experiences of countries where these services are already in place. Link to Word...

The Government of Rwanda requested the ILO to carry out a feasibility study on the introduction of a new maternity benefit scheme in Rwanda. For the moment, public and private sector employers in Rwanda provide 12 weeks of paid maternity leave to female employees based on labour laws. Women on maternity...

This report is part of a series of technical cooperation reports produced by the Social Security Department and the Employment Policy Department of the International Labour Office within the framework of the ILO/EU project “Improving Social Protection and Promoting Employment”. The project was funded by the European Commission and...

This report is the result of collaboration between the Government of Namibia and the ILO. Drawing on the Social Protection Expenditure and Performance Review (SPER) and Social Budget methodologies, the objectives of the report are: 1) to improve the knowledge and information base on the coverage and performance of...