The Law The United States’ Fair Housing Act (FHA) 42 U.S.C. §§ 3601–3619 Section 3604(b) states that “…it is unlawful [t]o discriminate against any person in the terms, conditions, or privileges of sale or rental of a dwelling, or in the provision of services or facilities in connection therewith,...

Universal social protection is a potent development policy tool that can alleviate poverty, inequality and social exclusion. In fact, few countries have been able to reduce poverty and improve living conditions on a broad scale without comprehensive social protection systems in place. The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development underscores...

This report looks into employment discrimination faced by transgender people while seeking employment in four countries in South-East Asia– Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, and Viet Nam. The findings from this study provide direct evidence of discrimination against trans people in job hiring practices in the...

Tracking older adults in the Health and Retirement Study from 1992 to 2016, we find that about one-half of full-time, full-year workers ages 51 to 54 experience an employer-related involuntary job separation after age 50 that substantially reduces earnings for years or leads to long-term unemployment. The steady earnings...

This report presents the findings of a recent study on social enterprises in Sri Lanka. The study used a combination of desk research, interviews with expert stakeholders and a survey of social enterprises, which engaged representatives from a diverse range of industries and sectors across the country. For the...

Interest in social enterprises in Indonesia is growing alongside increased emphasis on entrepreneurship in general. This is evident in the growing number of events, research, and government activities focused on social enterprise. The concept of social enterprise was formally acknowledged for the first time by the Government of Indonesia...

In 2015, leaders of all countries committed to “eradicate extreme poverty for all people everywhere” by 2030. In the past 25 years, the world has managed to halve the number of people living in extreme poverty. Yet despite this progress, at least 400 million people will still be living on...

New technologies continue to present great risks and opportunities for humanitarian action. To ensure that their use does not result in any harm, humanitarian organisations must develop and implement appropriate data protection standards, including robust risk assessments. However, this requires a good understanding of what these technologies are, what...

The Social Outlook for Asia and the Pacific lays out new arguments and evidence for the critical and urgent need to increase investment in people, particularly in social protection. Developing countries in Asia and the Pacific only spend about 3.7 per cent of GDP on social protection, compared to...

Just Transition—the idea that justice and equity must form an integral part of the transition towards a low-carbon world—is increasingly being mobilized both to counter the idea that protecting the environment and protecting jobs are incompatible, and to broaden the debate to justice-related issues such as the kinds of...

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) proclaimed the equality of all human beings in dignity and rights. The right to social security, however, has been taken more seriously only since the 2000s, through calls for ‘Social Security for All’ and ‘Leaving no-one behind’. The book investigates a major...

Evaluations of social protection interventions across Africa often register significant success in improving household food security indicators, but little or no improvement in individual nutritional outcomes. One reason is under-coverage of poor people; another is the low value of social transfers. This paper reviews experiences with social protection in...

Cash transfers have expanded rapidly in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) around the world in the past decade. The contexts in which they are implemented have also diversified; while cash transfers were mostly adopted initially as central elements of social protection systems, they have become increasingly popular as a...

Given the rise in humanitarian emergencies triggered by climate-related risks and conflict, often in contexts of chronic poverty and vulnerability, the international community is calling for the better integration of short-term humanitarian assistance and longer-term development interventions. In this context, social protection is increasingly portrayed as a policy tool...

WIEGO and the IDWF partnered to write this toolkit to support International Domestic Workers Foundation affiliates in their efforts to make the Domestic Workers Convention, 2011 (No. 189) real for domestic workers. The Toolkit describes Domestic Workers Convention, 2011 (No. 189) and its history and provides three steps on...

The adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) has given a new urgency to efforts to confront deficits in employment. We take up the call to improve the working conditions of informal workers who face being left behind given that processes of formalisation are unlikely to incorporate them in...

Women’s economic empowerment has gained increasing attention within the global development agenda in recent years, bolstered by the adoption of a range of relevant targets within the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in 2015. Yet the specific experiences of older women often remain underexplored and unrecognised, leaving them invisible to...

Women’s economic empowerment has gained increasing attention within the global development agenda in recent years, bolstered by the adoption of a range of relevant targets within the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in 2015. Yet the specific experiences of older women often remain underexplored and unrecognised, leaving them invisible to...

This is the third in a series of policy guides developed to support policymakers and practitioners in Asia and the Pacific in their efforts to strengthen social protection. This policy guide explains the  administrative processes, organizational policies and systems required to implement tax-financed social protection, focusing on schemes providing...

This policy paper: (i) provides a global overview of the organization of pension systems and their contribution to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG); (ii) monitors SDG indicator 1.3.1 for older persons, analyses trends and recent policies in 192 countries, including the extension of legal and effective coverage in a...

Most analyses of Central and Eastern Europe’s (CEE) second-pension pillars focus on Hungary and Poland, the first CEE governments to establish such pillars (1997-1999) and the first to retrench them (2010-2011). However, as the regional front-runners in second-pillar creation and termination, Hungary and Poland differ in some important ways...

This paper documents the reversal of pension privatization and the reforms that took place in the 1990s and 2000s in Venezuela. The report analyses the political economy of different reform proposals, and the characteristics of the new pension system, including laws enacted, governance and social security administration, social dialogue,...

This paper documents the reversal of pension privatization and the reforms that took place in the 1990s and 2000s in Nicaragua. The report analyses the political economy of different reform proposals, and the characteristics of the new pension system, including laws enacted, governance and social security administration, social dialogue,...

This paper documents the reversal of pension privatization and the reforms that took place in the 1990s and 2000s in Ecuador. The report analyses the political economy of different reform proposals, and the characteristics of the new pension system, including laws enacted, coverage, benefit adequacy, financing and contribution rates,...

This paper documents the reversal of pension privatization and the reforms that took place in the 1990s and 2000s in Poland. The report analyses the political economy of different reform proposals, and the characteristics of the new pension system, including laws enacted, coverage, benefit adequacy, financing and contribution rates,...