Social Protection for LGBT People: Challenges and good practices
How does social protection address the needs of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people? How can a rights-based approach be used to ensure that their needs are fully taken into account? In this video, Andrés Scagliola from the Social Development Department of the City of Montevideo discusses challenges and...
Read MoreSocial Protection and Care in the Sustainable Development Goals
Care and social protection are both explicitly mentioned in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). However, the Goals fall short of addressing how gendered power relations can be an impediment to women being able to fully enjoy their human rights. Valeria Esquivel from UNRISD discusses how social protection can contribute...
Read MoreSocial Protection for Food Security and Rural Poverty Reduction Social Protection for Food Security and Rural Poverty Reduction
How can human rights be used to reduce rural poverty? How can subsistence farmers and workers, indigenous groups and people in rural areas be guaranteed the right to food security? In this video, Maya Takagi from the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) discusses the organization’s approach to ensuring that...
Read MoreThe Economic, Cultural and Social Dimensions of Social Protection
How do economic, cultural and social rights fit in with social protection? How can duty bearers make sure that these rights are guaranteed for all, especially those excluded from the labour market? In this video, Christian Courtis from the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) discusses...
Read MoreOvercoming Exclusion, Promoting Rights: Challenges and Opportunities in Social Protection
In this video, Katja Hujo (UNRISD) and Isabel Ortiz (International Labour Organization) introduce Overcoming Exclusion and Promoting Rights: Challenges and Opportunities in Social Protection, an official side event of the 30th Human Rights Council. In this video series, experts from international organizations, governments and civil society discuss ways to...
Read MoreSocial Protection and Human Rights: About the Platform
Regional Perspective: Linking Social Protection and Human Rights
What responsibilities exist at the regional level to provide rights-based social protection? The Organization of American States’ Alexandra Barrantes talks about the importance of shifting the focus to people as rights-holders rather than beneficiaries; the role of legal frameworks (such as the San Salvador Protocol) in creating comprehensive social...
Read MoreActivist Perspective: Linking Social Protection and Human Rights
How does a rights-based approach support civil society organizations in their advocacy for universal access to social protection? In this video, Priti Darooka, founder and executive director of the Programme on Women’s Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (India) talks about the role of human rights frameworks in supporting the...
Read MorePolicy Perspective: Linking Social Protection and Human Rights
How can governments fulfil their obligation to provide social protection and respect the rights of all? Andrés Scagliola from the Government of the City of Montevideo, Uruguay, describes his experience developing and implementing policy that safeguards lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) people’s right to social...
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 MoreMigration Governance and Migrant Rights in the Southern African Development Community (SADC): Attempts at Harmonization in a Disharmonious Region
This paper examines prospects for enhanced regional migration governance and protection of migrants’ rights in the Southern African Development Community (SADC). Migration in this region is substantial in scale and diverse in nature, incorporating economic, political and mixed migration flows. In addition to movements between countries within the region,...
Read MoreWhat is a transformative approach to care, and why do we need it?
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...
Read MoreA Rights-Based, Gender-Equitable Approach to the Regional Governance of Migration: An Elusive or Achievable Prospect?
Videos available...
Read MoreTransnational Social Movements in ASEAN Policy Advocacy: The Case of Regional Migrants’ Rights Policy
Various processes have swept over Southeast Asia in the last four decades, producing pressures not only in the economic but also in the political and social milieus. When these processes congealed, transnational social movements (TSMs), which earlier had not paid much attention to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations...
Read MoreThe Political Economy of Pension Re-Reform in Chile and Argentina: Toward More Inclusive Protection
This paper argues that reforms implemented in 2008, the re-nationalization of the private pension funds in Argentina and the introduction of a social pension in Chile have moved both countries toward greater social inclusion in old-age protection. In the case of Chile this was achieved in 2008 after extensive...
Read MorePoverty, Inequality and Social Protection in Southeast Asia
Social protection is now widely accepted as encompassing a set of programmes designed to assist individuals and households in maintaining basic consumption and living standards when confronted by a range of contingencies across the life course (including ill-health, unemployment and old age). While often considered a luxury available only...
Read MoreCombating Poverty and Inequality: Structural Change, Social Policy and Politics
This report argues that this is because many current approaches to reducing poverty and inequality fail to consider key institutional, policy and political dimensions that may be both causes of poverty and inequality, and obstacles to their reduction. Moreover, when a substantial proportion of a country’s population is poor,...
Read MoreGendered Impacts of Globalization: Employment and Social Protection
The last three decades have seen remarkable changes in economic structures and policies both within and across countries, loosely captured by the term globalization. This paper reviews evidence on how key aspects of globalization processes have impacted the real economy, in terms of employment and social conditions of work...
Read MoreSocial Protection and Poverty
In the last decade, social protection has emerged as a policy framework employed to address poverty and vulnerability in developing countries. This report has two main aims: to provide an overview of social protection, and to provide an assessment of its potential contribution to addressing poverty and vulnerability in...
Read MoreCombating Poverty and Inequality: Structural Change, Social Policy and Politics
Chapter 5 of Combating Poverty and Inequality: Structural Change, Social Policy and Politics, argues that universal social protection – that which covers the entire population with adequate benefits and is grounded in claimable entitlements, whether derived from rights or payments by institutions and individuals – can contribute to...
Read More