Realizing Children’s Right to Social Protection in the Middle East and North Africa: a compendium of UNICEF’s contributions

Organization(s): UNICEF
Author: Edward Archibald
Regions: Middle East and North Africa
Country: Algeria, Djibouti, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Palestine, Syria, Tunisia, Yemen
Year: 2019
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This Compendium documents the broad range of UNICEF’s social protection interventions in MENA from 2014-2017. The Compendium illustrates how UNICEF has worked hand in hand with partner governments in both humanitarian and development settings and succeeded in reaching the most vulnerable children with social protection mechanisms. Thetimeframe selected represents UNICEF’s previous global Strategic Plan, which included social inclusion and social protection as a discrete focus area. Where possible, documented evidence for impacts that have emerged in 2018, have also been included. Information for the Compendium has been sourced from UNICEF Country Office Annual Reports, internal reporting, or has otherwise been documented in a published study or report.

UNICEF takes a holistic approach to helping governments build a child-sensitive social protection system. The Compendium includes 20 case studies detailing UNICEF’s contributions in the MENA region across the following five Action Areas:

  1. Generating evidence on child poverty and social protection, and conducting advocacy for evidence-based social protection policies and programmes.
  2. Supporting policies, coordination and financing to strengthen the integration, coherence and child-sensitivity of social protection systems.
  3. Expanding and improving the use of cash transfer programming for children.
  4. Linking cash transfer recipients to information, knowledge and services, and building a better social service workforce.
  5. Supporting social protection in fragile and humanitarian contexts through leveraging or improving the national social protection system.
Social Protection and Human Rights