2. Social Protection
• Protect basic levels of consumption
among those in poverty or in danger of
falling into poverty;
• Facilitate investment in human and
other productive assets to escape from
persistent and intergenerational
poverty;
• Strengthen the agency of those in
poverty so that they can overcome their
predicament
3. Concepts related to SP
• social policy
• economic protection
• safety nets
• social insurance
• social assistance
• social security
4. Selected approaches
• The World Bank’s Social Risk Management
deals with specific crisis but has a narrow
focus. Vulnerability only in economic terms
and cannot address of chronic poverty.
• IlO’s social minimum floor combines social
assistance with social insurance and labour
regulations
5. Selected approaches
• UNICEF: not only income poverty and economic
shocks, but also social vulnerability, thus taking into
account the inter-relationship between exclusion and
poverty
• ADB SP index: draw a clear distinction between SP
and more general growth promotion, poverty
reduction and social development programs such as
mainstream vocational training, basic nutrition,
health and educational services, and community
development
6. Social Justice
• Fair distribution of benefits, opportunities
and burdens
• Justice is the first virtue of social institutions.
• Principles
• Equality
• Needs
• Desert
7. Social Justice in the UN
…the overall level of inequality in the
world had risen since the beginning
of the 1980s. The trend towards
greater equality, evident in most
regions following the Second World
War, has to a significant extent been
reversed during the past few decades,
and all signs point to a continuation
of this tendency.
8. Social Justice in the UN
• Domains
• Equality of rights
• Equality of opportunities
• Equity of living conditions
• Inequalities in distribution of
• income
• assets
• opportunities for work and remunerated employment
• access to knowledge
• health services, social security and the provision
• of a safe environment.
• opportunities for civic and political participation
9. Inequality (barriers)
• Financial: fees, opportunity cost
• Legal: registrations, legal access
• Socio-cultural: discrimination because of
gender, ethnicity, physical ability, age,
etc.
• Political: political decisions that exclude
social groups/individuals
10. “Transformative” SP
• In addition to targeting the specific conditions
of the diverse social groups, social protection
must also be “transformative”, i.e. it should
also target the structural elements that place
those groups in a situation of vulnerability in
the first place
Social justice as the goal of social
protection
11. A framework for social protection
and social justice
Inequalities Temporality
• Financial: fees, opportunity • Transient/crisis
cost • Chronic
• Legal: registrations, legal Social Vulnerability
access exclusion Risks
• Socio-cultural:
discrimination because of
gender, ethnicity, physical
ability, age, etc.
• Political: political decisions
that exclude social groups/
individuals
Context/Tools Social Social
• Citizenship Justice Protection
• Legal empowerment
• Rights-based
approach
• Rule of law
12. More than academic
• Instruments: pensions, public works,
laws
• Design: targeting vs universal, cash vs
food, conditional vs unconditional
• Scope: individual, communities,
institution
