Is the World Bank’s report on Universal Basic Income taking universality seriously?
16/03/2020
The World Bank recently published a report on Universal Basic Income. In her comments, Gunnel Axelsson Nycander appreciates several aspects of the report, but also points at issues that are missing. The World Bank is not known for promoting universal social protection. Rather, it is seen as one of the...
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How can social protection safeguard children from climate change?
By David Stewart While it’s hard to be precise, the world is currently on track to heat between 3-5 degrees. Already, after 1 degree of warming from pre-industrialised levels the climate crisis is changing the world for children in unprecedented ways. At UNICEF, we recently heard from a panel of...
06/02/2020
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Gates-for-all by the year 2025? Let us kick-start a Global Fund for Social Protection by crowdfunding
Our guest blogger, Michael Cichon, is the former Director of the ILO’s Social Security Department and led the creation of the Social Protection Floor. He is still actively engaged in providing advice on social security globally. At the beginning of the second decade of the 21st century, we still have...
30/01/2020
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Standing in the Sun: Human Rights Abuses in the Name of Financial Inclusion
This blog was originally written for Financial Inclusion Week and was published by the Center for Financial Inclusion at Accion. To read the original blog, click here. By Sarina Kidd & Sarah Langhan. Human rights abuses by payment service providers need to come to an end in order for financial inclusion...
17/12/2019
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What can data tell us about international commitment to providing access to disability benefits?
Written by Patrick Llewellin, Diloá Athias, and Bjorn Gelders In recognition of the International Day of Persons with Disabilities, Development Pathways is launching the 2019 edition of our Disability Benefit Database – a unique inventory of tax-financed disability benefits in low- and middle-income countries around the world. Persons with disabilities – and their households – face a higher risk of living in poverty than people without disabilities. Even when incomes are similar, people with disabilities tend to...
03/12/2019
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Double Jeopardy: How Poverty Targeting Mechanisms Unfairly Impact on Families with a Disabled Member
Our guest blogger Ilene Zeitzer, is President of Disability Policy Solutions. An internationally recognised expert on comparative disability policy, Ms. Zeitzer has worked in more than 65 countries on various disability-related issues. In social protection policy, there is probably no better example of the unintentional consequences of well-intentioned policies than poverty...
02/12/2019
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Can you picture the right to social security?
By Alexandra Barrantes (Development Pathways), and Anna Bulman and Ria Singh Sawhney (Picture Human Rights) Development Pathways and Picture Human Rights have collaborated on a new mini-series on the human right to social security that seeks to demonstrate, through illustration, the importance of framing social protection debates and policy...
26/11/2019
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The World Bank’s new White Paper falls short on its objective of ‘protecting all’
The World Bank recently issued a White Paper on rethinking social protection systems to extend coverage. While at first glance this is an honourable goal, the proposals in Protecting All: Risk-Sharing for a Diverse and Diversifying World of Work would do little to achieve this aim. The paper proposes a rollback of...
22/10/2019
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The golden rule, applied to social protection
Alexandra Barrantes One of my favourite books to read out loud to my children at bedtime is The Golden Rule. It lays out, in very simple terms, the ideal that we should all “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”. But as this is not a...
10/10/2019
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A much-loved English bear points to cash programming that has more impact
Cash transfers are widely recognised as an important tool for tackling poverty and fostering human development outcomes. The operational challenge is to ensure that the right people are paid the right amount of money, regularly and reliably. In this article, guest blogger Charlie Goldsmith argues that schools can offer a...
25/09/2019
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