Reflections from a double landlocked country on the establishment of a digital and integrated information system for social protection
21/07/2021
By Richard Chirchir and Boniface Kibicho If you studied geography in school, then you must know that there are only two double landlocked countries in our spherical geoid: (i) Uzbekistan, in Central Asia, and (ii) Liechtenstein, in Western Europe. So, is there any relationship between access to oceans and social...
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Social registry…or regular sophistry
By Nicholas Freeland Stephen Kidd’s recent paper sets out very clearly the problems associated with the use to which social registries are commonly put: poverty targeting of social assistance, primarily through proxy means testing. I agree with many of his misgivings. But I have an even more fundamental concern about the concept of a “social registry”: what is it intended to...
23/06/2021
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Who are the “poor and vulnerable”? A view from Karamoja, Uganda
Across the globe, governments, researchers and international agencies have striven to better understand poverty and vulnerability, and to provide technocratic solutions to measure income or multidimensional deprivations. Some of these solutions are aimed at guiding policies that will then, hopefully, address poverty in a particular context
26/05/2021
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An exciting new book by Stephen Kidd on the social psychology of an indigenous people
By Ian Skoggard Social science is a broad enterprise focusing on diverse subjects of economics, politics, society and culture, to name a few, mostly all subscribing to objective, analytical, and if possible quantifiable methods of study. What if there was another approach, or dimension, to understand human behaviour, to which...
18/05/2021
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Child benefits in the US — For children here, there, and everywhere
By Dominic Richardson, David Harris, Shea McClanahan and Ian Orton Imagining a post-post Washington Consensus – child benefits in the US offer hope for bolder action for children around the world As part of recent COVID-19-related legislation, the US Government has committed to provide a quasi-universal child benefit (an affluence-tested...
11/03/2021
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Why we need to prioritise universal pensions for women
On International Women’s Day 2021, let’s think about pensions. Why? Women around the world still face highly unequal access to a minimum income in old age.
08/03/2021
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More than just cash: an innovative child grant in Papua province
Given the need to address child development issues and to improve the coverage of social protection programmes across Papua, the Provincial Government of Papua (PGP) responded by launching BANGGA Papua, a child grant for all indigenous Papuan children from birth until their 4th birthday.
03/03/2021
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COVID-19 and social insurance responses in Latin America
This blog post is based on a partnership between the Regional Office for Latin America and the Caribbean of UNICEF and the International Policy Centre for Inclusive Growth (IPC-IG) who have been working on the analysis of the social protection responses and COVID-19, with particular focus on social assistance, school feeding programmes, social insurance and labour market, migration and digitalisation of the implementation of the responses.
24/02/2021
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The vaccine against poverty, inequality and insecurity needs a stronger prescription
The COVID crisis is an opportunity to make the recognition of the role of social protection more permanent, and there is an almost unique opportunity to achieve this.
17/02/2021
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Calling Marcus Rashford: universal child benefits need you!
Last week, the United Kingdom’s social protection system took yet another big step back towards the 19th Century. The news broke that, during the current COVID-19 lockdown, when schools are closed to most pupils, the Government is providing schoolchildren living in poverty with food handouts, rather than offering their families cash. To make a bad situation worse, the food on offer is of limited nutritional quality while the main beneficiary of the scheme has been the business that was contracted by the Government...
20/01/2021
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