Good girls and good education: avoiding the “bad life” in Rwanda
“We have sex to stay in school, and we want to go to school so that we don’t have to have sex.” This year’s International Day of the Girl Theme is Innovating for Education. This theme appeals to me on a number of levels, but mainly because it is somewhat...
Grandmas, Pensions and Female Genital Cutting
Rebecca Calder reports on the surprising finding that pensions may be contributing to a reduction in female genital cutting in Karamoja, Uganda. In the 7th edition of our Pathways Perspectives...
Mis-labelled Cash Transfers
Nicholas Freeland, a Senior Social Policy Specialist, criticises a report written about a two year pilot social protection scheme in Morocco and how an unconditional transfer became 'mislabelled'.
To condition or not to condition: what is the evidence?
‘The World Bank do not like having conditions imposed on them: so why impose them on others?’ In the first of our Pathways Perspectives of the year, we look at...
Social protection programme’s role in tackling female genital mutilation highlighted
Uganda’s Senior Citizens Grant (SCG) is contributing to the combating of female genital mutilation, the Government of Uganda has highlighted. A video from the Government’s Expanding Social Protection programme – responsible...
Poverty-targeting harms non-beneficiary children in the Philippines
Credit where credit is due. The World Bank recently published a report on the Philippines Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Programme scheme showing that, among young children excluded from the scheme, stunting rates increased by an average of 11 percentage points. In contrast, among beneficiary children aged 6 to 36 months, stunting fell by...
SIDA’s event highlights lessons for progressive realisation of universal social protection to decrease inequality
In an event titled “Expanding social protection to decrease inequality,” Carin Jämtin, Director General of the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA), emphasised that “COVID-19 presents an opportunity for universal...
Analysing the scope for social protection in Somaliland
In the absence of government-led social protection schemes, Save the Children is piloting a child-sensitive social protection (CSSP) programme in Somaliland. Anh Tran, from Development Pathways, is working with Save the Children to analyse the scope for social protection in Somaliland, building on the CSSP, and providing specific recommendations to lay the foundation for building inclusive social protection schemes in Somaliland, that leave no children behind.
A Family Stimulus – Supporting Children, Families and the Economy through the Pandemic
“The UK has in place one of the least generous social security systems in the developed world” warns report titled: A Family Stimulus: Supporting children, families and the economy through the pandemic recently released by Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) in collaboration with Trades Union Congress (TUC).
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...