Social protection is a policy instrument with robust, flexible and widely available delivery mechanisms. In this respect social protection is generating further political interest as it allows for the rapid channeling of support to people most in need of assistance, and mitigates the effects of humanitarian disasters by strengthening targeted beneficiaries coping mechanisms; social protection also holds significant potential to transform short-term humanitarian interventions into development processes to achieve resilience, peace, stabilisation and economic growth in countries in crises.

This is why the European Commission launches the Guidance Package (GP) on Social Protection across the Humanitarian-Development Nexus. It results from an inter-service initiative led by the European Commission’s Directorate-General for International Cooperation and Development (DEVCO), Directorate-General for European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations (ECHO) and Directorate-General for Neighbourhood and Enlargement Negotiations (NEAR). The Guidance Package provides concrete and practical guidance to social protection as an effective short- and long-term response to multivariate shocks, protracted crises and displacement based on the current body of knowledge, including brief definitions, and processes of social protection approaches in most challenging settings. It illustrates the related challenges based on selected country practices, such as Somalia, Mali, Malawi, Colombia, Yemen, Lebanon, Kyrgyzstan etc.

All parts of the Guidance Package will be published in this online community of practice to promote learning and to facilitate knowledge exchange among members of the community. Community members can now access the summary of the forthcoming reference document, as well as two case studies (Lebanon and Somalia). On a weekly basis, more content will be added to the community library and to the European Commission´s community page. The reference document presenting the consolidated findings and methodology will be launched in March 2019.

For more information about the GP and the material being produced by the SPaN initiative, stay tuned in our community and share your experience with us!