Blog

Let’s begin with a rich synthesis! Beazley et al summarize the performance of select social protection Covid-19 responses in Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Kenya, Pakistan, Sierra Leone and Uganda . Trade-offs were in full display: Pakistan and Bangladesh showed the widest coverage (reaching 50 and 13% of the population, respectively), but they also provided the least generous transfers (in the case of Pakistan 1-5% of the annual consumption of bottom quarter of the income distribution). Those two countries were also the fastest in response, including reaching half of target beneficiaries in less than a month (in its first week, Pakistan enrolled 1M people/day for cash transfers). Sierra Leone, instead, reached only 5% of households, but transfers’ adequacy was 23% of bottom...Read more

In an age of increasingly digital social protection system, an important and sometimes overlooked issue is data protection. While digitalisation brings many benefits in the form of increased efficiencies, reduced costs, and increased transparency and inclusiveness, it also carries certain risks. One of these risks is that the use of technology in creating digital social protection systems may not take into account data protection and the citizens' right to privacy sufficiently. This blog summarises the exchanges and key messages raised by the expert panel at the webinar ‘‘ Key Issues of Data Protection for Social Protection and Implications for Linking Social Protection to Sustainable Employment ’’, held on 27 April 2021 and organised by the Social Protection for Employment Community,...Read more

This blog post was first published on BRAC website. Please check it here . The necessity of supporting the host community for building better livelihoods is as acute as addressing the needs of the refugees. A study by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) suggests that host communities have been facing multiple challenges including price hikes, fall in daily wages for labour work, service shortages and environmental degradation since the refugee influx. To improve the overall poverty rate of Cox’s Bazar, targeted interventions for both the refugees and host community are required. BRAC’s Ultra-Poor Graduation (UPG) programme has been working with the host community since 2018, with context-specific interventions to strengthen the socio-economic...Read more

The MENASP-CP Network project is led by the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) Social Policy Network (University of Bath) in partnership with the Overseas Development Institute (ODI). Funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council’s Global Challenges Research Fund , the project brings together a host of UK and international research leaders and partner organisations to undertake an ambitious programme of cross-disciplinary innovation and capability development in the governance of social policy in the MENA region. Specifically, the project aims to forge a paradigm shift in the critical analysis and policy practices of conflict-prevention in the Arab countries of the Southern Mediterranean region (the Levant and North Africa) – our geographical focus. It does this by advocating a...Read more