UNICEF and IPC-IG paper series on Covid-responsive Social Protection Landscapes in South Asia
By Abdul Alim (Regional Social Policy Advisor, UNICEF Regional Office for South Asia), Fabio Veras, Rafael Osório and Pedro Arruda (IPC-IG).
By the time Covid-19 has emerged as a global crisis, UNICEF Regional Office for South Asia (ROSA) and its country offices in the region were heading towards the conclusion of a series of studies on what we now refer to as ‘the pre-Covid social protection landscape of the region’. This strategical partnership was crucial for enabling a time-sensitive effort for cataloguing public responses from South Asian governments, with a particular focus on social protection responses and the extent to which these were fit to protect a group that is almost by default excluded from regular social protection systems - ‘the missing middle’.
We are now glad to finally share with you the final version of studies that resulted form this effort. Updated up to the end of July 2020, these studies are a resourceful asset at the hand of policymakers and the development community at large not only for organizing the main forecasts expected for the region in terms of socioeconomic impacts, but also for scrutinizing a very large number of policy responses through an extensive validation process that makes the final analysis attentive of design features and context-specificity that could be easily unnoticed or misunderstood otherwise. We hope the knowledge products resulting from this effort can provide a good account of the several social protection responses being deployed thus far, and that the deeper institutional and structural limitations of the current responses can inform the timely transformation of those into lasting and efficient social protection mechanisms capable of enabling societies to go from mitigation to recovery and ultimately to come out stronger at the other side with more shock-responsible and integrated social protection systems to better protect the population in the years to come.
Knowledge products of this Research Series:
Research Report No. 47. Socio-economic impacts of COVID-19, policy responses and the missing middle in South Asia by Nicolò Bird, Yannick Markhof, Beatriz Burattini, Fábio Veras Soares and Élise Chrétien (main report)
One Pager 447 — COVID-19 and social protection in South Asia: Afghanistan by Beatriz Burattini
One Pager 448 — COVID-19 and social protection in South Asia: Bangladesh by Fabianna Bacil and Gabriel Soyer
One Pager 449 — COVID-19 and social protection in South Asia: Bhutan by Krista Joosep Alvarenga and Fábio Veras Soares
One Pager 450 — COVID-19 and social protection in South Asia: India by Fabianna Bacil and Gabriel Soyer
One Pager 451 — COVID-19 and social protection in South Asia: Maldives by Krista Joosep Alvarenga
One Pager 452 — COVID-19 and social protection in South Asia: Nepal by Isabela Franciscon and Pedro Arruda
One Pager 453 — COVID-19 and social protection in South Asia: Pakistan by Yannick Markhof and Khurram Arif
One Pager 454 — COVID-19 and social protection in South Asia: Sri Lanka by Isabela Franciscon and Pedro Arruda
