Extensive coverage gaps in social protection worldwide still are associated with significant underinvestment in social protection, particularly in Africa, Asia and the Arab States. In 2012, the ILO Convention No. 202, concerning National Floors of Social Protection, established that signatory countries should guarantee access to nationally defined social protection floors. To support the global debate on the Global Fund and the implementation of Social Protection Floors, the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES) commissioned this study. Its objective is to explore the feasibility and necessity of a global financing mechanism for social protection, focusing on Nepal and Uganda.

The study eventually determined (i) the cost of co-financing the closure of national gaps in social protection floors, including access to essential health care; (ii) the redistributive impact of such policies in terms of poverty reduction and the reduction of inequality; (iii) the effects of a global funding mechanism support on the achievability of the social protection-related SDG targets in the sample countries; and (iv) the effects of the fund support on countries’ social protection systems resilience in times of crisis.