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Social Protection for Social Justice

Conference Report The Centre for Social Protection hosted a conference titled ‘Social Protection for Social Justice’ at the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) in Brighton, 13-15 April 2011. Financial support was provided by Concern Worldwide and UNICEF, as well as IDS. For logistical reasons, participation was limited to 100 delegates, who came from over 20 countries: in Africa (Egypt, Ethiopia, Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Zambia, Zimbabwe), Asia (Bangladesh, India, the Philippines, Thailand), Australia, Europe (Germany, Italy, The Netherlands, Switzerland), South America (Colombia, Peru), the United States and UK. Participants included academics from research institutes and universities; officials from the governments of Finland, India, Ireland and Rwanda; as well as practitioners from agencies including ActionAid, Concern Worldwide, DFID, EC, GUFFP, HelpAge, ICHRP, ILO, Save the Children UK, UNDP, UNICEF, UNRISD and the World Bank (see Annex 2: Conference Participants). The conference aimed to explore future directions for social protection that go beyond safety nets and risk management, to address broader concerns with redistributive equity and social injustice. 55 papers were presented. Side events included the launch of two books – ‘Social Protection for Africa’s Children’ and ‘Migration and Social Protection’ – and the 2010 European Report on Development: ‘Social Protection for Inclusive Development’ (see Annex 3: Conference Programme). This report explains the rationale for the conference, introduces the four organising themes of the conference, summarises key findings from the presentations and issues raised under each theme, and identifies conclusions that emerged from plenary discussions.

Conference Rationale

Social protection has successfully established itself as a core function of development policy in recent years, but in many respects it remains firmly rooted in its origins in social safety nets and humanitarian relief, where assistance was provided on a ‘discretionary’ rather than an ‘entitlement’ basis, usually for a limited time period, often in the form of food, and recipients were pejoratively labelled as ‘aid beneficiaries’. Social protection has moved beyond this in some respects: quasi-welfare programmes such as social pension schemes provide regular ongoing transfers; cash transfers have displaced or complemented food aid in emergency and non-emergency contexts; ‘beneficiaries’ are now ‘recipients’, ‘participants’ or even ‘clients’. Nonetheless, the Centre for Social Protection believes that social protection initiatives remain insufficiently focused on achieving social justice outcomes, both in terms of their objectives and in their implementation. The primary objective of most social protection interventions is to protect minimum subsistence levels in low-income households, and the ‘triple F’ crisis (food, fuel and finance) underlined the importance of social transfers in assisting affected people to survive livelihood shocks and preserve their assets. But social protection should not only help poor and vulnerable people to manage risk in the short-term, it should also tackle the sources of vulnerability in the long term. Since many sources of risk and vulnerability are social and political, this implies understanding the socio-political context and engaging with the holders of power and the drivers of inequality, to achieve socially equitable outcomes. There is also much analytical work to be done on how social protection mechanisms are reconfiguring social policy, constructing new social contracts between governments and citizens, and challenging the political discourse in countries throughout Africa, Asia and Latin America.

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Despite rapid advances in social protection thinking and practice in recent years, much work remains to be done, at both the conceptual and operational levels. In particular, the linkages between social protection and social justice are neither fully elaborated nor fully internalised by policy-makers, even those who are sympathetic to ‘rights-based approaches’. At the level of implementation, too few social protection interventions are designed and delivered in ways that truly respect and empower programme participants. Given this context, the conference was organised around four themes.

Conference Themes

Theme 1. Constructing democratic governance: social protection and new social contracts

The political ramifications of the social protection agenda are inadequately understood. What is the nature of the social contract between government and social protection claimants? Has social protection provided mechanisms for civil society mobilisation and citizen empowerment, or does it serve as a residual safety net that buys off social unrest?

Theme 2. Social protection and transformation of social and economic drivers of vulnerability

How can social protection move beyond immediate ‘vulnerability management’ towards sustainable ‘vulnerability reduction’? How can social protection address the underlying, structural, social and political drivers of poverty, vulnerability and inequality? How can social protection avoid stigma and ‘dependency’, and build resilience and autonomy?

Theme 3. Social protection and sustainable adaptation to climate and environmental change

Recent conceptual innovations, such as ‘adaptive social protection’, have sketched out the linkages between social protection and environmental concerns. How can social protection be better integrated with climate change adaptation, disaster risk reduction and related concepts, to achieve socially just outcomes that are also environmentally sustainable?

Theme 4. Social protection, inequality and redistributive justice

Big claims are often made for the potential of social protection, notably cash transfers, to reduce income poverty and inequality between rich and poor. How robust is the evidence base for these claims? Which forms of social protection, in which contexts, are most effective at reducing socioeconomic inequalities and contributing to redistributive justice?

Conference Findings

Opening panel

In a paper presented by Thandika Mkandawire, Jimí Adésìná critiqued the ‘social protection paradigm’ as the ‘social’ side of neoliberalism – a narrow agenda dominated by conditional and unconditional cash transfers, that originated in safety net responses to structural adjustment programmes in the 1980s. Most social protection interventions target the poor or ‘ultra-poor’, their success is demonstrated through ‘randomised control trial’ impact evaluations, and they are disconnected from broader social policy. In Africa, five sets of actors are driving the ‘social protection paradigm: international financial institutions (e.g. the World Bank), bilateral donors, NGOs (often single-issue advocates), consultants, and lower-level bureaucracies in developing countries (higher levels of government are not interested). Adésìná argued for a ‘transformative social policy’ that will reflect a wider vision of society and will fulfil multiple roles, including production, redistribution, protection, reproduction, social cohesion and nation-building, all underpinned by principles of equality and social solidarity.

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Richard Morgan explained that UNICEF’s approach to social protection is driven by the notion of reducing both social and economic vulnerabilities, not merely managing the manifestations of vulnerability with social assistance programmes. Discrimination and exclusion lead to economic and material vulnerability which can only be sustainably tackled by addressing power and social relations. This is what a transformative approach to social protection implies, and it resonates with UNICEF’s renewed focus on equity. Stephen Devereux then explained the rationale for this conference. The ambition is to shift the social protection paradigm away from ‘economic’ protection to genuine ‘social’ protection and empowerment. Despite its phenomenal success since its adoption by donor agencies in the 1990s, social protection is at risk of dropping down the development agenda, now that donor countries are facing financial pressures and political shifts to the right. The challenges are to integrate social protection into broader domestic social policies, and to operationalise the social justice aspects of ‘transformative social protection’. Opening the discussion, Lawrence Haddad suggested that ‘conventional’ social protection might well be ‘transformative’, even without being labelled as such. An incrementalist approach that redistributes cash and assets towards poor people might be more effective at empowering them and transforming social relations in the long run. Also, a bottom-line indicator of successful interventions is improvements in nutrition status, and the evidence from many social protection programmes is positive in this respect, so these achievements should not be discounted. Other participants noted that the coverage of ‘conventional’ social protection remains limited, so the immediate priority should be to extend coverage of social assistance and social security, not to focus attention on the limited ability of these programmes to deliver social justice outcomes. It is also important to take a longer-term ‘historicised’ view of social protection, and to recognise that social protection is unlikely to drive social transformation, but needs to respond to larger ongoing processes of transformation, such as urbanisation, climate change and financial crises. Theme 1: Governance

Two papers looked at the conceptual and ideological linkages between social protection and social justice. Sam Hickey defined social justice as the ways in which major social institutions distribute fundamental rights and duties. While there are many different perspectives on justice, in developing a social justice approach to social protection the ‘relational’ perspective is the best way forward. But social protection is not enough to achieve social justice – which is a much broader concept – and introducing the language of rights and justice to social protection might not be politically useful, as policymakers are often wary of the fiscal and legal implications of having to meet justiciable claims. Naila Kabeer noted that social protection has become popular as a response to the current financial crisis, but only as a reaction to market failure, i.e. within the hegemonic neoliberal paradigm – where the state plays a minimal role – that has proved to be detrimental to inequality. Although the state is the only institution obliged to provide social protection, this does not necessarily imply a return to a state-centric approach. New arguments are needed for a universalist approach – these debates are ongoing in countries like Brazil, India and South Africa – and for convincing sceptical policy-makers about the right to social protection (e.g. social protection as an investment in human capital). One panel considered the role for external actors in constructing social contracts. Charlotte Harland argued that social protection is intrinsically about the relationship between the state and its citizens. While support and learning from international agencies is useful, external actors that aim to achieve social change through ‘transformative social protection’ are implicitly demanding fundamental changes in local power relationships. The profoundly political nature of this type of intervention is unacknowledged or avoided in most of the social protection literature.

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Esther Schüring and Julie Lawson-McDowall agreed that social protection should be part of a social contract that governments conclude with their citizens. The case of Zambia is instructive because international donors have been instrumental in driving the social protection agenda, through pilot projects that the government has failed to scale up. Explaining this ‘stagnation’ social protection requires assessing whether the government has failed to adopt ‘correct’ policy recommendations, whether these recommendations were wrong, or whether progress has been incorrectly evaluated. This led to a consideration of the role of domestic actors in constructing social contracts through social protection. Sajjad Hassan spoke about the range of interventions that the Indian government has recently introduced or upgraded to ‘claims-based’ legislated rights, notably the Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS), the Public Distribution System (PDS), and the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS). Unfortunately, there is a disconnect between national-level rhetoric and ground-level realities – in practice, these social protection instruments continue to function as ‘quick fix’ handouts that fail to address the structural causes of poverty, such as inequality, social exclusion, and ‘elite capture’ by local power structures. Franklins Sanubi reflected on perceptions of social protection in Nigeria, where the concept is still seen as foreign and any government social welfare initiative is interpreted either as public altruism or as cynically motivated to ‘buy’ political support, rather than the democratic evolution of a social contract that extends economic and social rights to citizens. In such contexts, domestic civil society must take a proactive role in building political commitment and holding government accountable for delivering social protection. Rosalinda Ofreneo informed the conference about a participatory civil society movement in the Philippines called the People‘s Social Protection Agenda (PSPA), an alliance of domestic non-government stakeholders that is fulfilling a vital advocacy function, calling for social, gender, and environmental justice and the delivery of social assistance and social security for all. The discussant for this panel, Katja Bender, suggested that these case studies reveal that the process of developing a social contract around social protection should be deconstructed into three stages: negotiating, agreeing, and enforcing the social contract. The key challenges are to design an effective implementation system, and to identify incentives for local government to deliver. The next two panels explored the politics of social protection implementation. Deepta Chopra argued that the MGNREGS in India has limited potential to contribute to establishing social contracts in India, partly because of confusion about what the MGNREGS actually is – anti-poverty measure, job creation scheme, rural development programme, social protection scheme, livelihood promotion scheme, and/or flagship government programme? The discussant, Anna McCord, suggested that the most important ‘transformative’ element of this programme is not so much the work opportunities it offers, but the sense of empowerment that derives from the right to demand work. A presentation by Nidhi Vij showed how the introduction of ‘social audits’ to the MGNREGS has created a platform for participatory governance of social protection programmes. Social audits give villagers a ‘voice’ to hold local administrations and programme implementers accountable for delivery, thus empowering poor people and potentially transforming community-level social relations and political structures. The final set of papers in this theme focused on actors and agents in social protection delivery. Savina Tessitore made a strong case for upgrading the status of ‘recipients’ to ‘citizens’ in social protection programming. This requires the ‘constitutionalisation’ of social rights and the legislation of social policies, backed up by primary guarantees to design and implement these policies, and secondary guarantees to monitor, arbitrate, and ensure compliance. Hania Sholkamy commented on the role of social workers in delivering a conditional cash transfer in Egypt, noting that attention in the social protection discourse has focused on conceptualisation and design, while implementation challenges have been neglected. Specifically, the agents who actually deliver social protection have

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been almost invisible, but social workers are at the interface of the state and ‘beneficiaries’ of state policies, and have complex relationships with the policies they are responsible for implementing. The role of social workers and programme staff is crucial and often under-appreciated, they need not just training but capacity strengthening to be ‘professionalised’. Finally, Dolf te Lintelo argued that the role of informal social protection has also been overlooked because of the preoccupation with states and donor agencies. Instead of seeing the state as a benefactor disbursing social welfare and social rights, a critical appraisal of the state might lead to the conclusion that informal social protection is often necessary to protect poor people against insecurities and vulnerabilities that derive from state actions, or inaction.

Theme 2: Vulnerability

Delivering social protection is particularly challenging in fragile states and situations, but one panel examined ways in which social protection can potentially contribute to improving state-citizen relations in such contexts. Much depends on how social protection is designed and delivered. In a paper that contrasted experiences with cash transfer programmes in Sierra Leone and Kenya, Wale Osofisan showed that weak institutions and eroded infrastructure led to problems such as elite capture and undermined trust in public institutions. Conversely, in northern Kenya institutions such as grievance procedures and rights committees were established that empowered communities to hold the government accountable. Maricar Garde and Paul Dornan explored the linkages between social protection programmes and household coping with shocks, drawing on data from Ethiopia. One debating point that arose was whether evidence that programme participants have higher debt than comparably poor non-participants is a positive sign that access to credit for consumption smoothing was enhanced, or a worrying indication of dangerous levels of household indebtedness. The next panel explored how social protection can address vulnerabilities associated with social and political marginalisation. Aditi Jha argued that such vulnerabilities can be permanently reduced if citizens’ agency in the social and political spheres is extended, transforming powerlessness and resignation into ownership and empowerment. An innovative programme in India empowers selected community representatives by increasing awareness of their entitlements, and organising them to take collective action to claim their rights to social protection and improved service delivery. S. Abdul Thaha considered the vulnerability that derives from ‘identity discrimination’, taking the case of Muslims in Andhra Pradesh, India. The state government has reserved places for Muslims in education and employment, which is controversial but has achieved some redistributive equity. Another source of economic and social vulnerability is disability, which should be a central concern for social protection but, as Marguerite Schneider demonstrated, is all too often neglected in interventions such as cash transfers that target ‘households’ and prioritise economic impacts rather than social objectives. Challenges include defining disability, designing interventions for different types and severities of disability, and ensuring that social grants and other public services are fully accessible to people with disabilities. Gender is a driver of vulnerability that has become so ‘mainstreamed’ in development policy it often disappears. Nicola Jones and Rebecca Holmes reported on a multi-country study that aimed to understand why social protection debates and approaches have typically been gender-blind. Analysis of several case studies revealed that whether programmes are gender-aware depends on the “3 i’s” of social protection: institutions (e.g. whether political parties believe that gendered interventions can influence elections); interests (e.g. whether the programme is run from the Ministry of Gender or the Ministry of Agriculture); and ideas (e.g. whether elites perceive gender inequity as a major driver of poverty and vulnerability, that requires redress through social protection programmes).

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Stephen Devereux presented a case study from South Africa, where women working on commercial farms are extremely vulnerable to eviction and ‘casualisation’. Having lost their access to social security through employment contracts, these women depend on social grants, which are unusually generous in South Africa – but critics argue that they are a social policy response to a failure of economic policy to generate jobs and job security, and that the structural causes of vulnerability among women farm workers and other low-paid workers need to be urgently addressed. One strand running through this set of presentations is whether social protection only provides compensation to people facing unequal power relationships and social relations, or can it truly empower people to overcome these sources of inequity and vulnerability? Moving from women to children, Keetie Roelen interrogated the concept of ‘child-sensitive social protection’, arguing that a more nuanced approach is needed, that disaggregates ‘children’ by age and gender, that recognises the multi-dimensional nature of child poverty, that considers not only children’s current well-being but their future ‘well-becoming’, and that acknowledges that children do not live in isolation, so that appropriate interventions can be designed for each specific context. With this in mind, Peter Whiteford presented a case study from Vanuatu, which found that children face multiple sources of deprivation and vulnerability, some familiar from other contexts and some specific to small island states. Although child poverty in Vanuatu is relatively low and not heavily gendered, children face deprivations in dimensions such as immunisation, health, shelter, sanitation and food – which has implications for the type of social protection that is designed and delivered. Globally, child mortality rates are falling, but at different rates between rich and poor groups within countries, according to cross-country evidence presented by Nicola Hypher. Some countries are achieving equitable progress (pro-poor child mortality reductions) but progress in many others is equity-neutral (no narrowing of the gap between rich and poor). Equitable progress is associated with extending access to social services and coverage of certain social protection instruments, such as conditional cash transfers, social health insurance and targeted cash transfers (e.g. child grants). Social protection aims to reduce vulnerability, but it can also be the source of new vulnerabilities, because it creates new social categories: beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries. Tessa Hochfeld asked whether the Child Support Grant in South Africa is associated with social stigma, given that the CSG is widely (but probably unfairly) associated with welfare dependency and high teenage fertility. Qualitative research finds that this negative rhetoric is internalised by CSG recipients themselves, and their neighbours – although women don’t blame themselves for being poor, many feel shame at being dependent on ‘handouts’ from the state. Next, Ian MacAuslan examined the impact of cash transfers on social relations, specifically whether these programmes generate resentment of recipients by non-recipients, because they ignore the reality that targeted individuals or households are embedded within complex networks of social relations. Negative social impacts can be avoided if communities participate fully in programme implementation, for instance with community-based targeting, and evaluations should consider impacts on social relations to improve future design. The third paper on this panel looked at similar issues on the MGNREGS in India. Despite its many achievements, Laura Camfield argued that it has limited social transformation potential because it fails to address inequities at the community level. It offers equality of opportunity but not equality of outcomes – most benefits accrue to landlords, higher castes, large families, and administering officials. An evaluation from a wellbeing perspective, which assesses impacts on relational and subjective dimensions of participants’ wellbeing, concluded that the programme’s beneficial impacts are offset by its corrosive effects on trust and social relationships. Urbanisation is another under-appreciated source of vulnerability. An innovative approach to social protection was introduced for Kenya’s ‘ultra-poor’ living in urban slums, following the post-election

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violence of 2008. The programme had three components: a monthly cash transfer to meet basic needs, skills development and small grants to promote livelihoods, and a social transformation process to reduce stigma and discrimination within the community. Amina Abdulla reported on an evaluation of this programme that found not only increased dietary diversity and access to education and health care, but also positive social changes such as strengthened social networks, increased self-confidence and greater space for social action and participation. In rural areas, cash transfer programmes are increasingly seen as vehicles for achieving ‘transformative’ impacts as well as livelihood protection and promotion. A review by Zenebe Bashaw Uraguchi of evidence from Bangladesh and Ethiopia concluded that these claims might be overly optimistic. Participants do receive vital support during periods of stress such as the annual hungry season, but limited budgets restrict programme coverage and exclude large numbers of vulnerable people. In both countries, these interventions remain as essentially temporary safety nets with little systematic impact in terms of enhancing redistributive justice.

Theme 3: Climate change

Social protection is increasingly recognised as having a role in building resilience to climate change. Six conference papers addressed this linkage between social protection and climate change justice. Paul Siegel presented a ‘no regrets’ approach (meaning it would improve wellbeing whether or not climate change occurs) that he and Steen Jorgensen call a ‘risk-adjusted social protection floor’, which focuses on creating resilient, equitable and sustainable economic, social and environmental systems that are based on the universal provision of human basic needs. This approach draws on the ‘social risk management’ and ‘adaptive social protection’ frameworks, but adds social guarantees and other rights-based instruments to existing insurance products for disaster risk management. Mark Davies presented ongoing work on adaptive social protection in South Asia, an approach that combines key elements of social protection, disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation, in order to enhance the resilience of livelihoods that are most vulnerable to climate change. Despite the potential gains from a coordinated or integrated approach, there are many challenges at the conceptual and policy levels integrate, not least the risk of propping up livelihood systems that are unsustainable in the long term. Terry Cannon focused on disaster risk reduction in a context of increasing climate risk, arguing that disasters are socially constructed because vulnerability is determined by power inequalities (who lives in marginal environments? who is responsible for most greenhouse emissions?). A rights-based approach to social protection offers a way forward, because conventional disaster responses are reactive and do not address the political origins of vulnerability. Moving from conceptual frameworks to policy interventions, Carol Watson discussed mechanisms for building social protection into adaptive responses to climate change. These should be targeted to people living in areas facing significant environmental risk, especially farmers and pastoralists. Mechanisms included: cash transfers to bolster livelihoods; agro-pastoral input subsidies; public works programmes to enhance environmental infrastructure and the natural resource base; social insurance strategies; and micro-insurance against drought and production failure. A case study of adaptive social protection in Rwanda was presented by Paul Siegel, a country that is implementing an integrated adaptive social protection approach. Public works projects prioritise land conservation, hillside terracing, water resource management and reforestation. A proposed community-based multi-hazard early warning system would trigger rapid responses, such as flexible scaling up of public works and cash transfers when economic and environmental conditions deteriorate. Finally, Rachel Godfrey Wood asked whether social cash transfers have a role to play in climate change adaptation, recognising that cash transfers are the dominant social protection instrument, with a substantial evidence base of positive impacts. Godfrey Wood concluded that cash transfers can build adaptive capacity, by meeting basic needs and reducing immediate vulnerability, financing

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costs of responding to climate shocks, reducing pressures to adopt damaging ‘coping strategies’ that raise future vulnerability, allowing improved risk management and investment in adaptive capacity, and even facilitating mobility and transition into alternative livelihoods.

Theme 4: Inequality

Reductions in inequality are central to the achievement of social justice, and social protection has a direct role to play, as a redistributive mechanism. Kate Carroll pointed out that even where poverty reduction is occurring, inequalities are often increasing because of the dominance of market-led policies. Achieving social justice and inequality reductions through social protection require other policies to be in place, such as accessible and good quality education and health services. Rights-based integrated National Development Strategies are needed, based on redistribution of wealth, self-reliant growth, ecological justice, and women’s rights through recognition of the care economy. Gabriele Köhler demonstrated that many countries in South Asia do, in fact, reflect transformative approaches to social protection in their development policies. Examples include the girls’ education grant in Bangladesh, the social pension in Nepal, the Benazir income support programme in Pakistan, and the Mahatma Ghandi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme in India. Many of these programmes are rights- or claims-based, and some have ‘affirmative’ elements to redress social inequities faced by Dalit, Muslim, or tribal communities. On the other hand, these schemes typically do not consider the underlying causes of exclusion. Social protection takes too narrow a focus – national and international economic and social policies to address inequities seem to have receded. Dipankar Datta presented a specific case study from India: the role of civil societies in strengthening social assistance schemes in Orissa. Good governance – “the mechanisms, processes and institutions through which citizens and groups articulate their interests, exercise their legal rights, meet their obligations and hold the government responsible, accountable and transparent” – is essential if social assistance schemes such as the Public Distribution Scheme and MGNREGS are accessed by the poorest and truly benefit them. Civil society has mobilised to reduce corruption and elite capture of these programmes and improve their delivery, for instance by cellphone- and web-based tracking of the MGNREGS and PDS, creative use of community media, and promoting Right to Information hubs. A major challenge is how to scale up this model from individual communities to national coverage. The discussion on this panel suggested that ‘social protection plus’ is needed to upgrade social protection from social assistance to claims-based rights – this is the ‘transformative’ element. There is an urgent need to link social protection explicitly to social rights, such as paid maternity leave for women. But this is potentially confrontational and raises the question of who should be campaigning for the right to social protection – donors and international NGOs? domestic civil society? citizens? It was noted that countries like Brazil and India have adopted a more ‘political’ approach to social protection than countries where donors are driving the social protection agenda, where calls for a rights-based approach to social protection and citizen mobilisation around social justice are muted. Staying in Asia, Indra Tiwari intriguingly characterised social protection as “a quadripartite indistinct/ sluggish nexus of international propaganda, slothful state, moribund family, and right-prone individual”, and argued that the family system remains the core institution that is responsible for the well-being of individuals. The proliferation of social rights and social protection programmes – which are too limited to provide economic sufficiency and social dignity – targets individuals and ignores the role of families and communities, but when these informal institutions are too poor to provide adequate protection, more complementary support is needed from the government. Ellen Ehmke adopted a ‘welfare regimes’ perspective to explain the trajectory of social protection in India, which also considers the constellation of state, market, community and households in producing social welfare. Path dependency is important in India, where contemporary policies have been shaped by experiences in the pre-colonial, colonial and independence periods. Despite the egalitarian

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provisions made in the Indian constitution, the welfare regime continues to emphasise differences between various groups within the Indian population, and remains fundamentally inegalitarian. David Fryer critiqued the claims made for cash transfers as a ‘revolution’ in development policy, arguing that grants are a relatively cheap and easy elite-driven response to two pressures created by capitalism – fiscal constraints and rising poverty. The only policy changes that have genuine transformative potential are those that increase the agency of subordinate classes. In countries like South Africa, where rising levels of social spending marks a shift from ‘hard’ neoliberalism towards a ‘developmental state’, the state’s role remains passive and residual – poverty is mitigated through social grants, but intervening in the market to ensure high levels of employment is eschewed, and workers’ rights are inadequately protected. This is the problem with liberal democracies – poverty is mitigated at best. In social democracies, ensuring full employment is written into the social contract. The next panel explored challenges in ensuring access to social protection and social rights. Andrew Fischer raised the unfashionable topic of population growth, arguing that, with global population reaching nine billion by mid-century, employment and equity-focused development strategies must be prioritised, and social protection must be scaled up to universal provision. Demographic trends must be factored into these policy debates – the ageing population in the global North versus the youthful population in the global South, urbanisation and de-agrarianisation in the global South, and so on. Rachel Sabates-Wheeler discussed another demographic process – migration – and the challenges that migrants face in accessing social protection from either their home or destination communities. More often than not, social protection is not ‘portable’. Even when formal entitlement rules are established, low-income and low-status migrants often have to negotiate with employers, administrators and others to claim their entitlements. Finally, Wendy Nefdt presented a case study of the role of civil society in extending access to the right to health in South Africa. A group of civil society organisations and academics formed a Learning Network to build social capital and develop materials such as information pamphlets and toolkits for dissemination, with the objective of supporting the realisation of the right to health and social justice. The discussant for this panel, Carly Nyst, discussed a human rights approach to poverty reduction through social protection. For social protection to be transformative, basic human rights principles are needed, including: equality and non-discrimination (extending access to migrants, reducing inaccessibility due to distance, application costs, language barriers, lack of information, lack of ID cards, gender discrimination, etc); universalism (to save financial and social costs of targeting and minimise risks of exclusion); unconditionality (because conditions are patronising to the poor); transparency; accountability; adequacy; and active participation by beneficiaries and civil society. Three papers examined the economic impacts of cash transfers and their links to economic and social empowerment. Michael Sansour discussed a programme in Palestine that promotes economic empowerment through micro-enterprise grants. The programme’s success in terms of income generation, asset accumulation and social capital formation was attributed to its participatory approach at the design and implementation stages. However, in this context the risk of conflict is high, and sustainable livelihoods and social transformation can only be achieved if the sources of conflict are addressed and resolved. Jessica de los Rios talked about a conditional cash transfer programme in Peru that recently introduced a savings component, targeting women participants. The rationale is that mobilising savings is a first step to formal financial inclusion, at lower risk than microcredit, and that access to savings facilities can smooth consumption, protect assets, and enhance women’s autonomy and empowerment, thus reducing social and economic inequalities. Cormac Staunton presented evidence on the multiplier effects of cash transfers and food aid in Zimbabwe, which found that well targeted cash transfers can boost local economies and reduce inequality between programme districts and wealthier districts. However, within communities cash

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transfers can exacerbate inequality, because they are less likely to be shared with poor neighbours than is food aid. The final parallel session considered how social justice is being addressed in global poverty reduction and social protection agendas. Wouter van Ginneken built a case for a human rights approach to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The MDGs are relevant to this issue not only because social protection can contribute towards achieving these goals but because they represent a ‘claim’ by the poor on the global community to meet humanity’s basic needs – in effect, the first step towards a global social contract. The challenge for the MDGS beyond 2015 is to formulate core human rights indicators, that would form a basis for national and international contracts that can hold states accountable. Michael Cichon then presented the ‘Social Protection Floor’, a UN-led initiative that aims to ensure access to a core set of essential services (e.g. health, education, water and sanitation) and social transfers (in cash or in kind) to ensure minimum income and livelihood security for all. Analysis confirms that establishing the Social Protection Floor is affordable (about 1% of global GDP) and would eradicate extreme poverty as well as realising several MDGs. The challenge is to support individual countries in closing crucial protection gaps, by prioritising the allocation of scarce public resources to maximise the reduction of poverty and insecurity. Finally, Philippe Marcadent argued that the four strategic objectives of the Decent Work Agenda – creating jobs, guaranteeing rights at work, extending social protection and promoting social dialogue – are key elements of a social justice approach to social security. Social protection is not only about social assistance to ‘vulnerable groups’, it also covers social security for all workers, where the challenge is to extend social insurance to informal economy workers such as domestic workers and the self-employed. The discussant for this panel, Marcus Kaltenborn, remarked that the MDGs, the Social Protection Floor and the Decent Work Agenda all important components in the progressive development of international law, but that judicial and political frameworks are needed to interpret these rights and give them legal content.

Closing reflections

The closing panel – Sarah Cook, Thandika Mkandawire, Andy Norton, Rachel Sabates-Wheeler, Timo Voipio and Jenn Yablonski – noted key issues that had struck them during the conference, and drew attention to other issues that were inadequately addressed. One area in need of attention is conceptual clarity around key terms like social justice, social policy – even social protection itself, which has evolved since its inception. More systematic thought should also be given to linkages between labour market policies and social protection. Also, inequality needs to be addressed not just through social transfers but through redistribution of productive assets. Notions of citizenship are critical not only in defining eligibility but in establishing the social contract. This raised a counter-point, that the preoccupation with the state as duty-bearer for delivering social protection overlooks the role of informal providers, and the positive or negative relationship between formal and informal social protection remains inadequately understood. In his concluding remarks, Thandika Mkandawire drew attention to three ‘surprising silences’ in the social protection discourse – on ideologies, social movements, and taxation. On ideologies, abstract political philosophies have actually been translated into manifestoes of political parties, and that there is convincing evidence from Europe that social democracies perform better on a number of outcomes. The much-praised successes in social protection in Latin America are coming mainly from the new generation of central leftist regimes, but analysis of these programmes rarely discusses the ideologies of these governments – nor of governments in Africa, which are also driven by ideologies that are translated into policy agendas.

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A second silence of direct relevance to debates on social justice concerns social movements, which were historically most effective when representing the interests of marginalised or dispossessed

classes. What is now described as ‘civil society’ bears little resemblance to labour movements, peasant associations, women’s cooperatives and other vehicles for social change. Instead, the main civil society actors in social protection are NGOs whose primary role is delivery of services – notions of class solidarity seem to have disappeared from the social policy discourse. The third silence concerns taxation. As Mkandawire pointed out, “welfare regimes are fiscal regimes”, so any assertion that comprehensive social protection is affordable because it will ‘only’ cost 3% of GDP is meaningless unless the question is asked: whose income will cover this 3%? If the rich have to pay it could amount to 6-8%of their income and they might resist this, but if the poor have to pay it could be 10-15% of their income and they cannot afford to pay this. Social protection discussions tend to ignore fiscal policy because donors have negative perceptions of aid-dependent governments – either social spending is an economic distortion associated with rent-seeking or it’s a clientelistic and neopatrimonial attempt to buy off political constituencies. The alternative discourse, which sees social protection as good for social justice, argues for bypassing the state and going ‘straight to the people’. This might avoid the messiness of politics and maximise ‘grassroots participation’ but it encourages the view that outside agencies can intervene and skip the elites – a misguided strategy.

Conclusions

Social protection is not only about installing safety nets and contributing to poverty reduction – important though these are – it also has profound implications for governance and social relations. The conference addressed the perception that insufficient attention has been paid to the politics of social protection, and its relationship to social justice. In addition to the points already summarised above, the following conclusions emerged out of the presentations and discussions. Firstly, social protection is much more than a service delivery sector. The decisions a society makes

about how and whether to guarantee basic subsistence for all citizens reveals the vision that society has about itself – is it based on solidarity and interdependence, or individualism and self-reliance? What constitutes a ‘good society’ at a time when neoliberalism prevails and financial austerity offers governments a convenient excuse to cut back on social spending? These questions resonate in the UK and mainland Europe as much as they do in the poorest countries.

Secondly, the social protection agenda has implications for the evolving social contract between

governments and citizens. If there is no direct line of accountability between the providers and beneficiaries of social protection, the potential for mobilising civil society is limited. This issue is particularly pertinent in countries where poverty and aid dependence mean that international donor agencies dominate the design and financing of these interventions.

Thirdly, social protection must be delivered in ways that do not stigmatise people. Social protection

programmes need to respect the dignity of claimants and empower them to become active citizens rather than passive beneficiaries. As noted above, ‘social audits’ in India are innovative participatory tools that empower marginalised villagers to claim their right to social protection, and to hold local administrations accountable for their delivery.

Fourthly, social protection should be linked to other dimensions of social policy, such as tackling

discrimination and social exclusion, which are often the root causes of poverty. Eradicating social injustice can eliminate a need for welfare transfers. For instance, is it better to deny an HIV-positive person work and compel them to depend on social protection, or to outlaw discrimination in the labour market based on HIV status, as South Africa has done?

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Fifthly, the most progressive social protection interventions are underpinned by legislation, which transforms a charitable gesture into a justiciable right. In India, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) gives every rural household the right to 100 days of public works employment each year. In Swaziland, where pensions were introduced for all older citizens in 2005, a delay in payments due to cashflow problems provoked aggrieved pensioners to lobby their MPs, and parliament was suspended until the issue was resolved.

The conference ended on an optimistic note. Social protection has been the development success story of the past decade. Not only are social protection programmes extending their coverage to poor and vulnerable people across the world, they are increasingly becoming claims-based and justiciable, empowering individuals and communities, and building social contracts between states and citizens. But it is important going forward to protect the gains made: to extend coverage further and to stay focused on the primary objective – guaranteeing subsistence when private sources of subsistence are inadequate – while working to institutionalise projects and programmes so that they become permanent and irreversible entitlements. Evidence presented at this conference confirmed that this is a vital first step toward ensuring that social protection becomes a more effective tool for achieving social justice for all.

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Annex 1. Conference Personnel

Conference Directors

Stephen Devereux Institute of Development Studies, Brighton, UK

Allister McGregor Institute of Development Studies, Brighton, UK

Advisory Committee

Kate Carroll ActionAid, London, UK

Tim Conway Department for International Development (DFID), UK

Arjan de Haan Institute of Social Studies, The Hague, The Netherlands

Francie Lund University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, South Africa

Thandika Mkandawire London School of Economics, London, UK

Timo Voipio Ministry for Foreign Affairs, Helsinki, Finland

Jennifer Yablonski UNICEF, New York, USA

Conference Administrator

Liz O’Brien Institute of Development Studies, Brighton, UK

Theme Convenors [all IDS]

Dolf te Lintelo Theme 1: Governance

Deepta Chopra Theme 1: Governance

Keetie Roelen Theme 2: Vulnerability

Christophe Béné Theme 3: Climate change

Rachel Sabates-Wheeler Theme 4: Inequality

Gabriele Köhler Theme 4: Inequality

Conference Communications [all IDS]

Clare Gorman

Hester Phillips

Conference Rapporteurs [all IDS]

Jennifer Constantine

Vikas Dimble

Suprita Jayaram

Nitin Madan

Emmanuel Rukundo

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Annex 2. Conference Participants

Amina Abdulla Concern Worldwide, Kenya

Omotayo Daud’ Alabi Concern Worldwide, Sierra Leone

Catherine Arnold Department for International Development, UK

Katja Bender Institute of Development Research and Development Policy, Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany

Christophe Béné Institute of Development Studies, UK

Saul Butters Institute of Development Studies, UK

Laura Camfield DEV, University of East Anglia, UK

Terry Cannon Institute of Development Studies, UK

Kate Carroll Action Aid, UK

Elisa Cavacece Department of Foreign Affairs, Ireland

Deepta Chopra Institute of Development Studies, UK

Michael Cichon International Labour Office, Switzerland

Tim Conway Department for International Development, UK

Sarah Cook United Nations Research Institute for Social Development, Switzerland

Victoria Correa Policy Officer for Gender Equality, European Commission, Belgium

Dipankar Datta Concern Worldwide, India

Mark Davies Institute of Development Studies, UK

Jessica De Los Rios Institute of Peruvian Studies, Peru

Chris De Neubourg UNICEF, Italy

Stephen Devereux Institute of Development Studies, UK

Paul Dornan Young Lives, University of Oxford, UK

Ellen Ehmke International Centre for Development and Decent Work, University of Kassel, Germany

Martin Evans Oxford Institute of Social Policy, UK

Andrew Fischer Institute of Social Studies, Erasmus University, The Netherlands

Andrew Fox Concern Worldwide, Ireland

David Fryer Rhodes University, South Africa

Maricar Garde Save The Children, UK

Justine Gatsinzi Government of Rwanda Vision 2020 Umurenge Programme, Rwanda

Giorgia Giovannetti European University Institute, Robert Schuman Centre, Italy

Rachel Godfrey Wood International Institute for the Environment and Development, UK

Duncan Green Oxfam GB, UK

Matthew Greenslade Department for International Development, UK

Jessica Hagen-Zanker Overseas Development Institute, UK

Charlotte Harland UNICEF, Zambia

Sajjad Hassan Office of Commissioners to the Supreme Court (in the Right to Food case), India

Sam Hickey IDPM, University of Manchester, UK

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Tessa Hochfeld University of Johannesburg, South Africa

Rebecca Holmes Overseas Development Institute, UK

Nicola Hypher Save The Children, UK

Carl Jackson Westhill Knowledge Group, UK

Aditi Jha independent, India

Richard Jolly Institute of Development Studies, UK

Nicola Jones Overseas Development Institute, UK

Naila Kabeer School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, UK

Markus Kaltenborn Faculty of Law, Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany

Brid Kennedy Concern Worldwide, Ireland

Andrew Kettlewell Government of Rwanda Vision 2020 Umurenge Programme, Rwanda

Charles Knox-Vydmanov HelpAge International, UK

Gabriele Koehler Institute of Development Studies, UK

Nupur Kukrety Oxfam GB, UK

Andrea Lampis CIDER, Universidad de Los Andes, Colombia

Tom Lavers University of Bath, UK

Julie Lawson-McDowall UNICEF, Kenya

Richard Longhurst Institute of Development Studies, UK

Charles Lwanga-Ntale Development Initiatives, Kenya

Ian MacAuslan Oxford Policy Management, UK

Richard Mallett Overseas Development Institute, UK

Philippe Marcadent International Labour Office, Switzerland

Jenn Marshall Department for International Development, UK

Anna McCord Overseas Development Institute, UK

Allister McGregor Institute of Development Studies, UK

Thandika Mkandawire London School of Economics and Political Affairs, UK

Richard Morgan UNICEF, USA

Wendy Nefdt University of Cape Town. South Africa

Tavengwa Nhongo Africa Platform for Social Protection

Andrew Norton Overseas Development Institute, UK

Carly Nyst International Council on Human Rights Policy

Rosalinda Pineda Ofreneo College of Social Work and Community Development, University of the Philippines

Wale Osofisan HelpAge International, UK

Chris Pain Concern Worldwide, Ireland

Angela Penrose Grow Up Free From Poverty Coalition, UK

Nils Riemenschneider Oxford Policy Management, UK

Keetie Roelen Institute of Development Studies, UK

Andrea Rossi UNICEF, India

Rachel Sabates-Wheeler Institute of Development Studies, UK

Michael Sansour British Consulate General, Israel

Franklins A. Sanubi Delta State University, Nigeria

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Amy Schmidt United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, Jordan

Marguerite Schneider Department of Psychology, Stellenbosch University, South Africa

Frank Schneider Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH, Germany

Esther Schüring Maastricht Graduate School of Governance, The Netherlands

Hania Sholkamy Social Research Center, American University in Cairo, Egypt

Paul Siegel World Bank, USA

Rachel Slater Overseas Development Institute, UK

Gabrielle Smith Concern Worldwide, Ireland

Cormac Staunton Concern Worldwide, Ireland

Maria Stavropoulou Overseas Development Institute, UK

Caroline Sweetman Oxfam GB, UK

Dolf te Lintelo Institute of Development Studies, UK

Savina Tessitore independent, Italy

Shaik Abdul Thaha Maulana Azad National Urdu University, India

Indra P Tiwari National Institute of Development Administration, Thailand

Carolina Trivelli Institute of Peruvian Studies, Peru

Zenebe Bashaw Uraguchi Swiss Foundation for Development and International Cooperation, Switzerland

Wouter van Ginneken independent, France

Nidhi Vij Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse University, United States

Timo Voipio Ministry for Foreign Affairs, Finland

Paul Wafer Department for International Development, UK

Carol Watson independent, France

Peter Whiteford Social Policy Research Centre, University of New South Wales, Australia

Jennifer Yablonski UNICEF, USA

Nedal Zahran United Nations Development Programme, Palestine

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Annex 2. Conference Programme

TIME ACTIVITY Presenter

DAY 1: Wednesday 13 April

10:00–11:00 PLENARY SESSION 1: Welcome Convening Space

10:00–10:15 Opening remarks Haddad

10:15–10:30 Introduction to the Centre for Social Protection Sabates-Wheeler

10:30–10:45 Review of conference programme Devereux / McGregor

10:45–11:00 Conference logistics & communications O’Brien

11:00–11:30 TEA BREAK Room 121

11:30–13:00 PLENARY SESSION 2: Agenda-setting papers Convening Space

11:30–11:45 Beyond the social protection paradigm in Africa Adesina (Mkandawire)

11:45–12:00 Policies and practice for equity and transformation Morgan

12:00–12:15 Why “social protection for social justice”? Devereux

12:15–13:00 Discussion Haddad

13:00–14:00 LUNCH Room 120/121

13:30–14:00 SIDE EVENT: “Good practice in social protection” Convening Space

14:00–15:30 PARALLEL SESSION 1

1.1. Conceptualising social protection for social justice Convening Space

14:00–14:15 A social justice approach to social protection Hickey

14:15–14:30 Universalist approaches to social protection Kabeer

14:30–14:45 Measuring social justice Babajanian

14:45–15:30 Discussion McGregor

2.1. Coping and social protection in fragile contexts Room 120

14:00–14:15 Social protection in fragile states in Africa Osofisan

14:15–14:30 Social transformation in Sierra Leone Alabi

14:30–14:45 Social protection and coping with shocks in Ethiopia Garde

14:45–15:30 Discussion Gupte

4.3. Ensuring access to social protection and social rights Room 221

14:00–14:15 Demographics and scaling up social protection Fischer

14:15–14:30 Access to social protection for migrants Sabates-Wheeler

14:30–14:45 CSOs and the right to health in South Africa Nefdt

14:45–15:30 Discussion Nyst

15:30–16:00 TEA BREAK Room 121

16:00–17:30 PARALLEL SESSION 2

1.2. Constructing social contracts: role of external actors Convening Space

16:00–16:15 The rise of social protection in development De Haan

16:15–16:30 Social protection for transformation in Zambia Harland

16:30–16:45 The politics of social protection in Zambia Schüring

16:45–17:30 Discussion Conway

2.2. Social protection and the politics of marginalisation Room 120

16:00–16:15 Enhancing the status of the marginalised in India Jha

16:15–16:30 Affirmative action for Muslims in India Thaha

16:30–16:45 Including disability in social protection policy Schneider

16:45–17:30 Discussion Datta

3.1. Climate change, disasters, and social protection Room 221

16:00–16:15 A risk-adjusted social protection floor Siegel

16:15–16:30 Adaptive social protection in South Asian agriculture Davies

16:30–16:45 Disasters and social protection Cannon

16:45–17:30 Discussion Rossi

17:30–18:30 LAUNCH EVENT: European Report on Development 2010:

“Social Protection for Inclusive Development”

Room 120/121

Giovannetti

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DAY 2: Thursday 14 April

09:00–09:30 PLENARY SESSION 3: Review of Day 1 Convening Space

09:30–11:00 PARALLEL SESSION 3

4.1. Alternative visions for rights-based social protection Convening Space

09:30–09:45 Social protection in national development strategies Carroll

09:45–10:00 Transformative social protection in South Asia Koehler

10:00–10:15 Strengthening social assistance governance in India Datta

10:15–11:00 Discussion Voipio

1.3. Constructing social contracts: role of domestic actors Room 120

09:30–09:45 Activism and the “right to food case” in India Hassan

09:45–10:00 Social protection as residual safety net in Nigeria Sanubi

10:00–10:15 Rights-based social protection in Philippines Ofreneo

10:15–11:00 Discussion Bender

2.3. Gender, social protection and social justice Room 221

09:30–09:45 The politics of gender and social protection Jones

09:45–10:00 Social protection for single mothers in Malaysia Evans

10:00–10:15 Social protection for farmwomen in South Africa Devereux

10:15–11:00 Discussion Kukrety

11:00–11:30 TEA BREAK Room 121

11:30–13:00 PARALLEL SESSION 4

3.2. Social protection for climate change adaptation Convening Space

11:30–11:45 Climate resilience and social protection Watson

11:45–12:00 Adaptive social protection in Rwanda Gatsinzi

12:00–12:15 Cash transfers and climate change adaptation Godfrey Wood

12:15–13:00 Discussion Lwanga-Ntale

2.4. Social protection and justice for children Room 120

11:30–11:45 Child-sensitive social protection Roelen

11:45–12:00 Social protection in small island states Whiteford

12:00–12:15 Social protection’s role in reducing child mortality Hypher

12:30–13:00 Discussion Yablonski

4.4. Social protection, inequality and empowerment Room 221

11:30–11:45 Vulnerability and economic empowerment in Palestine Sansour

11:45–12:00 Savings mobilisation on a CCT in Peru De Los Rios

12:00–12:15 Multiplier effects of social transfers in Zimbabwe Staunton

12:30–13:00 Discussion Smith

13:00–14:30 LUNCH Room 120/121

13:30–14:30 LAUNCH EVENT: “Migration and Social Protection”

“Social Protection for Africa’s Children”

Convening Space

Sabates-Wheeler

Devereux

14:30–15:30 PLENARY SESSION 4: [to be confirmed] Convening Space

15:30–16:00 TEA BREAK Room 121

16:00–17:30 PARALLEL SESSION 5

4.2. Framing welfare regimes in social protection Convening Space

16:00–16:15 State welfarism and social protection in Asia Tiwari

16:15–16:30 Political society in the Indian welfare regime Ehmke

16:30–16:45 Neoliberalism and social spending in South Africa Fryer

16:45–17:30 Discussion Pain

2.6. Social protection for vulnerability reduction Room 120

16:00–16:15 Reducing vulnerability in urban slums in Kenya Abdulla

16:15–16:30 Social protection and social justice in Ghana Adjei

16:30–16:45 Resource transfers in Bangladesh and Ethiopia Uraguchi

16:45–17:30 Discussion Hagen-Zanker

1.4. The politics of implementation: MGNREGA in India Room 221

16:00–16:15 MGNREGA and social contracts in India Chopra

16:15–16:30 Social audits on MGNREGA in India Vij

16:30–16:45 Implementation of MGNREGA in India Narayan

16:45–17:30 Discussion McCord

19:30 CONFERENCE DINNER: “Al Fresco”

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DAY 3: Friday 15 April

09:00–09:30 PLENARY SESSION 5: Review of Day 2 Convening Space

09:30–11:00 PARALLEL SESSION 6

4.5. Social justice in global social protection agendas Convening Space

09:30–09:45 A human rights-based approach to the MDGs Van Ginneken

09:45–10:00 The Social Protection Floor Cichon

10:00–10:15 Social assistance and the Decent Work Agenda Marcadent

10:15–11:00 Discussion Kaltenborn

1.5. Actors and agents in social protection delivery Room 120

09:30–09:45 From social protection recipients to citizens Tessitore

09:45–10:00 Social workers and cash transfers in Egypt Sholkamy

10:00–10:15 Informal social protection and the state Te Lintelo

10:15–11:00 Discussion Slater

2.5. Social vulnerabilities and social protection Room 221

09:30–09:45 Social stigma and cash transfers in South Africa Hochfeld

09:45–10:00 Cash transfers and social relations in Africa MacAuslan

10:00–10:15 Social tensions on MGNREGA in India Camfield

10:15–11:00 Discussion Knox-Vydmanov

11:00–11:30 TEA BREAK Room 121

11:30–13:00 PLENARY SESSION 6: Closing Reflections Convening Space

Cook; Mkandawire; Norton; Sabates-Wheeler, Yablonski Voipio

13:00–14:00 LUNCH & DEPARTURE Room 120/121