Anticipatory Social Protection
Claiming dignity and rights

The social protection landscape is currently characterised by competing discourses and agendas, given that bilaterals, multilaterals and private funders have different targets and have differing constituents whose lives they seek to improve. Critical aspects such as gender inequalities and inequities, women and children’s agency and community coping mechanisms are often not adequately addressed.
This publication introduces the Commonwealth Secretariat’s anticipatory and transformative social protection approach, which outlines the principles and strategies for advancing a gender-responsive, human rights-based approach to social protection.
It presents analysis and discussion of a framework for social protection, models of good practice from across the Commonwealth, and innovative ways of providing social protection that are not based on men and women being in full-time paid work in the formal economy.
This publication will assist policy-makers and development practitioners in making informed decisions about programme design and delivery so that beneficiaries’ access to and participation in social protection mechanisms are fully realised.
Contents
Foreword
Acknowledgments
List of tables, figures and boxes
Abbreviations and acronyms
About the authors
1. Towards an Anticipatory and Transformative Social Protection Agenda
1.1 Background
1.2 Setting the social protection agenda
1.3 The Social Protection Floor initiative
1.4 Human rights framework with women at the centre
1.5 Transformative social protection
1.6 Anticipatory social protection
1.7 Programme design and implementation
2. Rights and Unpaid Work: A Critical Review of International Experience
2.1 Context
2.2 Institutional measures: experiences and lessons learned
2.3 Social transfer designs: Mexico, Bangladesh, South Africa
2.4 Implementation: financing, targeting, delivery
2.5 Incorporating gender, human rights, women’s unpaid work, children’s agency
3. Regional Developments
3.1 Africa
3.1.1 Targeting
3.1.2 Gendered anticipatory social protection
3.2 South Asia
3.2.1 Livelihood and income security
3.2.2 Education and health
3.2.3 Social protection in old age
3.2.4 Gender-based discrimination and violence
3.3 East and Southeast Asia
3.4 The Pacific
3.5 The Caribbean
4. Politics of Care and Isolation: Case Studies
4.1 Caring for children with disabilities in an advanced welfare state: Denmark
4.2 Caring for the aged in a developed economy: South Korea
4.3 Community action in support of marginalised sex workers: India
4.4 Community action for dignity and rights: India
4.5 HIV care and access to land, the GROOTS Model: Kenya
4.6 A revived land tradition protects HIV-affected children: Swaziland
4.7 Building peace through anticipatory and transformative social protection: Rwanda
4.8 An endowment fund protects education of HIV-affected children: Papua New Guinea
4.8.1 Background and structure
4.8.2 Bringing hope to HIV-affected children, families
4.8.3 Limitations
4.8.4 The HIV-protective effect
4.8.5 Anticipatory, transformative and energising
4.9 Social protection models: New Zealand and India
4.9.1 Crown Corporation accident compensation, New Zealand
4.9.2 Private sector distributes free milk to New Zealand’s primary schools
4.9.3 Programme design for financial inclusion in India
5. The Carer’s Journey
5.1 Elizabeth’s voice, 1993
5.1.1 How did we make that transition from diagnosis to living?
5.1.2 Living with dying was not always easy
5.1.3 During the dying, the role of the carer changes
5.2 Elizabeth’s voice, 2013
5.2.1 Lost livelihoods, lack of benefits
5.2.2 Carer’s voices begin to be heard
5.2.3 Assessing economic value
5.2.4 Psychological, emotional, social costs
5.2.5 Gender income gaps
5.2.6 Social and economic justice for carers
5.2.7 Feminisation of care, masculinisation of labour
6. Endnote
Notes
References and bibliography
About the contributors
Marilyn Waring (Author)
Professor Marilyn Waring is a feminist economist and public policy expert specialising in the economics of unpaid work.Anit N Mukherjee (Author)
Dr Anit N Mukherjee is a health economist who works particularly on the economics of development, HIV and national policy.Elizabeth Reid (Author)
Dr Elizabeth Reid is a development specialist on HIV and a Visiting Fellow at the Australian National University.Meena Shivdas (Author)
Dr Meena Shivdas is a gender and development expert at the Commonwealth Secretariat, focusing on women's rights, HIV, culture and the law.Reviews
'Concerns and subjects among development practitioners and academics come and go, but social protection is a topic that has remained consistently present. Equally persistent has been the vagueness of its meaning, despite its concrete – policy relevant – nature.
This book helps in remedying this lack of clarity, and provides a clear conceptual understanding of ‘social protection’. More importantly, it offers an understanding that is comprehensive (through the inclusion of the issues of rights and care, and an emphasis on the life cycle), and that is illustrated by examples from country and regional level.'
‘Anticipatory Social Protection is the first book I have read that truly puts the ‘social’ into social protection. Mainstream social protection is doing a vital job of delivering economic protection to poor people, but it has largely failed to challenge the social and political determinants of poverty and vulnerability. In this powerful book, Waring, Mukherjee, Reid and Shivdas argue persuasively for a more dynamic approach to social protection, one that proactively redresses social inequities through the application of human rights principles to marginalised groups such as unpaid carers and third gender persons. In so doing, the authors shift the social protection discourse away from ‘safety nets’, ‘resilience’ and ‘graduation’, towards ‘dignity’, ‘empowerment’ and ‘rights’. Most importantly, this book shows us alternative models that really work in practice. Social transformation through social protection is both essential and possible.'
Dr Stephen Devereux, Research Fellow, Institute of Development Studies, UK and author of Social Protection in Africa and Social Protection for Africa’s Children
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