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Social Protection Podcast is brought to you by socialprotection.org. We’re a knowledge sharing and capacity building platform, open to social protection practitioners, policy-makers, and experts, as well as academics and students. Social protection is a large and growing field, that has also achieved increased profile and salience since 2020 due to COVID-19. From building delivery systems and protecting People with Disabilities, to social protection financing and school feeding – there is no shortage of topics for Social Protection Podcast to tackle. Each month we will aim to bring you rich, interesting and different content. Through interviews, discussions and debates with experts and practitioners, Social Protection Podcast will illuminate new research and bring a range of perspectives to debates and controversies as well as areas of growing consensus.
Episodes
Thursday Jan 26, 2023
Thursday Jan 26, 2023
The COVID-19 crisis has led to an acceleration in electronic payments of social protection benefits through individual bank accounts or mobile money. According to one global estimate, 80 million women opened accounts for the first time during the pandemic to receive government payments. Digital payments have long been seen as the first step towards improving people's financial inclusion and, by extension, their financial health.
In this episode, we discuss the idea of unbanked individuals gaining access to banking services and digital transactions, financial literacy, and savings options, and how this contributes to insurance, remittances, and other aspects. We also highlight the importance of careful and deliberate policy design to ensure that digital accounts can, in fact, open the door to greater financial inclusion instead of ending up as dead ends.
Our guests for this episode:
- Dr. Moizza Binat Sarwar, Research Fellow, Equity and Social Policy, ODI
- Astrid Devalon, Digital Financial Inclusion and Women's Economic Empowerment team lead, WFP
In the quick wins segment, Dominique Leska-See (Advisor for Digital Social Protection, GIZ) and Anita Mittal (Senior Advisor, Lead - Digital Convergence Initiative, GIZ) present the Digital Convergence Initiative for Universal Social Protection.
Resources:
Publication | Is going digital the solution? Evidence from social protection
Webinars | Talking interoperability - Dialogue Series
Publication | Digital Financial Inclusion and Women’s Economic Empowerment through Cash Transfers
Thursday Dec 15, 2022
Thursday Dec 15, 2022
After 2 years of COVID-19-dominated headlines, record inflation rates, and climate events taking centre stage in the global debate, it comes as no surprise that social protection might be called on to respond to these multifaceted crises. But can we forecast what the future of social protection might hold based on its latest developments?
For the final episode of the year, we invited Ugo Gentilini, Global Lead for Social Assistance at the World Bank, for a wide-ranging interview looking back at the main social protection themes in 2022. Among other topics, we talk about persisting myths, pathways for universality and the most interesting papers released over the year to help you catch up with that reading goal you might have set for yourself some months ago.
To shake up our traditional format a bit, the interview was paired with contributions by other members of our Social Protection Community, drawing attention to the big highlights of 2022, and their resolutions for the coming year. This episode features contributions from:
- Tomoo Okubo, Policy Specialist, UNICEF
- Christina Dankmeyer, Social Protection and Climate Change Specialist, ILO
- Vania Budianto, PhD Candidate, Australian National University
- Dr. Safdar A. Sohail, Dean of the National School of Public Policy (NSPP), Pakistan
Resources:
- Weekly Social Protection Links: Ideas, evidence and practices from the world of social protection... by Ugo Gentilini
- World Social Protection Report 2020-22: Social protection at the crossroads – in pursuit of a better future
- Tracking Global Social Protection Responses to Price Shocks: Living Paper v.3
- The impact of a poverty reduction intervention on infant brain activity
- The Politics of Distributing Social Transfers: State Capacity and Political Contestation in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia
- How Effective Is (More) Money? Randomizing Unconditional Cash Transfer Amounts in the US
Thursday Nov 24, 2022
Thursday Nov 24, 2022
In the aftermath of the 2022 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP 27) and the important debates that followed, this episode discusses the relevance of social protection as an actionable strategy for climate action.
This year was marked by severe climate events and risks, with a rise in heatwaves, floods, droughts, and wildfires, leading to significant effects on those most vulnerable to environmental hazards. Many no longer perceive climate change as a future threat, but rather as a pressing reality that places countless people at risk of deteriorating living conditions and even losing their livelihoods.
How can social protection help address the risks posed by climate change today and in the future? To bring the issue into perspective, we asked our guests to reflect on both climate adaption and mitigation, focusing on possible pathways for environmental restoration and nature-based solutions, as well as an equitable transition towards a post-carbon economy.
Shedding light on these concerns, we heard from Bessie Msusa, Chief Economist in the Department of Economic Planning and Development in Malawi, and Cecilia Costella, Independent Consultant and Senior Advisor with the Red Cross Climate Centre. Finally, for this month’s Quick Wins, we were joined by Felicity O’Brien, Assistant Director at the Social Protection Team at Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT).
Resources:
Thursday Oct 27, 2022
Thursday Oct 27, 2022
Social protection can play an important role in ensuring that poor and vulnerable people meet their nutritional needs. What are the factors at play? This episode helps explain how social protection can contribute to improving food security and reducing the nutrition gap.
While the adequacy of social protection interventions seems to be at the forefront of the discussion, the state of food systems and prices must also be considered. On average, social protection covers only 5-10 per cent of household food costs. With food prices surging to record levels over the past two years, this has become a pressing challenge, especially in the face of long-term risks to human development.
Our guests for this episode have contributed greatly to unpacking these topics:
- Saskia de Pee, Chief of Analytics and Science, Nutrition Division, WFP
- Jessica Owens, Regional Advisor, Social Policy, UNICEF ROSA
- Marco Knowles, Senior Social Protection Officer, FAO
For our ‘’Quick Wins’’ segment, Martha Santos (Programme Manager for South-South and Triangular Cooperation at UNICEF) provided her inputs directly from the Global South-South Development Expo (GSSD Expo 2022).
Resources:
- The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2022: Repurposing food and agricultural policies to make healthy diets more affordable
- Tracking Global Social Protection Responses to Price Shocks: Living Paper v.3
- WFP's Fill the Nutrient Gap tool
- ISPA’s Food Security and Nutrition tool (FSN)
- (Webinar) Global Food and Nutrition Crisis and Building Forward Better
- (Webinar) Ripple effects of the war in Ukraine: What role can 'adaptive' social protection play to prepare for and respond to anticipated global price shocks and hunger?
- Global South-South Development Expo 2022
- ESCAP-led Thematic Solution Forum on Social Protection and Health: South-South and Triangular Cooperation to Enhance Capacity to Produce and Deliver vaccines
Thursday Sep 29, 2022
Thursday Sep 29, 2022
The UN General Assembly has declared 2022 as the International Year of Artisanal Fisheries and Aquaculture (IYAFA 2022) to enhance global awareness and promote collaboration around the theme. To provide guidance for related initiatives, the IYAFA Action Plan was structured around seven pillars, including social and environmental sustainability. Social protection can provide valuable contributions to all of them.
In this episode, our guests were invited to reflect on the role of social protection in covering vulnerable fisheries and fish workers against various social and climate-related risks and uncertainties. They also shared country case examples and reflected on some of the main aspects around the furthering of social protection for the fisheries sector.
Along with our host, Jo Sharpe, Daniella Kalikoski and Daniela Salazar—both Fishery Officers at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)—and Sebastian Mathew, Executive Director of the International Collective in Support of Fishworkers (ICSF) participated in this rich discussion.
In the second part of the episode, Fabio Veras, Research Coordinator at the International Policy Centre for Inclusive Growth (IPC-IG) presents some quick wins in celebration of the IPC-IG’s 18th anniversary.
Resources:
International Year of Artisanal Fisheries and Aquaculture (IYAFA 2022)
IYAFA 2022’s Global Action Plan
Insights from an analysis of Seguro-Defeso’s legal framework
Webinar: Impact Evaluation of the Seguro Defeso in Brazil
Cash Transfer Programmes in Brazil: Impacts on Inequality and Poverty
Yemen National Social Protection Monitoring Survey (NSPMS): 2012-2013 – Final Report
Thursday Sep 01, 2022
Thursday Sep 01, 2022
In this episode, we are talking about social protection and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
The coronavirus pandemic and the subsequent triple crisis of food, energy and finance have set back progress towards the SDGs. Social protection is seen as an SDG accelerator that can contribute to many, even most of the SDG targets from ending poverty and hunger to improving gender equality and access to health and education, and even tackling inequality and climate change.
But can we make enough progress in the time left to achieve the SDGs?
Our guest on this episode, Nenad Rava - Head of programmes at the Joint SDG Fund - talks about how social protection interventions can catalyse change and progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals.
In addition, in September we are celebrating the seven-year anniversary of socialprotection.org – which hosts the Social Protection Podcast. In this special Quick Wins, we will hear from Mariana Balboni – Coordinator of socialprotection.org - about the platform’s most exciting features and some of its achievements.
Resources
Joint SDG Fund - Integrated Policy for Leaving No One Behind
Promoting the Specific Needs of Women and Girls: The Joint SDG Fund Gender Marker
Closing Gaps: Making Social Protection Work for Women in Mexico
Accelerating Vietnam’s Transition Toward Inclusive and Integrated Social Protection
Albania - Improving Municipal Social Protection Service Delivery
Quick wins resources
e-Conference: Turning the COVID-19 crisis into an opportunity: What’s next for social protection?
Social Protection and COVID-19
Dashboard: Social protection responses to COVID-19 in the Global South
Social protection responses to COVID-19 [Task force] Online Community
Social protection in crisis contexts Online Community
Thursday Jul 28, 2022
Thursday Jul 28, 2022
Targeting is one of the most widely debated topics in social protection. Who should receive support from social protection systems? How do we identify the ‘right’ people, and reach them?
The way countries choose to target programmes involves weighing up a complex set of issues, including cost and coverage, the likely degree of ‘error’ over who is excluded and included, the need to respond dynamically to changing circumstances and shocks, and the need to build political support for investments, as well as trust and community cohesion.
In the meantime, our targeting toolkit is still made up of a handful of fundamental methods and approaches, each with their strengths and weaknesses, when it comes to the critical task of selecting and reaching people in need.
In this episode we introduce some of the key trade-offs most frequently invoked when making decisions about targeting social protection and ask our guests about the latest thinking on how to reconcile these challenges and dilemmas.
Our guests for this episode are:
Rachel Sabates-Wheeler — Research Fellow, IDS
Matthew Wai-Poi — Senior Economist, World Bank
Plus, to contribute to our monthly segment of ‘Quick Wins’ which highlights news, achievements, and research that have shaped recent developments and sparked our interest, we heard from:
Nazanin Akhgar, Chief of Social Policy/PME, UNICEF Iran
Quick wins resources
UNICEF's Global social protection programme framework
Programme Guidance: Strengthening Shock-Responsive Social Protection Systems
Thursday Jun 30, 2022
Thursday Jun 30, 2022
What do social protection systems need to look like to promote inclusion, autonomy and participation for people with disabilities?
Cash transfers are certainly important to meet basic living costs, as well the ‘extra’ costs that people with disabilities often need to pay just to access essential services. However, people with disabilities also have high needs for healthcare, assistive devices, and extra support to go to school or be employed. Traditional models of social protection that assume incapacity or poverty as prerequisites for receiving assistance may not be well designed to support persons with disabilities to achieve full and effective participation in public life.
In today’s episode, we’re featuring case studies on disability-inclusive social protection systems from Fiji and Thailand that bring cash and complementary programmes together to help achieve this goal.
Our guests for this episode are:
- Joshco Wakaniyasi, Programme Manager, Pacific Disability Forum, Fiji
- Phatcharamonth Pitipanyakul, Director, Division of Rights and Welfare of Persons with Disabilities at the Ministry of Social Development and Human Security, Thailand
- Alexandre Cote, Disability and Social Protection Policy Specialist, UNICEF
Alexandre Cote also contributed to our monthly segment of ‘Quick Wins’, which highlights news, achievements and research that have shaped recent developments and sparked our interest.
Resources:
Conference: Disability - Social Protection - Inclusion: Dialogue for change
Webinar: Social protection and community support system for inclusion of persons with disabilities
Practitioner Note 1: Inclusive targeting, identification and registration
Thursday May 26, 2022
Thursday May 26, 2022
In this episode, we will tackle the elephant in the room when it comes to discussions around universal approaches to social protection: financing.
While high- and middle-income countries are in a better position to increase the share of domestic resources allocated to social protection, either through taxation, social contributions, etc., a considerable number of countries lack the means for domestic financing. This is why international financing mechanisms are increasingly being called for, most notably in the form of a global fund for social protection.
But what shape should such a fund take? What are the lessons available to date? How to address the coverage gaps in social protection given differences in fiscal space? And finally, how did the COVID-19 pandemic influence those trends in social protection financing?
These and other questions are addressed by our guests in this episode:
- Charles Lwanga-Ntale, Independent Consultant
- Helmut Schwarzer, Head of Public Finance, Actuarial and Statistics Unit of the Social Protection Department at the International Labour Organization
- Marcus Manuel, Independent Consultant
Plus, to contribute to our monthly segment of ‘Quick Wins’ which highlights news, achievements, and research that have shaped recent developments and sparked our interest, we heard from:
- Dr. Zina Nimeh, Associate Professor of Public Policy at UNU-MERIT and Maastricht
Links from the episode:
Thursday Apr 28, 2022
Thursday Apr 28, 2022
Last month, we had a bonus episode about the conflict in Ukraine, and how social protection systems could support a fast-growing refugee crisis. As we enter the seventh week of the conflict, the challenge of supporting both the population staying and fleeing deepens.
However, this episode carries a glimmer of hope: today, we are talking to specialists who are making the most of social protection systems to support the people in need.
We will hear from Gabriele Erba, Beneficiary Data Systems Specialist for UNICEF, discussing the registration system the agency just implemented with the government. Gabriele has been working for the last 12 years to design, implement and research cash transfers in humanitarian settings.
In addition, we will hear from Paul Harvey, partner with Humanitarian Outcomes, on how Ukrainian social protection systems are still being delivered and how are they being affected by the conflict. Paul Harvey is also the co-Director of the BASIC research, which examines social assistance in protracted crises. He’s been researching humanitarian issues for the last 20 years and before that was an aid worker.
Along with this episode, socialprotection.org also hosted a special webinar to comment on the Ukrainian refugee response and where and how humanitarian cash can link to and support social protection systems – hearing directly from the Government of Poland and specialized researchers on the topic.
Our guests for this episode are:
Gabriele Erba, Beneficiary Data Systems Specialist for UNICEF; and
Paul Harvey, partner with Humanitarian Outcomes and co-Director of the BASIC research
Links and resources related to this episode:
Ukraine poll: U-Report
Publication: Ukraine – can social protection be sustained and support a humanitarian response?
Last month’s bonus episode: Ep. 11 | Bonus Edition | Social Protection for Ukrainian Refugees
World Bank’s paper: ‘Tracking social protection responses in Ukraine and neighbouring countries’.