From poverty to power - Oxfam-Québec

FROM POVERTY TO POWER(although delivery methods remain controversial), social protectionis rapidly gaining support in some of the poorest countries of theworld, and challenging many of the assumptions of the aid industry.In 2005, the Ethiopian government introduced a ‘productive safety netprogramme’ to support over seven million of its poorest citizensthrough a combination of public employment schemes and grants toelderly people and expecting and nursing mothers. In Brazil, the BolsaFamilia (Family Stipend) scheme provides financial aid to some 11million poor Brazilian families, on condition that their childrenattend school and are vaccinated.Narrowly defined, social protection consists of two components.Social assistance transfers resources to vulnerable groups in the formof pensions, child support grants, and so on, while social insuranceallows individuals and households to protect themselves against risksby pooling resources with others.However, social protection goes much deeper than this. It tackleshead-on a central aspect of poverty, arguing that the state in particularhas a duty to seek to reduce vulnerability by guaranteeing the basicrights set out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Suchrights constitute a fundamental part of citizenship. Approached inthis way, social protection spills over into issues of social services andsocial equity raised elsewhere in this book – providing decent education,health care, water and sanitation; redistributing land to vulnerablefarmers; guaranteeing property rights for women or for squatters inthe cities; combating gender-based violence; or guaranteeing labourrights for workers in formal and informal economies alike.Instead of treating poor people as ‘beneficiaries’, such a conceptionof social protection focuses on the rights and voices of poor peoplethemselves, building an enduring constituency and demand for stateaction, and so promoting the combination of active citizens andeffective states that is crucial to development.When done well, social protection can have an extraordinaryimpact. In 2007, a combination of child support, disability payments,and pensions was reaching approximately 13 million South Africans,out of a total population of 48 million. Total spending in 2007amounted to $9bn – 3.4 per cent of GDP. 12 The programme resulted208