From poverty to power - Oxfam-Québec

4 RISK AND VULNERABILITY SOCIAL PROTECTIONfrom a combination of high-level political support and an active civilsociety continually pushing the government to go further.Emerging from the dark days of apartheid, South Africa’s newConstitution promises that ‘everyone has the right to have access tosocial security, including, if they are unable to support themselves andtheir dependants, appropriate social assistance’. 13 Evaluations showthat households that receive social grants are more likely to sendyoung children to school, provide better nutrition for children, andlook for work more intensively, extensively, and successfully than doworkers in comparable households that do not receive social grants. 14As part of its Soviet legacy, Kyrgyzstan has formal systems of socialprotection which, in principle, cover all its citizens. Kyrgyzstan’s socialprotection system now comprises a social insurance fund from whichold age and disability pensions are paid; a health insurance fund,which covers the costs of health treatment for the working populationand for children and older people; and a social assistance system,which provides small amounts of cash assistance on a means-testedbasis to people living below the poverty line. Although far fromperfect, it shows that even a very poor country (in 2005 Kyrgyzstan’sannual per capita GDP was $319) can run a social protection systemthat helps protect the most vulnerable. World Bank analysis suggeststhat, without the system, the extreme poverty headcount would haveincreased by 24 per cent, the poverty gap by 42 per cent, and the severityof poverty by 57 per cent. Furthermore, these levels of social protectiondo not represent an unsustainable drain on public resources: in 2002,they cost 3 per cent of GDP. 15Nor is social protection confined to the state alone.A huge amountof such activity takes place ‘below the radar’ at community level,through family support networks or religious organisations. NGOssuch as India’s Self Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) organisea range of health, maternity benefit, and other insurance and creditschemes for thousands of women in the informal economy, exemplifyinghow social protection can target gender inequality. 16 InternationalNGOs such as Oxfam are also increasingly introducing elements ofsocial protection into their programmes.The burgeoning interest in social protection springs both from animproving grasp of the nature of poverty and inequality and from past209