From poverty to power - Oxfam-Québec

FROM POVERTY TO POWERhave a dignified funeral. 20 Cash transfers put poor people in the drivingseat, spending resources on the things that matter most to them.Cash transfers have been judged successful in many countries,particularly when made conditional on keeping children vaccinatedor in school, as in Brazil’s Bolsa Familia or Mexico’s Oportunidadesprogrammes. These have reduced present vulnerability and have alsoincreased school attendance, thereby improving long-term securityfor the next generation.Pioneer countries such as South Africa or Kyrgzystan show thatsocial protection can be provided for as little as 3 per cent of GDP. Thisis serious money, but much of it would be recouped by avoidingemergency spending when things go wrong. In 2005, the UK government’shigh-level Africa Commission concluded that the costs ofpre-emptive social protection are less than the costs of respondingafter a crisis and argued that, for an annual $5bn–$6bn, ‘Five millionof the most vulnerable children and another 40 million chronicallypoor households caring for orphans and other vulnerable childrenwould be supported through community programmes and cashgrants, perhaps conditional on school and health clinic attendance.The interlocking cycles of poverty and exclusion trapping millionswould be interrupted, preventing the transfer of poverty from parentto child and mitigating the far-reaching impacts of AIDS and conflict.’ 21Nevertheless, cost is often raised as an objection, not least by theInternational Monetary Fund in its role as custodian of financialprudence. In 2004, the government of Lesotho introduced a noncontributorypension for all over-70s (against advice from aid donorsthat it was unaffordable), becoming the fourth country in SouthernAfrica to do so, after South Africa, Namibia, and Botswana.An additional$5.5bn in aid, as the Africa Commission recommends, would cost lessthan $5 per person in donor countries, and would equal just threeweeks’ spending by the US government on the war in Iraq. 22Social protection holds the potential to transform the lives of poorpeople across the world, North and South, and it is evolving rapidly.For aid donors and NGOs, it addresses the divide in their thinkingbetween ‘emergencies’ and ‘development’. Oxfam, like most other aidorganisations, deals separately with sudden disasters (where it specialisesin delivering food and shelter and in getting water and sanitation212