Notes onSocial Protection and

Social Justice

Notes onSocial Protection and

Social Justice

Jorge Carrillo-Rodriguez

Social ProtectionSocial Protection

• Protect basic levels of consumption among those in poverty or in danger of falling into poverty;

• Facilitate investment in human and other productive assets to escape from persistent and intergenerational poverty;

• Strengthen the agency of those in poverty so that they can overcome their predicament

Concepts related to SPConcepts related to SP

• social policy• economic protection• safety nets

• social insurance• social assistance• social security

Selected approachesSelected approaches

• The World Bank’s Social Risk Management deals with specific crisis but has a narrow focus. Vulnerability only in economic terms and cannot address of chronic poverty.

• IlO’s social minimum floor combines social assistance with social insurance and labour regulations

Selected approachesSelected approaches

• UNICEF: not only income poverty and economic shocks, but also social vulnerability, thus taking into account the inter-relationship between exclusion and poverty

• ADB SP index: draw a clear distinction between SP and more general growth promotion, poverty reduction and social development programs such as mainstream vocational training, basic nutrition, health and educational services, and community development

Social JusticeSocial Justice

• Fair distribution of benefits, opportunities and burdens

• Justice is the first virtue of social institutions.

• Principles• Equality• Needs• Desert

Social Justice in the UNSocial Justice in the UN

…the overall level of inequality in the world had risen since the beginning of the 1980s. The trend towards greater equality, evident in most regions following the Second World War, has to a significant extent been reversed during the past few decades, and all signs point to a continuation of this tendency.

Social Justice in the UNSocial Justice in the UN

• Domains• Equality of rights• Equality of opportunities• Equity of living conditions

• Inequalities in distribution of• income• assets• opportunities for work and remunerated

employment• access to knowledge• health services, social security and the provision• of a safe environment.• opportunities for civic and political participation

Inequality (barriers)Inequality (barriers)

• Financial: fees, opportunity cost

• Legal: registrations, legal access

• Socio-cultural: discrimination because of gender, ethnicity, physical ability, age, etc.

• Political: political decisions that exclude social groups/individuals

“Transformative” SP“Transformative” SP

• In addition to targeting the specific conditions of the diverse social groups, social protection must also be “transformative”, i.e. it should also target the structural elements that place those groups in a situation of vulnerability in the first place

Social justice as the goal of social protection

A framework for social protection and social justiceA framework for social protection and social justice

Socialexclusion

Inequalities• Financial: fees,

opportunity cost• Legal: registrations, legal

access• Socio-cultural:

discrimination because of gender, ethnicity, physical ability, age, etc.

• Political: political decisions that exclude social groups/ individuals

SocialProtection

SocialJustice

Context/Tools• Citizenship• Legal

empowerment• Rights-based

approach• Rule of law

VulnerabilityRisks

Temporality• Transient/

crisis• Chronic

More than academicMore than academic

• Instruments: pensions, public works, laws

• Design: targeting vs universal, cash vs food, conditional vs unconditional

• Scope: individual, communities, institution