Social Protection Group
Previous meeting:

Southern Africa incorporates some of the poorest countries in the world, with the proportion of those living on less than US $1 a day averaging about 40% overall. Inequality in the region is manifested through rising unemployment and levels of impoverishment, worsening mortality and morbidity and the inability of the majority of people to access sources of livelihood or basic services. Accordingly, social protection has risen rapidly to the top of the policy agenda for many governments, donors and NGOs in southern Africa, where cash transfers in particular are emerging as a preferred mechanism for delivering social protection to poor and vulnerable people. The policy debates however are moving fast as major social forces - many of a global nature - impact and reshape social welfare policies and practices. Moreover the policy choices and design of social protection programmes - whether to apply conditions, to transfer cash, food or vouchers, to implement social insurance rather than social assistance, and who to target – are driven by ideological principles as much as empirical evidence and technical issues. In the context of these debates this workshop examines the various sources of vulnerability, social protection responses, and the different conceptual and normative frameworks underlying them.