Rights and the life cycle: reordering social protection tools

Political Economy - Development: International Development Efforts & Strategies eJournal, 2015

This book reflects on the public policies, programmes and regulatory frameworks that are taking a rights-based approach to expanding social protection coverage and benefits in Latin America, with a view to achieving universal coverage. The book’s discussion of the policy tools and programmes pursued in the region aims to provide the reader with technical and programmatic insights for assembling and coordinating public policies within consistent and sustainable social protection systems. The combination of normative orientations and stock of technical knowledge, together with advances regarding the rights-based approach to social protection within a life cycle framework, afford the reader not only a tool box of specific social protection instruments, but also an in-depth examination of related political economy aspects. The book has three parts. The first describes the context in which the shifts in social protection policies have occurred. The second examines social protection tools...

This paper aims to contribute to developing the normative framework for rights-based social protection systems and discusses lessons learned in some emblematic programs implemented in Latin America which have sought to advance a rights approach. The paper first emphasizes the added value of the rights approach and describes the normative content of the right to social security. It then describes the basic elements of a rights-based approach and examine how is operationalize in the design, implementation and evaluation of landmark social protection programs in the region. The paper seeks to demonstrate that despite the large gap that still exists between the rhetoric of a human rights approach and its implementation in specific policies, there have been significant achievements in some countries in Latin America . It argues that some of the good practices in the region can serve as policy examples to follow elsewhere. The paper concludes with several public policy recommendations to consolidate rights perspective in social protection programmes.

2018

This article discusses the future of social protection in Latin America and the challenges the region faces in three key performance areas: coverage, sufficiency and sustainability. In particular, the article analyses how coverage is strongly determined by the structure of employment; the limits to expand it given the inability to generate sufficient fiscal space; the consequences of widespread economic and labour informality; the governance deficits; and the acceleration of population aging. It also discusses the increasing need of an adequate combination of contributory and non-contributory social protection provision, as well as the need for a better articulation of social protection systems with the sustainable development framework and its three main spheres: economic, social and environmental. Finally, it is addressed the future of social protection in a context of a growing employment in the services sector, technological change and automation of production and employment; and the relevance of an adequate social protection response to the consequences of climate change and the effects of natural disasters.

2014

This document analyzes the State’s role in social matters, in terms of social insurance and protection, social promotion and investment, and its distributive and redistributive role. It also describes changes and major trends in the region’s social investment and protection between the beginning of the twentieth century and the 1980s and outlines what is being termed “the reform of social reforms” in the twenty-first century, in the light of the challenges of the region’s social development. Three recent models of universalism are presented, as well as the debates on their potential and limitations. The paper concludes with a summary of the universalist social protection project emerging in the region.

Creating comprehensive and universal social protection systems is one of the key policies for helping bring about greater levels of equality and well-being and eradicating poverty in the region. Social protection, designed with a rights-based approach, is connected to efforts to fight inequality in several ways: it considerably reduces or eliminates the probability of being unable to cope with an unforeseen risk, it encourages the implementation of strategies aimed at empowering the vulnerable in confronting risks, and it limits the reproduction of the vicious circle of poverty and inequality by preventing families from mortgaging their key human development assets, such as health and education.

International Social Security …, 2005

ECLAC Books, 2016

This book aims to discuss and disseminate knowledge regarding the rightsbased public policies, programmes and regulatory frameworks that are being used to expand social protection coverage and benefits in Latin America. It provides an overview of recent reforms, innovations and instruments that are aimed at achieving universal coverage, appropriate quality, low segmentation and sustainable financing, together with a stylized, informed analysis of the social and economic context within which such policies are being developed. The concept of social protection as presented here takes a rights-based, systemic and comprehensive approach. Social protection instruments are intended to address structural problems such as poverty and inequality, as well as risks to which the whole population is exposed, including unemployment, disability and old age. All instruments must be integrated into social protection systems with effective coordination between programmes and institutions in order to be able to meet the demand from individuals, families and communities.

2009

The Open University's repository of research publications and other research outputs ... A review of social protection in Latin America ... Barrientos, Armando and Hinojosa-Valencia, Leonith (2009). A review of social protection in Latin America. Centre for Social Protection - IDS, ...

Institutional frameworks for social policy in Latin America and the Caribbean 13 and proposes four complementary analytical dimensions by which to study them: (i) the legal and regulatory dimension, (ii) the organizational dimension, (iii) the technical and operational dimension and (iv) the financing dimension. On the basis of these, it analyses progress and discusses what still needs to be done at the regional and national level. The studies presented here were carried out as part of the cooperation programmes Structural Change for Sustainable and Inclusive Development in Latin America and the Caribbean (2014-2016) and Support for the Implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development in Latin America and the Caribbean (2016-2018), executed by ECLAC in conjunction with the German Agency for International Cooperation (GIZ), with financing from Germany's Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ). The two institutions thereby aim to contribute to improved social policy analysis, design and implementation and thus to progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals on the basis of a rights approach.