Rights Based Approach to
Implementing Social
Transfers: Some Issues for
Discussion
Fauzia Shariff
Reaching the Very Poorest, Policy Division
22nd June 2005
This does not represent DFID policy
1 Palace Street, London SW1E 5HE
Abercrombie House, Eaglesham Road, East Kilbride, Glasgow G75 8EA
DFID’s Policy Commitments on
Rights
• The government’s White Papers of 1997 and
2000 note the government’s commitment to
human rights. DFID’s Target Strategy Paper
on Human Rights sets out key priorities for
addressing human rights issues as part of our
overall approach to development.
• Key issues:
• Participation of poor people in decision making
• Building socially inclusive societies by
addressing exclusion, discrimination and
inequality
• Supporting governments who take rights
seriously and encouraging others to do so.
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Social Protection and Rights
In context of social protection DFID is
increasingly interested in social transfers
•
• Challenges in Africa: need effective responses
to predictable humanitarian crises to allow
beneficiaries to build assets and prepare for
future crisis’
• Creates entitlements rather than handouts and
helps to change view of poorest
• Complement health and education initiatives –
poorest regular, predictable income to feed
and house children and have choice
(education rather than work)
• Empowers poorest to manage their own lives
improves human development outcomes – key
to long-term poverty reduction
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What are social transfers?
• Regular and predictable grants – usually in
the form of cash – that are provided to
vulnerable households or individuals.
• Examples
• Non-contributory pensions
• Family allowances
• Disability allowances
• Widow’s allowance
• Conditional cash transfers (e.g. to households
with children to provide cash on condition that
children attend school and health clinics)
• Work Programmes providing cash or food to
the unemployed in exchange for work
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Some rights they protect
•
•
•
Right to social security (UDHR art. 22)
Right to just and favourable remuneration
ensuring an existence worthy of human dignity
and supplemented by other means of social
protection (UDHR art. 23.3)
Right to standard of living adequate for health and
well-being including food, clothing, housing and
medical care, necessary social services, the right
to security in the event of unemployment,
sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other
lack of livelihood - motherhood and childhood are
entitled to special care and assistance. (UDHR art.
25)
These are linked to the enjoyment of other rights
related to health and education.
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Some Challenges in a Rights
Approach to Implementing
Social Transfers
1. Participation of poorest and
enforceability by the poor
2. Inclusion of poorest
3. Country-led approaches to
development
Page 5
1. Participation and
Enforceability
a/ Participation
• Providing transfers in cash instead of food etc.
Beneficiaries make decision on how to allocate benefits – studies
show they are likely to spend on greater variety of food, paying off
debts, investing in livestock and animal husbandry etc.
Getting recipients’ perspectives on policy before and during (e.g.
participatory evaluation of projects)
•
☢ Takes time, issues of representation, data becomes out of date
☢ Create expectations, and worsen relations with state
☢ Getting unbiased feedback on impact of transfers on children and on gender
inequalities in HH can be difficult
•
Having an impact on setting the agenda at national policy level
☢
Excluded groups often little representation in government
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b/ Enforceability
Clarity of Entitlements
• Clarity of rights set out in policy/legislation and commitment to
enforce
Knowledge and Information
• Knowledge of how system works – recipients and Implementing
officers
• Information on who should get what, when – is it acceptable to put
beneficiaries’ names on display?
☢ Access issues: Illiteracy, linguistic diversity, physical remoteness,
poor transport and social isolation
Means of Enforcing What is Due
• Vertical accountability: Government-citizen
Civil society, courts/administrative appeals system, community
mobilisation
☢ Access to justice (formal/informal), freedom of expression and
association, transparency of appeal system
•
•
Horizontal accountability: transparency vs culture of corruption
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•
•
Right: Children Underweight (% severe) by quintile
in 1996 and 2000 (above) and annual rate of
improvement of each quintile relative to the national
average (below)
15
10
5
0
Lowest Second Middle Fourth Highest
20
15
10
5
0
-5
-10
Highest
•
2000
20
Fourth
•
In Tanzania, households with disabled members
are 20% more likely to be living in poverty.
Women account for nearly 70% of the 1.2 billion
people currently living in extreme poverty.
In Brazil, nearly three times as many black women
as white women die from the complications of
pregnancy and childbirth.
In the Indian states of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar,
primary school enrolment for scheduled caste and
scheduled tribe girls is 37%, compared with 60%
for girls from non-scheduled castes. Among boys
from non-scheduled castes, 77% are enrolled.
In China, although ethnic minorities make up less
than 9% of the population, they account for 37% of
known cases of HIV.
1996
Middle
•
25
Second
Excluded benefit least from development
30
Lowest
2. Inclusion
-15
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Targeting
Social transfers target the poorest and excluded
groups
☢ Who benefits? Who chooses
• Universal vs Targeted –
Equality of process or of outcome
Equal payments to all children, or targeted
payments to the poorest children.
• Community Based targeting
• Reinforcing community level distribution of
wealth and power?
• Providing real say for poorest in local
community context
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3. Country-led Approach to
Social Transfers
Country ownership means governments have to take initiative
in adopting SP programmes.
• Getting SP on the agenda - Governments are most likely
to respond to interests of citizens with a stronger voice –
not the interests of the poorest and excluded groups –
unless they perceive benefits from stronger citizenship ties,
(e.g. election time, in response to social unrest in deprived
areas)
• Once in place social transfers integrate poor people (end
exploitative relationships of work or debt) and may make
people more engaged with state, more politically aware
• But they also create ‘entitlements’ with obligations on
State - may resist obligations to deliver benefits seen as
inducing dependence, and potential shift in power to poor that
might result
• (potentially) donor - may mean longer predictable aid flows
which can clash with budgetary flows of donors
•
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References
For more information see:
Human Rights Target Strategy Paper:
http://www.dfid.gov.uk/pubs/files/tsphuman.pdf
Human Rights Review:
http://www.dfid.gov.uk/pubs/files/humrightsrevfull.pdf
Partnerships for Poverty Reduction
http://www.dfid.gov.uk/pubs/files/conditionality.pdf
Eliminating Hunger: Target Strategy Paper
http://www.dfid.gov.uk/pubs/files/elimhunger.pdf
Safety, Security and Access to Justice
http://www.dfid.gov.uk/pubs/files/safesecureaccjustice
.pdf
1 Palace Street, London SW1E 5HE
Abercrombie House, Eaglesham Road, East Kilbride, Glasgow G75 8EA
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