Humanitarian emergencies are increasingly protracted and characterised by multiple compounding crises. International social security standards provide a roadmap for building national social protection systems. In the Arab States region, the International Labour Organization has been critically assessing how to apply these standards across the humanitarian, development, and peace nexus when countries face protracted crises. This article presents case studies in four countries: Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, and the Occupied Palestinian Territory. It addresses questions on how to strengthen humanitarian–development transitions using international standards, where entry points exist or challenges remain, and how these transitions may contribute to strengthening peace through social cohesion.
International social security standards, protracted crisis, social protection, humanitarian–development–peace nexus, rights-based approaches, systems building, Arab region.
Social protection is recognised as vital for addressing poverty and vulnerability, curbing inequality, contributing to human development, enhancing resilience, and responding effectively to shocks, and has gained prominence through the Sustainable Development Goals and Covid-19 pandemic response. The universal right to social security is well established in international human rights frameworks and standards.11 Nevertheless, 73 per cent of people around the world lack adequate social protection (ILO 2021a).
The global context has changed significantly over the past decade. Shocks and stresses are increasing in complexity, severity, frequency, and duration – including climatic shocks, political instability, conflicts within/between countries, and forced displacement – and are contributing to multiple compounding and protracted ‘poly-crises’. Humanitarian needs are escalating globally, but disproportionately in fragile and conflict-affected states (FCAS) (Development Initiatives 2023).12
There has been growing commitment to new approaches to aid provision in protracted crises, and to strengthening collaboration, coherence, and complementarity between humanitarian, development, and peace nexus (HDPN) actions. In protracted crises,13 humanitarian assistance – while critical for supporting needs – cannot deliver transformative change (Cliffe et al. 2023). Joint, complementary actions (and financing) between HDPN actors are needed to reduce the burden on the humanitarian system and reduce drivers of fragility as well as to protect development gains, avoid duplication of efforts in contexts of scarce resources, and progressively expand rights-based social protection. Yet in many protracted crisis contexts, national social protection systems remain weak or are emerging (Longhurst and Slater 2022). Recognising the importance of social protection to manage risks and support development, a plethora of global agreements have seen HDPN actors commit to strengthening links between their work and contributing to national systems building where possible.
In line with its mandate, the International Labour Organization (ILO) supports the application of international social security standards (ISSS) globally, including in FCAS (Cherrier, forthcoming). In the Arab States region,14 the ILO has assessed how to apply ISSS ‘across the nexus’ in several protracted crisis contexts. This includes in the Occupied Palestinian Territory,15 where humanitarian actors have engaged since 1949; Jordan and Lebanon, both impacted by the Syrian refugee crisis since 2011, and with Lebanon facing escalating humanitarian needs since 2019; and Iraq, where there is a move to reduce 15 years of humanitarian assistance supporting forcibly displaced populations. Each context has an internationally recognised national authority (to varying extents and capacities) and social protection systems at varying levels of development. Jordan and Iraq have both ratified the Social Security (Minimum Standards) Convention, 1952 (No. 102) (ILO 1952), unlike Lebanon or the Occupied Palestinian Territory. Despite different root causes and constraints, all have commonalities in their social protection sector, with gaps in benefits, coverage, and financing.
In the Arab region, international HDPN actors are major players in the provision of social protection programmes for vulnerable populations, often delivering structural income support programmes comparable in size to those of national governments. With its partners, the ILO has supported social protection reforms in all these contexts, identifying context-specific entry points for engagement ‘across the nexus’ in line with ISSS.
This article presents experiences and lessons learned from engagement in these contexts to illustrate practical examples of applying ISSS for systems building in protracted crises. It seeks to address the following questions:
In Section 2, we provide an introduction to international social security standards and discuss their relevance in protracted crisis contexts. In Section 3, we present case studies of ILO’s engagement in four countries in the Arab States region, providing practical examples of the entry points for applying ISSS for system building in protracted crises. Following this, Section 4 concludes with some forward-looking reflections from the authors on what these case studies mean for working on social protection across the nexus in protracted crises.
Worldwide, ISSS guide efforts by governments and development partners to build national social protection systems. Convention 102 sets international principles and minimum requirements across nine contingencies (ILO 1952). The Social Protection Floors Recommendation, 2012 (No. 202) (ILO 2012), further outlines the core guarantees for horizontal and vertical extension of nationally defined social protection systems. These frameworks represent a global consensus towards what constitutes the right to social protection (Figure 1), with principles enshrined in ISSS, including:
Social protection is recognised as a means of preventing crises, enabling recovery, and building resilience, and ISSS principles are therefore highly relevant for protracted crisis contexts.16 Most notably:
However, while building social protection systems in protracted crisis settings is increasingly part of global policy dialogue, there has been little focus on the application of ISSS in these contexts.
One reason is that ISSS consider social protection under the primary responsibility of the state. In many FCAS, this responsibility is not fully realised or absolute.17 Where the state is party to conflict, national schemes may not adequately cover conflict-affected populations; and while international obligations exist for states to provide social protection to forcibly displaced populations, implementation varies. In practice, many refugee populations remain excluded from national social protection measures due to regulatory frameworks, political reluctance, and financial constraints. Further, weak governance and limited space for non-governmental actors often undermine conditions for participation and hamper effective social dialogue. There exist manifold political (and legal) constraints to the provision of sustainable and predictable development funding for social protection in FCAS, while shorter funding cycles and rigid policies constrain the impact of humanitarian instruments. Finally, there are challenges in harmonising ISSS with humanitarian normative frameworks. Humanitarian action is guided by principles (humanity, neutrality, impartiality, and independence) that are critical to the ability to act in humanitarian settings. While HDPN stakeholders have committed to working ‘across the nexus’ to support social protection, these principles can be difficult to reconcile in practice.18
The Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) is marked by a complex, extremely protracted crisis stemming from decades of Israeli occupation, leading to widespread poverty and vulnerability, compounded by a myriad of other shocks and developmental constraints. Political divisions between the West Bank and Gaza, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) mandate to cover refugee needs, and donor controls against fiduciary risk contribute to parallel UN-led interventions, undermining the role of the state as duty bearer. The Ministry of Social Development (MoSD) implements the National Cash Transfer Programme (NCTP), but coverage and adequacy are insufficient compared to needs.
The Palestinian Authority faces a deep financial crisis, partly due to Israel withholding clearance revenues alongside limited domestic revenue generation capacity, leading to irregular NCTP payments. This leads to high dependence on donor funding, which is intermittent and declining. Gaps in the provision of other social protection instruments (contributory schemes, active labour market measures), alongside the occupation and other political factors, contribute to continued reliance on humanitarian cash transfers. Efforts at establishing a solid contributory social insurance pillar have been stalled for almost a decade. However, humanitarian access concerns and donor constraints limit the willingness of some organisations to engage with national actors (in case independence is compromised). Furthermore, donor dependency and broader democratic deficits reduce opportunities for nationally inclusive programming built on social dialogue. Populations are not able to organise and demand their rights.
Development actors, including the ILO, have aimed to address challenges by supporting social protection systems-building reforms. Since 2021, a European Union-funded project has aimed at strengthening nexus coherence in social protection, including establishing a Social Protection Cash and Voucher Assistance Thematic Working Group (TWG) to facilitate coordination, reduce fragmentation, and increase shock-responsiveness.
Investments in nexus coordination mechanisms have helped develop a co-owned sectoral vision based on ISSS. The TWG has developed an agenda for change across all stakeholders, testing shared approaches and co-creating a joint agenda for a unified, rights-based social protection system. The TWG is co-chaired by the Palestinian Authority and humanitarian actors, with facilitation by the ILO as a neutral broker (non-cash implementer). It has sought to create safe spaces for actors to discuss their ‘red lines’ (such as non-engagement with political actors), enabling a more open dialogue and building trust. Leaders of the main safety net programmes (MoSD, the World Food Programme (WFP), and UNRWA) have engaged in joint planning and design based on ISSS. The TWG uses adaptive management to drive coordination processes across the nexus, allowing actors to tackle practical elements of programme design (e.g. data sharing) without being stalled by political barriers.
Sectoral discussions have challenged the rationale of targeting mechanisms, considered the feasibility of rights-based approaches, and focused on harmonising transfer values across HDPN programming. In line with ISSS, there has been increasing support for individual life-cycle-based transfers to address long-term vulnerability, for better transparency, predictability, and accountability, compared to existing poverty-targeted social assistance (ILO 2023a). Further discussions have focused on transfer values, given that similarly vulnerable households receive up to five times more through humanitarian programming than their NCTP-covered counterparts (ILO 2023b).
However, there remains no data-sharing framework or joint beneficiary registry to track who receives what, and despite successes in programmatic alignment, these have not led to integrated programme design, financing, or delivery. The MoSD aims to provide inclusive social protection for all in Gaza and the West Bank, including refugees, but solidarity and social dialogue also remain largely unaddressed, with political division, and internal and external constraints preventing Palestinians from fully demanding their rights.
In such a protracted crisis, the long-term collective goal must be to strengthen state capacities to fulfil its role as duty bearer and to reduce the need for humanitarian assistance. In the absence of a political solution, regular ‘development’ programming is critical to maintain national systems. More flexible, long-term, or joint financing mechanisms between HDPN actors should be adopted to reduce artificial barriers.
In the OPT case, coverage and adequacy (with dialogue as a pre-cursor) have served as practical entry points to introduce ISSS into discussions with HDPN actors, towards harmonised approaches and strategic layering of HDPN programming. Ultimately, more transparent and accountable programmes, perceived by the population to be state led (even if delivered by non-state actors), and ideally with funding channelled through national systems, could serve to strengthen the citizen–state relationship in the long term.
Lebanon has recently faced an unparalleled sequence of financial, economic, and political crises. Since 2019, inflation has soared and around 40 per cent of households live in extreme multidimensional poverty (ILO 2022a). National estimates show that the country hosts 1.5 million refugees, mostly from Syria, with 90 per cent unable to meet their survival needs (UNHCR, UNICEF and WFP 2022).
Lebanon’s social protection system was unprepared and unfit to shoulder the impact of these compound shocks. As a result of legal gaps and institutional fragmentation, the right to social protection is far from extended to all. Most formal employees are entitled to only a very basic package of social insurance benefits, but the drastic currency devaluation has translated into considerable loss of value for contributions and benefits across all funds. Self-employed workers, those in the agriculture sector and in the informal economy, and foreign workers have no legal entitlement to social protection, including access to health care or employment-related and state pensions. Most domestic spending on social protection has historically benefited civil servants and the military, leaving cash assistance programmes for the vulnerable severely underdeveloped and underfunded (IFI 2021). The collapse of the banking sector has prevented families from accessing their savings when needed the most.
With limited options (and no political will) to piggyback on national systems, the sizeable humanitarian response to the refugee crisis has run in parallel to national social protection schemes and institutions. This has in turn fuelled social tension, linked to the perception of refugees enjoying more comprehensive and generous benefits than vulnerable Lebanese. Now declining international funding envelopes mean that humanitarian cash assistance will increasingly fall short of host communities and refugees’ needs.
However, the unprecedented crisis has simultaneously given new impetus to reform efforts for strengthening national social protection systems. Regular and deliberate engagement with government and parliament over several years have resulted in tangible landmark changes: the rollout of a nationwide targeted social assistance programme in 2022, the launch of the National Disability Allowance (NDA) in 2023, a long-awaited pension system reform, and the adoption of Lebanon’s first national social protection strategy in 2024. These developments result from heterogeneous factors: a renewed awareness and focus on social protection in the national debate, the converging pressure and support of the international community to prioritise social spending, the need of the political class to show progress on at least some concrete agendas, and the urge to address structural issues that threaten system sustainability (and where reform has become unavoidable).
The emergence of these new social protection instruments – and their stronger alignment with ISSS – now opens new perspectives for the HDPN. For example, the new pension law advances a principle of equality of treatment between national and non-national workers – a cornerstone of ISSS – which has potential over time to facilitate the extension of social protection to non-Lebanese workers through the contributory system.
Additionally, since the launch of the national social protection strategy, international partners are seeking to establish stronger linkages between humanitarian assistance and the national policy framework, as indicated in the recently adopted basic assistance sector strategy. A positive example is the NDA, the first rights-based social benefit in Lebanon. The programme provides monthly income support to Lebanese and refugee youths with disabilities under a common design, unified eligibility parameters, and harmonised benefits, aligning to ISSS. The design resulted from lengthy participatory involvement of disabled persons’ organisations in Lebanon and highlighted the existence of larger ‘space’ for HDPN alignment and inclusive social protection approaches when life cycle rights-based approaches are adopted, as opposed to poverty targeting.
Partners have stressed that the NDA should contribute to developing state systems and administrative capacities. The entitlement is linked to the official Personal Disability Card system, a deliberate policy to operate through national institutions rather than in parallel. While this delayed the programme launch, it contributed to ensuring government leadership and ownership and the re-operationalisation of eight national disability centres. The 2024 national budget includes domestic funding for social assistance for Lebanese nationals, including the NDA.
The Lebanon case emphasises that social protection reform agendas can accelerate at times of crisis, when the right mix of domestic and international factors are at play. In protracted crises, aligning humanitarian and development objectives requires carefully balancing the trade-off between scaling up short-term support, while not losing sight of structural reforms and capacity-building investments that can lay foundations for more inclusive and sustainable rights-based approaches in the long term.
While Jordan has higher social protection spending compared to other countries in the region, with a mature national social protection system, there remain significant coverage gaps. Many workers in the informal economy (the ‘missing middle’) do not receive poverty-targeted social assistance through the National Aid Fund (NAF) but are also not included in contributory schemes. Furthermore, despite inclusive social insurance legislation, uptake amongst vulnerable groups remains limited because its design is unsuitable for their needs. The monthly social insurance contribution is largely allocated towards the old-age pension; shorter-term (health and family-related) benefits are not included. Meanwhile, the declaration of earnings can lead to social assistance benefits being removed, creating disincentives to register for social insurance. Employers are reluctant to absorb the formalisation costs, despite the benefits for enterprise productivity. Barriers are more significant for women workers, only one quarter of whom are registered with the Social Security Corporation (SSC).
All regular workers, including refugees, have a legal right to social security. However, barriers to effective access are higher for refugees, who work predominantly in the informal sector for low wages. Some 80 per cent of non-Jordanian workers (migrants and refugees) are not registered with the SSC (ILO 2021b). Conversely, refugees cannot access state-provided social assistance, which is only available to nationals. Years of advocacy by the international community have not led to concrete alignment of humanitarian funding with national cash assistance systems. Without access to social protection, most Syrian refugees rely on humanitarian cash assistance.
With support from the international community, the ILO and SSC aim to address challenges by tackling constraints to informal workers’ participation in social insurance, including migrants and refugees. This initiative (Estidama++) focuses on affordability and awareness barriers to participation and enhancing social protection systems coherence. The adoption of contributory approaches for social protection extension to refugees aims at reducing dependence on humanitarian funding, recognising refugees’ rights as workers and aligning social protection extension objectives across Jordanians and refugees in the informal economy. This has helped reframe the narrative, from dependency to one where refugees contribute to a functioning labour market, and a sustainable national social protection system.
Past efforts to extend social protection coverage in Jordan addressed financial barriers to access by reducing social security contributions, but at the expense of the adequacy of benefits, including for refugees. These approaches did not guarantee a minimum level of protection. Estidama++ ensures the affordability of contributions through an aid-funded transition mechanism, while maintaining minimum protection levels and solidarity in financing, in line with ISSS. It will be important to document whether engaging both populations with equal rights and obligations to the national contributory social insurance system will also mark a positive contribution to social cohesion, especially given the mixed evidence on the social cohesion impacts of linking humanitarian assistance and social protection (Lowe et al. 2022).
However, refugees’ transition pathways to self-reliance need time and a whole-of-system approach. Donors across the nexus need to better connect the different strands of work on socioeconomic inclusion – encompassing inclusion in social insurance, financial services, and the labour market. In particular, nexus strategies require realism and comprehensive approaches for ‘graduation’ from social protection, which often lack a proper understanding of labour demand and pay insufficient attention to the transition from social assistance to social insurance (Behrendt 2017). Cash assistance cannot be cut off prematurely; it must span the transition. Efforts to transition refugees to livelihoods opportunities and social insurance are critical to support resilience and reduce humanitarian need, but some refugees and vulnerable Jordanians will still require long-term social assistance. While there is willingness from workers and employers to transition into formal labour, contribution fees, administrative barriers, fear of benefit loss, and the absence of smoothing instruments inhibit transition. Therefore, structural reforms of the social protection architecture should facilitate deeper integration of different pillars to enable layering up of the three main social protection providers (SSC, NAF, and United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)) to a nationally determined minimum standard.
The Jordan case emphasises that social insurance system strengthening can support refugees’ inclusion in social protection. The allocation of humanitarian funding to Estidama++ shows that the contributory route can be attractive for HDPN actors and catalyse refugee-inclusive social protection in certain contexts, provided the right conditions are in place. However, efforts to support refugees’ access to social insurance and develop pathways to self-reliance come over a decade into the Syrian crisis. The inclusion of refugees is inherently a political issue and requires development actors to set long-term incentives for government – through joint financing and supporting vulnerable Jordanians alongside refugees. Broad HDPN social protection programming approaches and ‘systems thinking’ – as opposed to a narrow focus on cash assistance – are needed early on in protracted crises.
In Iraq, 1.2 million people remain internally displaced due to conflict and the security situation, which have significantly impacted infrastructure and the economy. Iraq is also susceptible to climate change, and population growth is placing increasing pressure on natural resources. While forcibly displaced populations from Syria have historically received humanitarian assistance, this funding is decreasing sharply, leading actors to seek more ‘sustainable solutions’ (Development Initiatives 2023). Iraq’s social protection system is fragmented and does not guarantee adequate coverage. Only a small fraction of private-sector workers are covered by social insurance which, until 2023, did not include maternity or unemployment benefits. The Public Distribution System provides a food ration to almost all Iraqi families but is not coordinated with the poverty-targeted Social Safety Network (SSN), which provides inadequate cash transfers to a small share of vulnerable households in federal Iraq. Neither scheme coordinates with contributory mechanisms.
Unlike other countries in the region, almost all of Iraq’s social protection schemes are domestically financed. Yet some 85 per cent of the state budget is collected from oil revenue, which is subject to significant fluctuations, affecting the overall SSN budget and leading to ad hoc decision-making on coverage. The resulting unreliability, lack of transparency, and inequality in benefit levels make the Iraqi social protection system unlikely to contribute to strengthening the social contract.
The Government of Iraq is keen to support SSN recipient households to exit poverty in a sustainable manner. Simultaneously, reduced humanitarian funding is pressurising humanitarian actors to support their current caseloads to become self-reliant, leading them to promote ‘graduation approaches’. While pursuing similar objectives, there is little to no coordination or alignment between government and humanitarian efforts in this regard. In turn, there is limited recognition in either case that the extent to which access to ‘livelihoods’ contributes to sustained ‘exit from poverty’ and self-reliance depends heavily on employment quality and social insurance coverage (ibid.) – particularly important in a context where informal jobs represent two-thirds of total employment (ILO 2022b).
One mechanism to achieve this objective is the creation and implementation of public employment programming (PEP), for which the ILO was designated as the government’s main technical partner. The programme will prioritise coverage of SSN recipients who are willing and able to work, and the jobs created thereunder will initially focus on the construction of green social housing, thus aiming to address the triple crises of employment, housing, and climate change with a harmonised approach. The programme development will be informed by previous employment schemes, which covered refugees and host communities in northern Iraq since 2020 and created standard operating procedures that include minimum standards on employment conditions, applicable to any cash-for-work initiatives implemented by HDPN actors. Key design considerations will ensure quality employment (including respect for labour laws and access to social security), and include trainings to strengthen participants’ employability.
The Iraq case emphasises that effective long-term transitions require options to layer benefits, rather than an either/or choice, integrating existing programmes with social insurance mechanisms to ensure coverage for all through mutually reinforcing systems. Ensuring such coherence and complementarity between the PEP and social protection schemes requires coordination across a range of actors. This is already a significant challenge in the Iraqi context, where such mechanisms may be formalised but have limited effectiveness.
Protracted crises, and HDPN approaches within these, occupy an uncomfortable ‘middle ground’ where the context does not strictly fit into distinct humanitarian/development definitions. Difficult as it may be, on the ground there is a need for convergence from both sides.
With their own unique sets of barriers, risks, and challenges, the case studies show how humanitarian responses/funding can contribute to longer-term development agendas and national social protection system strengthening. While there is much literature on this for acute shocks, the four country experiences demonstrate that multiple entry points exist to concretely advance humanitarian to development transitions in protracted crisis settings too. In these contexts, the normative lens of ISSS, based on the individual right to social security, can serve as a compass to orient HDPN actions towards building social protection systems.
While standalone humanitarian programmes provide protection for vulnerable populations, they do not automatically contribute to developing national capacities or may potentially undermine them. This becomes an issue of concern the longer the crisis persists. Development actors should get involved early enough in humanitarian response discussions: they are well placed to play a convening role amongst HDPN and national actors and build understanding of the relevance of ISSS, to support the transition towards long-term development objectives.
ISSS encourage a holistic ‘systems’ approach to social protection to accelerate transitions from humanitarian assistance where relevant. Beyond cash-based social transfers, ISSS envisage comprehensive and sustainable systems, where other social protection instruments – social insurance, labour market programmes – are important to strengthen the resilience of crisis-affected populations. Discussions on HDPN linkages to these programmes should centralise on sustainability and efficient financing (alongside inclusivity and decent work principles) to incentivise diverse actors and donors to act along all components of the social protection ecosystem, and support transition from non-contributory to contributory approaches wherever possible.
In protracted crisis contexts, HDPN actors need to find ways to overcome challenges in harmonising ISSS with humanitarian principles and policies: while humanitarian principles are clearly important, principles of state responsibility are equally so. Coverage, adequacy, and inclusivity can all provide entry points for applying ISSS across HDPN actions, as technical-level commonalities often exist between approaches. Coordination on these topics can offer benefits for populations regardless of political concerns on normative frameworks. Non-discrimination principles embedded in ISSS can also advance inclusive approaches, aligning the decent work agenda for displaced populations and host communities alike. In protracted crises with long-standing programmes, humanitarian vulnerability often converges with poverty, offering higher potential for alignment due to similar objectives across HDPN programmes.
Governments are the ultimate duty bearer to deliver ISSS. Where feasible, state responsibility, domestic financing, and national ownership are essential to facilitate genuine transitions along the nexus and reduce recurrent dependency on humanitarian aid. Development and humanitarian financial instruments and strategies must be coordinated jointly, followed by programme implementation. There is a need for flexible, multi-year funding to bridge humanitarian and development social protection interventions (OECD 2019), particularly in protracted crises, to avoid humanitarian funding being reduced without the required step-up in development or domestic financing for social protection.
Finally, more attention is needed to develop the evidence based on the role of social protection in peace-building. The 1919 Constitution of the ILO states that ‘universal and lasting peace can be established only if it is based upon social justice’,19 stemming from the application of ISSS. Conceptual frameworks and understanding need to be clarified and further detailed on notions such as social cohesion in protracted crises and what this means for social protection and systems building, thinking through possible entry points and risks, and considering what changes are measurable. Where national systems exist, coherent communications and programme delivery based on ISSS would do no harm, and could indeed build the social contract indirectly, even if not all programmes are fully state led.
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|
Principles |
Universality and comprehensiveness |
Adequacy |
Sustainability |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Diversity of methods and approaches (consideration of diversity of methods and approaches, including of financing mechanisms and delivery systems) |
Rights and dignity (respect for the rights and dignity of people covered by the social security guarantees) |
Minimum predictable levels of income replacement and security |
Solidarity by collective financing (while seeking to achieve an optimal balance between the responsibilities and interests among those who finance/benefit) |
|
Complaint and appeals mechanisms (efficiency and accessibility of complaint and appeal procedures) |
Entitlement guaranteed by law (entitlement to benefits prescribed by national law) |
Progressive realisation (including by setting targets and time frames) |
National consensus based on social dialogue (tripartite participation; full respect for collective bargaining and freedom of association for all workers) |
|
Systemic coherence and coordination with other public policies and services (coherence with social, economic, and employment policies; coherence across institutions; high-quality public services) |
Non-discrimination, equality of treatment, social inclusion (non-discrimination, gender equality, and responsiveness to special needs; social inclusion and of persons in informal economy) |
Periodic adjustments |
Transparent, sound, and participative management (regular monitoring, periodic evaluation; transparent, accountable, and sound financial management and administration) |
Note: Return to Figure 1 International social security standards (ISSS) guiding principles.
Copyright © 2024 The Authors. IDS Bulletin © Institute of Development Studies | DOI: 10.19088/1968-2024.123
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 4.0 International licence (CC BY-NC), which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original authors and source are credited, any modifications or adaptations are indicated, and the work is not used for commercial purposes.
The IDS Bulletin is published by Institute of Development Studies, Library Road, Brighton, BN1 9RE, UK. This article is part of IDS Bulletin Vol. 55 No. 2 October 2024 ‘Reimagining Social Protection’; the Introduction is also recommended reading.