First published in 1948, the International Social Security Review is the principal international quarterly publication in the field of social security.
The article discusses the current practices for providing social protection to refugees and migrants, focusing primarily on low- and middle-income (LMICs) destination countries. It examines formal providers of social protection, including state institutions, development agencies and humanitarian organizations. In recent years, there has been an increase in funding from multilateral donors, especially in the context of the COVID–19 pandemic, leading to the establishment of national assistance programmes in LMICs that also encompass refugees and to a lesser extent migrant workers. International agencies play a crucial role in providing humanitarian cash assistance to refugees, given their status under international protection under the 1951 refugee Convention and related protocols. Access to social insurance remains tied to formal employment. Social insurance entitlements for migrants are often restricted and refugees are typically excluded from formal employment in LMICs. Regarding labour market interventions, refugees and migrants are often excluded from national programmes, with migrants’ residence permits being often tied to employment. For refugees, international agencies take a prominent role in providing livelihood programmes aimed at enhancing income-generating opportunities, economic inclusion and financial independence. However, the effectiveness of these interventions remains unclear, lacking rigorous evidence, and often being short-term with limited coverage.
Migration is a complex phenomenon that has significant implications for migrant workers’ access to social protection and for social security systems in both origin and destination countries. As the number of migrants continues to rise worldwide, policy makers face a multitude of challenges in adapting social protection programmes to meet the needs of an increasingly diverse population. This article explores the relationship between migration and social protection, highlighting key issues and trends that have emerged in recent years. It examines the impact of migration on social security systems in both sending and receiving countries and reports on the ways in which migration patterns can create both opportunities and challenges for these systems. The article provides an overview social protection measures and gaps in selected countries and considers the need for policy makers to take account of the unique needs and circumstances of migrant populations. The article also explores the role of international cooperation in addressing the social protection challenges and opportunities posed by migration. It considers some of the emerging trends and innovations to support the governance of social protection schemes that may help to address some of the legal and practical challenges faced by migrant workers and social security institutions. The article highlights the importance of understanding the complex relationship between migration and social protection to develop policies and programmes that are responsive to the needs of all members of society, regardless of their country of origin or immigration status. It also underlines the importance of quality administration and good governance for the effective implementation of social protection measures. In support of the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals agenda, a call is made for continued dialogue and collaboration among policy makers and stakeholders to ensure that social security systems are equitable, effective, inclusive, and sustainable in an increasingly globalized world.
The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) outlines the rights for every child, including the right to benefit from social security and the right to a standard of living adequate for their physical, mental, spiritual, moral, and social development. The UNCRC is the most widely ratified human rights treaty to date. However, millions of children continue to be denied their rights and face poverty, vulnerability and social exclusion, merely because they are displaced – internally or across borders. Children bear the heaviest burden of displacement, despite not being responsible for its triggers. This reality underlines that a significant population is being “left behind”, threatening progress to achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals as part of international efforts to end poverty and ensure all people enjoy peace and prosperity. This article advocates for inclusive social protection systems for displaced children by highlighting the difficulties they encounter, emphasizing the potential benefits of social protection, and assessing the current status of inclusive social protection for this vulnerable group. Drawing on emerging lessons from UNICEF’s experience across several refugee and internal displacement contexts, such as Brazil, Ethiopia, Slovakia, and Türkiye, the article also offers recommendations to strengthen inclusive social protection systems specifically tailored to meet the humanitarian and development needs of displaced children.
This article explores factors influencing the extension of social protection to migrant workers in the region of the Cooperation Council for the Arab States of the Gulf (GCC). While there are some indications of new momentum for reforms, we find that reforms to address gaps in legal social protection coverage have historically been hindered by the very design of the migration system, including the assumed short-term migration time frame and over reliance on employer-sponsored provisions, as well as the political economy in the region, which translates into a segmented labour market and associated social protection entitlements for national and migrant workers, and limited channels for migrant worker representation. Despite some new mechanisms being developed, labour dispute and judicial systems are often ineffective in protecting workers and their families when benefits are not paid. Bureaucratic, financial, language, documentation and geographic barriers constitute further obstacles to migrant workers’ access to social protection in practice. The article closes with key policy implications, including measures for: developing comprehensive legal provisions in line with international standards and principles as well as the commitments to leave no one behind and to ensure social protection for all in the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development; addressing practical barriers, power imbalances and outreach, monitoring and enforcement gaps; and strengthening dialogue and collaboration between all actors, including GCC and country of origin governments, employers, workers, and wider stakeholders advocating for migrant workers’ rights.
The target populations to be covered in this article on the extension of social protection coverage are refugees, as defined by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Our approach to their coverage is based on the pillars of public health and social protection, which together provide the rationale and legislative basis for coverage. The social protection benefits to be covered are comprehensive health services, providing entitlement to services without conditions such as prior contributions or duration of residence. Refugees are vulnerable since they come from conflict areas or go through persecution and personal threat. They carry grief from the loss of family members and friends, property and livelihood, and social and cultural support. Some have sustained injuries before rescue and evacuation and need additional care. They may have chronic diseases and need medications they can no longer access. Some may have communicable diseases, such as tuberculosis, and children may have missed scheduled mandatory vaccinations. Refugees are vulnerable to new and re-emerging infections, as seen in the COVID–19 pandemic. While the focus in this article is on providing health care, the social determinants of health are addressed, including access to education, employment with decent working conditions, and safe environments. We focus on coverage by national authorities and institutions, legislative amendments to enable entitlement to non-citizens, and provide national examples. Experience has shown that coverage is feasible with the assistance and guidance of international and local organizations and associations and with an acceptance by the existing social protection institutions of the benefits of extending coverage to new members. This article concurs with the principle and pledge of the 2030 Social Development Goals of the United Nations to “leave no one behind”.
UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, has the mandate to save lives and build better futures for millions of forcibly displaced and stateless people. This contribution sets out UNHCR’s mandated roles concerning displaced population groups and details the nature of the humanitarian and human development challenges that confront the international community. In this important regard, the social protection coverage extension objectives of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Global Partnership for Universal Social Protection (USP), to leave no one behind, are considered essential.
This 2023 special issue of the International Social Security Review contributes to the core debate framed by the international ambition of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals to leave no one behind and does so through the lens of social security coverage extension. Specifically, the special issue addresses the social security rights of selected population groups prioritized by the current programme of work of the International Social Security Association; namely, displaced populations, amongst whom children represent a significant proportion, and international migrant workers. Implicit in this choice is a wish to collate, analyse, enrich, and disseminate knowledge to forge a stronger consensus to help realize effective social security coverage for all.
With the enactment of Statutory Instrument No. 72 (2019), Zambia is extending pension coverage to workers in the informal economy. We present evidence on the experiences and perspectives of domestic workers and bus and taxi drivers regarding pension scheme coverage in Zambia. We use data generated through interviews and focus group discussions. The analysis shows that pension schemes, as conventionally designed for formal economy employees, are not compatible with the values, beliefs and needs of informal economy workers, and pension coverage was not a priority for them. As a form of social innovation, extending access to pension coverage had a lower relative advantage and lacked incentives to attract informal economy workers. We propose a member-centred framework for initiating the extension of social security coverage to informal economy workers.
Globally, people with disabilities are disproportionally affected by poverty. Social protection policies, including cash transfers, are key strategies to address poverty “in all its forms”, but it is currently unclear how such programmes affect people with disabilities. This study examines differences in the impact of the Lesotho Child Grant Programme (CGP) on food security, health, education and livelihoods between people with and without disabilities using data from a community randomized control trial. Overall, this study finds the CGP had significant and differential impacts for people with disabilities across multiple health indicators (e.g. increased health expenditures, self-rated health, likelihood of seeking healthcare). The CGP also had an impact on food security, decreasing the number of months households with and without members with disabilities faced extreme food shortages. There was also a modest but significant and differential impact of the CGP on the engagement of people with disabilities in paid work. The CGP only had an impact on school enrolment for children without disabilities, however the difference in impact was non-significant and likely due to underpowered sample sizes. Overall, people with disabilities receiving the CGP still experienced high levels of absolute deprivation, and were generally still worse off compared to people without disabilities, indicating a need for adapted or complementary social protection and other poverty alleviation programmes.
One mechanism for influencing income redistribution through a pension system is to incorporate non-contributory financing. Using mathematic modelling tools, this study compares two arrangements for financing Argentina’s pension system that emerged from an optimization exercise. One arrangement permits financing through income tax and the other does not. The former is found to be preferable in terms of equality and proves robust to changes in the investment rate and the inequality aversion parameter. The use of mathematical modelling tools by decision-makers with access to sufficient high-quality data would allow for a credible assessment of the extent to which a particular parametric reform might (or might not) contribute to improved income distribution.
This study uses news media discourse analysis to investigate the highly contentious process of pension privatization retrenchment in Lithuania. In 2016, Lithuania began debating reforms on restructuring its poorly performing “second pillar” pension scheme – statutory funded individually defined contribution plans managed by the private sector. Pension reform is here conceptualized as a process of discursive contestation of the orthodox neoliberal consensus that prevailed in designing and introducing a private pension system in the early 2000s. By 2018, when a new Law on Pensions institutionalized a subsidized “nudge-type” private retirement saving scheme, this process was legitimized by a newly prominent libertarian paternalistic ideology. Impacts of the discursive framing of pension reforms on their outcomes are discussed.
Using household surveys from 17 Latin American countries over 2009–2018, we analyze contributory pension coverage for the economically active population (EAP) and contributory/non-contributory pension coverage for older persons. Nine countries have “private” and eight have “public” pension systems. Inequalities in gender, income, education, location and firm size affect both coverage of the EAP and the elderly. Rather than being affected by the type of pension system – private or public –, coverage depends on structural features of the labour market and public policy interventions. Our findings confirm current understanding that level of development is directly related with coverage whereas inequality and informality are inversely related with coverage. Based on these results, we recommend policy interventions.