The Rise and Rise of Social Protection as an Area of UNICEF Work : Alex Yuster

by Alex Yuster

If you joined UNICEF less than 10 years ago, you might think that social protection has long been a part of our work. In fact, it was an area we largely ignored, or actively avoided until about 2005.

While I can offer only my opinion as to why that was the case, I can share first-hand the story of how country offices began to engage, supported by a multi-disciplinary team in Programme Division.

Here’s a non-official definition of social protection: government support - cash, services and in-kind - to families and individuals to help cope with the challenges they face over the course of their lives. Those challenges include the additional needs of childhood, childbearing and child rearing, as well as those more frequently covered by ‘social security’: unemployment, illness and old age.

UNICEF’s identity has long been associated with the most concrete aspects of health, nutrition, education, water and sanitation, and what I call the pointy end of child protection (that is, helping children experiencing violence or exploitation). In each of these fields, forward thinking colleagues have often looked for ways to support the social change and systems needed to improve these services over the long term, and to prevent poor health or nutrition, non-attendance, and child protection risks in the first place. But we lacked a clear way to address a key component of all these risks: child poverty.

UNICEF’s first attempt to address child poverty per se was critical and ground-breaking: the efforts around Structural Adjustment with a Human Face in the early 90s. Still, this was purely advocacy, and didn’t yet bring us down to the nitty gritty level of most of UNICEF’s sectoral work. So what did?

As ever, it started from the practical needs, experiences and experimentation of country and regional offices. NYHQ added value by recognizing the connections between these efforts, documenting and sharing good practices and amplifying them through global engagement. But let’s start with where it started: in the field.

In the mid 1990s two seemingly unrelated issues were gaining traction in UNICEF: new country programmes in the former Eastern Bloc, and the impacts of HIV on children, especially in sub-Saharan Africa. Despite these different origins, both involved responding to risks associated with child poverty and loss of parental care, and helped create demand for what we now know as child-sensitive social protection. So how exactly did we get there? Having worked with UNICEF on HIV and social policy in Mozambique and Zimbabwe from the mid 90s till 2003, and then on alternative care (and juvenile justice) in NYHQ, I had a front row seat and a hand in bringing all this together.

In the new CEE/CIS region, the challenges to child rights were somewhat different to what UNICEF offices were used to. The former socialist countries traditionally invested substantially in social services, though were now faced with financial crises which reduced available public funds. These investments included cash benefits and services, though the latter often involved removing children from families and raising them in institutions – an expensive option rarely if ever in a child’s best interests. Helping countries reform their social protection systems to better support families in caring for their children –through economic means and social services – quickly became the core of our work in these countries.

Given the link to alternative care and the small size of the new COs in the region, the work was usually handled by child protection staff. Dita Reichenberg was the regional Child Protection adviser and a systems thinker: she helped us see the reform of the social protection system as integral to preventing family separation. She helped colleagues work both with the ‘other side’ of the social protection ministries responsible for child welfare, and linking up with the World Bank, which had also taken an interest.

Meanwhile, around the world and especially in sub-Saharan Africa, the HIV pandemic wore on, leaving many children without parents, often in the care of grandparents. Helping these caretakers and preventing further impoverishment was critical. UNICEF soon realized that differentiating between children in poverty and/or without parental care due to HIV or other causes was counterproductive and potentially stigmatizing. Thus the phrase ‘AIDS orphans’ quickly gave way to ‘orphans and vulnerable children’ as a broader group directly or indirectly impacted and in need of support.

One response, piloted first in small communities in southern Africa and eventually through government action initially in Malawi and South Africa, was to provide cash benefits – either as social protection payments or foster care stipends, including to relatives who cared for children. Most countries in the region had minimal social protection systems - more often limited to social security payments for formal sector workers. UNICEF’s engagement thus began most often through colleagues working on HIV or child protection. At this point, social policy programmes were nascent or non-existent in the region, and the idea that social protection should be part of government programmes in lower income countries had not yet taken off globally (even if it was enshrined in various ILO Conventions and the UN Charter).

Back at HQ, several of us found ourselves supporting our regional and CO colleagues as they forged new ways forward to expand cash payments and other forms of social protection. Fortunately, we spoke to one another across our PD silos: Gaspar Fajth and Katie Holland in Social Policy, Miriam Temin in HIV, and myself in Child Protection formed the Social Protection working group to come up with common approaches and advice. To us, it was clear that a) we were all working towards the same goals, b) that while we were new to this area of work, it wasn’t really a new idea and c) that UNICEF had a valuable perspective to contribute.

To make a bigger impact, we had to become part of a larger global conversation around expanding social protection, including cash transfers. The World Bank was already involved, and UNICEF was engaging productively with them in Eastern Europe. It helped that the WB there understood services as part of the social protection system, and that these too needed to improve. In Southern Africa, especially Malawi, we worked closely with Save the Children UK to develop and expand pilot cash transfer programmes. The ILO had long led on the normative side; we now were beginning to collaborate also with them, beyond child labour. As these relationships grew, UNICEF HQ and Save the Children led the development of a common statement on Child Sensitive Social Protection, involving the ILO, WB, DFID and others in 2006 (the link is the final version from 2009).

The HQ Social Protection team quickly came to a consensus that Social Policy should be UNICEF’s leading voice in this new-to-UNICEF but longstanding sector. It fit best with their mandate and skills, and interaction with the WB’s social protection practice could best be supported by them. Just a few years later, UNICEF released its first Programme Guidance and Framework for Social Protection, which has many similarities to the common statement – only in part because Jenn Yablonski, who coordinated those papers, had been recruited from SCF-UK!.

As luck would have it, my final UNICEF posting was Global Chief, Social Policy (2013-2020), where I had the pleasure of supporting the social protection unit, led by David Stewart, in updating our social protection guidance. While UNICEF’s investment in social protection grew steadily from 2006, the pandemic has finally led to full recognition of its centrality to child wellbeing: the next UNICEF Strategic Plan includes it as a stand-alone outcome area.

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