Organizers: Bretton Woods Project, Human Rights Watch, ACT Church of Sweden, Development Pathways
Moderator:
- David Sherfinski, US correspondent, Context
Panelists:
- Mather Greenslade, Associate, Development Pathways
- Isobel Frye, Executive Director, Social Policy Initiative
- Angella Kasule Nabwowe, Executive Director, Initiative for Social and Economic rights (ISER)
- Jamele Rigolini, Senior Advisor for Social Protection and Jobs, World Bank
Watch the session here.
David: The World Bank (WBG) has committed to moving towards universal social protection but there’re many questions on how to get there. Hopefully groups will make their voices heard about how the Bank has lived up to this commitment and the Bank will hear.
The WBG has committed to helping move states towards achieving universal social protection but it’s also promoting programmes like poverty targeting and conditional cash transfers, which the panel will discuss.
More than half of the world’s population has no access to essential social services and social security.
Developing these programmes require an immense amount of work and resources.
Matthew: I have written a book titled Beyond the World Bank: The fight for social protection in the Global South.
Defining social protection by some sort of narrow definitions: a combination of tax financed and contributory programs. This presentation will be focused on the tax-financed side.
One of the hypothesis in the book is that the WBG has been promoting poverty targeting through proxy means testing, which uses observable characteristics of households to estimate whether that household is in poverty.
It’s not the only approach to poverty targeting, sometimes it’s also about women involvement in the community and there’re also other methods as well.
Poverty targeting comes with costs, like high targeting errors, i.e, 50 per cent of population may be excluded for the benefits. Household incomes can be very similar across large parts of population. This can make it hard to identify.
The potential to poverty targeting to be less political can be discussed but it is critical. Countries approach to poverty targeting and universal schemes may vary from country to country.
My book looked at six countries: Some of them, like Fiji, use a combination of poverty targeting system and universal schemes. What´s common is the Bank’s advice to promote poverty targeting and to use proxy means testing, in all except Rwanda.
Recent research showed 52 medium- and low-income countries (MLIC) have universal or nearly universal social protection schemes. The research has shown the Bank opposes universal schemes. I have recent experience in Kenya of the Bank opposing universal social protection schemes.
- Why does the Bank do what it does?
Application of partial logic, which has been dominated by the argument that limited resources may go to those more in need and not considering a wider pros and cons. Not looking at high errors or targeting for example. - Need for short term results (meet SDGs for example) and need to show funders results, value for money.
- Incentive to arrange loans, which may push staff to using available resources.
The Bank has also done some positive things: It has advocated for the last 30 years to expand social protection; it has effectively communicated the evidence; it has expanded its own spending in social protection; it has expanded programmes in countries; it has started to support universal schemes; it has produced publications in the last 3 or 4 years. Some of its messaging still points to poverty targeting, but there’re also positive sides.
The ultimate target is life-cycle social protection comprehensive systems that sustainable over the long term and that protects wider population groups along the long term.
This universal system could be delivered through tax-financed or contributory programmes and could be delivered through universal poverty targeting program. I am not promoting that tax financed should be universal, but that the Bank has prejudged these issues in countries.
I do see some positive progress, but I am a bit sceptical. The WBG for example, also promotes social registries, designed to poverty target over a range of programmes, which seems to push in another direction.
Going forward the plea would be for more transparent way of cost-benefits of different approaches, and that the World Bank promotes support to countries in a more transparent way, perhaps all wrapped up into the operationalisation of the Bank’s Roadmap. Think in terms of human rights and entitlement, which is where universal social protection can come across.
Jamele: We are committed to universal social protection, but perhaps we understand it different. For us it’s a group of programmes that work together.
We agree that we are far away from universality. We know the way we target has issues and misses people. Even the Nordic states do target through taxation, which is also imperfect.
If there’s a solid tax system, that can work well. But in many countries, there are not these solid systems.
We understand there are a lot of issues related to rights, but there’re also issues related to budget.
Given the resources and competing needs in developing countries, what’s the best way? This is how we frame the discussion.
Despite its reputation, poverty targeting has helped in the past few decades.
In MICs the rights-based approach becomes more and more important. It’s more present in government discussion.
Something missing in the discussion is the government’s view. It’s true we often go for proxy targeting but, in many cases, it is the government who wants to use those tools.
There’s a book where we acknowledge these systems are not perfect but look at other ways for doing this.
Any targeting methods makes mistakes but in MICs these errors are made among people who are not that vulnerable.
Social registries are a great method that integrates the delivery of many tools for social protection. Poverty is always multidimension (to be successful you want to provide cash transfers, services to vulnerable, etc). And that’s the way for people to escape poverty, providing means according to their needs.
Angella: In the continent one in every five people has access to social protection programmes, but also when you look at the continent there’s only 0.5 per cent spent of its GDP on social protection.
After Covid, we did research with Human Rights Watch around poverty, Covid and child labour – all of it pointing to a lack of social protection. Research after Covid found lots of children working on coal mines. We realised that in the absence of universal social protection, children have to go to work to provide for their families.
What happens to people when you do targeting for the poor? Today they’re fine but tomorrow they are back to zero.
In Uganda there’s a social protection program for all under 18: To access this programme you have to have a national digital ID. In Uganda people do lots of manual labour for years, which prevents them from having social protection, many do not have birth certificate… this brings a lot of problems.
At the end of 2023 I met two twins, one receiving cash transfers and the other not, only because one of them did not have a digital ID.
Financing: The Bank says that when you have limited finances, targeting is the best way. But we should be talking about how to engage country to mobilise domestic resources.
In most countries there’s madness about tax exemptions but there’s no analysis on how much could be won from here. We are not looking at illicit financial flows. In Tanzania money lost in illicit financial flows could pay for five years of universal social protection programmes.
African Union protocol on social protection: We see it as a progressive instrument because it takes into consideration the reality of the African continent and is providing a good tool for groups to advocate towards universal social protection. We are in a more austere situation because the WBG and IMF push for liberalisation.
The private sector is not going to places where they are not going to make profits. The Bank should not be pushing for more privatisation.
Strengthening the public system and the African Union protocol gives us room to move towards a safer environment and protection for the poor.
Isobel: The return to the universal wealthy state Angella advocates for is great.
Social security is a critical pillar and strong foundation to build resilient communities.
Universal access to social security is recognised as a human right.
Promoting targeting, we find it very challenging.
We see in south Africa critical issues to the approach on targeting systems.
There’s forty-one per cent unemployment rate in South Africa. More than half of the population lives in poverty. It’s one of the countries with higher level of inequality.
Salaries are one of the main source of income, social assistance floors are one of the main sources of income as well.
We need to look at social security in different ways. The current model is failing.
Targeting leads to the dilution of income for the recipient.
We also need to be mindful of the semantics when we refer to these different issues.
Because of Covid we said we needed some cash transfer for working aged people.
We interviewed beneficiaries who applied to these cash transfer programmes and saw the succession of adoption of proxy means testing in order to maintain the targets. There were huge errors of exclusion. The last programmes had to be incremented by a lot because of how much error there was in the last one.
It’s not the cash transfer what creates the dependency but the targeting. Targeting dilutes access.
The way the targeting is done is devising.
WBG progress: In South Africa and other countries we are very concerned about increased targeting of proxy means for social protection. Around 30 per cent of people does not receive any protection.
Climate justice adaptation and mitigation funds: In countries with high level of unemployment we need to look at ways where basic income can be transferred in areas where there’s no large risk of exclusion.
Looking at protection rather than poverty alleviation could be useful.
Questions and answers:
Question: Can poverty targeted schemes be set in stone?
Matthew: In Kenya the Bank deserves some credit in how they have supported the country to invest in some universal pension schemes. 250$ dollars from the bank for poverty targeted schemes, which could have been used to cover for lots of social protection schemes.
In implementing the programme, the Bank is pulling government official aways from the universal social protection schemes to implementing poverty targeting schemes.
Jamele: I don’t know the specific countries but to me sometimes it’s just body implementation. It’s true we are pushing for IDs, we think they’re fundamental. But we work in countries where we have told the government the fact of having an ID should not be used not to get a cash transfer. We do not want lack of services, including IDs, affecting the ability to access transfers. We do make mistakes, but we try to minimise them. One more thing, I do not think we have ever done is that we do want access to education ad services. We know financial hurdles should not be an obstacle to access education and health. They should be accessed universally. How do we get here is a complicated issue, but we do support it.
Regarding resources mobilisation: We push for it, it’s difficult to access resources. Our main plea is that whatever countries do, they need to support sustainability.
Resources mobilisation are very important. We should not only see resources to cover for social protection, there’re also many programmes the government may spend the money in.
We discuss with governments what to finance and there needs to be an agreement that it’s something the government wants to finance but also that’s the Bank wants to finance.
I work in governments that have a different view of social protection and even with that we do have extremely useful collaboration.
Angella: National IDs is a big issue for us. Target national IDs for access to services, leads to discrimination and that goes against constitution.
Progressive realisation and why targeting makes more sense now, for our organisation, even if it’s well designed, for us it would continue to mean that government moves further away from the means of universal social protection. If targeting is happening now and it’s what needs to happen in the interim, one of the things we’re supporting is support to countries to be able to develop comprehensive data and information systems. This was for example something big around Covid.
This is key for people who would be able to benefit from these systems. One other thing is that then we need to look at free quality healthcare and education. It’s very critical. Given IMF and WB push for liberalisation – the private sector is there for profits, this is unquestionable. The private sector cannot deliver, it can complement, but they will only come where there’s cost-benefit.
Matthew: It’s a plea to the WBG that we do not only thing about poverty reduction in the short term but develop the nation towards comprehensive systems. Tax revenues as part of GDP is raising. This suggests a lack of awareness about the social contract and the political context. It’s national development what ultimately matters for poverty reduction.
There’s difference of opinions around social registries: one thing is that they only cover a minority of the population. Second, are they any good for administering individually-based universal benefit. Would that money not be better spent in national IDs registries that Angela was mentioning before?
Inaudible questions
Jamele: We may have influence, but we’re struggling in many countries to convince countries that borrowing Ida can help their social safety nets, that these are good investments. We’re facing many questions about the sustainability. This relates to the question on domestic resources mobilisations: We require countries to develop so social protection schemes can expand. We have different discussions depending on the countries’ fiscal capacity.
Mostly related to resources mobilization, ability to target and approach to tax. I do think we have some of the merit in pushing countries to have social protection systems, which we did not use to do 10 years ago.
Categorical for us is a source of target.
Closing remarks:
Isobel: to the WBG my ask would be, can we start looking at social security policy as an economic policy? Not as a poverty alleviation policy? Can we look at understanding globally that the age or way of distribution of income is no longer relevant for majority people? Can there be a recognition that in the absent of income coming from jobs there can be income coming from state redistribution (like income tax VAT) and that that is the way to go?
Angella: I would like the WBG not to ignore the scale if vulnerability and that this have implications for the access to services. I would like the Bank to benchmark the African Union protocol, which takes into consideration the life-cycle approach and the human rights approach and includes elements such as the climate crisis.
Mathew: the link to taxation is critical. Connecting social protection with resources mobilization is the way how states should work. When programmes are dominated by donors spending the whole thing can really fall apart. My ask would be to link better to politics and social contract, and liking to a transparent way that we can all understand. Look at national development and review current support to social protection vs past support to social protection to see what has and has not worked. Consider cost-benefit in the long term.
Jamele: we hear you and look forward to continuing this discussion. My one plea and where I think we have different views. I am looking forward to working in areas where we can find agreement. We have improved but we cannot do it along, we need advocacy and help making it clear for governments that this is the way to go.
