How to guarantee social protection in a highly disenfranchised world
Protests have gained a common ground in Kenya with volatile inflationary rates looming and ever increasing inequality gap widening. As i type this i can hear sounds of blowing vuvuzelas as public university lectures protest on the streets of Nairobi.The sound of the vuvuzela is not one of a celebratory tone but that marked by an unrestless workforce who for a long time have been receiving poor pay from the Kenyan government and now want their demands fulfilled. The International Labour Organization and the Social Protection Advisory Group have released a new report Social protection floor: for a fair and inclusive globalization that aims to provide a blue print for governments especially in developing countries to promote ‘ social protection’ reduce poverty and promote social inclusiveness. UN Sec General Ban Ki-Moon has stated that
“The Social Protection Floor Initiative is a UN system-wide effort to promote common priorities and solutions, to ensure basic social guarantees for all”.
This new shift to development aims to increase safety nets to the most vulnerable by promoting social inclusiveness of all citizenry in order to reduce poverty. Despite the existence of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, access to these ‘universal rights’ has not been so universal rather selective as many remain locked out of the provisions of this authoritarian declaration. In developing countries fundamental developmental concerns such as those of the food insecurity, housing, water, sanitation, income insecurity, lack of social benefits and exclusion of women in the decision making process are just but a tip of the ice berg. How can a government guarantee there is human security for all in terms of income, employment or access to basic social services without excluding anyone be it the elderly, women and children or the youth. The adoption of the social protection floor as a global concept aims to tie it’s approach down to country specific social problems to promote inclusive growth. This concept deviates from the previous ‘Washington Consensus’ one size fits all rule that offered a temporary yet concentric solution to social and economic problems. However, social protection endevours to offer country specific prescription to economic and social woes giving countries the autonomy and ownership to design and implement their own social protection floor that will embrace and acknowledge the countries’ institutional frameworks, history, social aspirations and economic budget.Social protection floors in general aims to protect all from economic and social insecurity while paying tentative attention to to those that were excluded by the bounties of globalization.The achievement of the social floors will highly be determined by how effective our governments are in providing security, ensuring rule of law and inclusive growth as well as how active the citizenship is in terms of exercising their universal rights and their obligations that link them to their development states in terms of paying taxes and obeying the laws. Duncan Green in his book
From poverty to power:How active citizens and effective states can change the world
sees the cooperation of effective states and active citizenship as an important component in eliminating poverty and ensuring social inclusion. The social protection strategy with it’s multiplier effects could be the developmental solution to the challenges that capitalism as a system has just thrown to us. By the time i was concluding writing this short article,i had gathered that the government had already pronounced the lecturers strike illegal so much for social protection!!.
Africanfootsteps 