Seminar on Social Protection in Development Cooperation

Objectives

The objective of the seminar is to raise awareness of EU staff working in development cooperation about the role of social protection in support of inclusive growth and poverty eradication and to reinforce the participants' capacities to engage in social protection programmes and policy dialogue.

The course is aimed at DEVCO staff and DG NEAR staff managing ENI cooperation, both in Delegations and Headquarters, as well as at IPA colleagues working in Delegations.

It is also open, according to availability of seats (i.e. on a 2nd priority), for HQ to colleagues from the "Relex family" (ECHO, TRADE, FPI, ECFIN, EEAS and IPA staff working in HQ) and for Delegations to EU Member States representations in the relevant region or country, Government and other national representatives from the country.

The training course will adopt a comprehensive vision of social protection, looking at the various components of provision which together ensure at least minimum social floor at different points in the lifecycle and during different phases of engagement with the labour market.

The main topics will be:

1. Social Protection and Inequalities

• Understanding inequalities – framework and key policy levers
• Inequalities of wealth and income, inequalities of opportunities and social outcomes.
• Cross-sectional and longitudinal (throughout the life cycle) dimensions of inequalities
• Measuring inequalities: Gini-coefficient, Lorenz curve, Theil-index
• Modern way to assess changes in inequality and poverty
• Effects of inequalities and redistribution on growth and vice versa
• Role of taxes and transfers (in-cash and in-kind)
• Addressing inequalities even more effectively: Does SP require more evidence, better instruments, and new partnerships?

2. Social Protection and Fiscal Policy

• Social protection in financial jargon: investments, consumption, transfers, off-budget funds. Do we speak the same language?
• SP in periods of economic growth and downturn: on redistributive, counter- and pro-cycle fiscal policies and the role of economic stabilizers.
• Spending enough, better and more equitably: Instruments to assess SP focussed budgets, as well as the effectiveness and efficiency of implementation.
• Domestic Resource Mobilisation
• Getting a fair share of government expenditure for SP: On sources of revenues and sectors that SP is competing with?
• Correlation between SP and growth: How to generate evidence? On multiple-criteria decision-making analysis and other relevant tools.
• Social transfer management: Sufficient room for more effectiveness and efficiency?
• Making SP programmes gradually contributory for those who graduated from poverty

3. Assessing, Monitoring and Evaluating Social Protection Systems (SDGs and SP indicators)

• Reporting and monitoring of SP systems and results: still a battleground of institutions to compete between evaluation methods, indicators and data granularity?
• Inter-Agency Social Protection Assessment tools (ISPA) and other available tools to assess SP systems, policies, programmes and instruments
• Indicator classification for Social Protection (Poverty status, risk factors during life-cycle, SP programme benefits, SP systems)
• The mystery and information value of indicator metadata (definitions, disaggregation, data sources, and related information).
• Selecting and using indicators for social protection programming (inclusiveness, adequacy, appropriateness, feasibility, equity, administrative efficiency, sustainability, etc)
• Steps towards aligning SP and SDG indicators - how to overcome data and conceptual challenges to benefit both.

4. Enhancing access to employment opportunities

• Public work programmes, active labour market measures, enhancing livelihoods promotion, etc.
• Gender and vulnerable groups