Integrated Social Protection Systems: Enhancing Equity for Children - UNICEF - (2012)

This in an Executive Summary about UNICEF's work on creating social protection systems that use a holistic, multi-sectoral approach. UNICEF believes that social protection is critical for all countries, and that it needs to be universal.

UNICEF supports Progressive Realization of Universal Coverage, helping countries identify and progressively expand programmes and policies most conducive to achieving universality, while also recognizing countries’ different capacities and contexts. They say that social protection programmes can be affordable and sustainably financed.

Long-term national financing strategies should be identified and implemented to protect and expand expenditure on effective social protection programmes. UNICEF promotes the development and strengthening of integrated social protection systems, which take a multi-sector approach and invest in sustainable national systems in order to more effectively and efficiently address the multiple vulnerabilities faced by children and their families. 

In this document, UNICEF offers many good practices with regards to approaching promotion of social protection, which is a critical part of formalizing. Many of the actions they take to protect children could be taken to protect those in the informal economy.