SPIAC-B: A Joint Statement on the Role of Social Protection in Responding to the COVID-19 Pandemic

Representatives of UN system agencies, other multilateral and bilateral development agencies, donor governments, and civil society observers that make up the Social Protection Inter-Agency Cooperation Board (SPIAC-B), committed to the realization of SDGs 1.3 and 3.8, call for urgent social protection measures to respond to the rapidly evolving COVID-19 pandemic. COVID-19 is a global health emergency with significant immediate as well as longer-term social and economic implications.

It exposes some of the problems caused by inadequate social protection coverage, that prevent people from:

• accessing adequate healthcare and adopting preventive behaviours;
• taking time off work when ill (including health workers);
• caring for children or other relatives when continuing to work in cases where schools have closed and alternative care arrangements (such as by extended family) are no longer possible; and
• maintaining adequate living standards, including food security when unemployed or when forced to reduce economic activity. 

The SPIAC-B will support global and national responses to the COVID-19 pandemic by monitoring and aggregating emerging evidence and practices from SPIAC-B members and their constituents. We will facilitate rapid learning from this response so that countries can apply those lessons and develop effective context-specific responses in the short and long-term. For example, SPIAC-B agencies have produced and will periodically update the COVID-19 Task Force online community on SocialProtection.org.