External publications

Social protection: a powerful tool – but not in the Middle East and North Africa

Loewe, Markus
External Publications (2021)

published on www.menasp.com, 01.03.2021

Volltext/Full text

Social protection is a powerful development policy tool. If well designed, it can contribute to manifold social, economic, and political goals such as those in the Agenda 2030 Its primary goal is to reduce poverty, vulnerability, and inequality. More indirectly, however, it can also promote education, health, gender justice, access to water, investment and pro-poor growth. And it can be a cornerstone in social contracts thereby stabilising societies, political systems and state-society relations. In most countries of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), however, social protection systems are not well designed and, hence, have only marginal effects on all of these goals.