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Home»Social Development

Social Development

Social Protection Topic Guide

Horizontal inequalities: reading pack

Non-food items (NFIs) and the needs of women and girls in emergencies

Helpdesk Report
  • Brigitte Rohwerder
May 2014

The NFIs which best meet the basic needs of women and girls in emergencies include: Hygiene/dignity kits: women and adolescent girls require locally appropriate sanitary items to manage their menstrual hygiene. These may be reusable cloth or disposable sanitary pads. The opportunities for privately washing, drying, and disposing of sanitary cloths or reusable pads need to be ...» more

Harmful traditional practices in diaspora communities

Helpdesk Report
  • Evie Browne
May 2014

In general, the trajectory of change among the diaspora communities discussed in the literature surveyed for this report is away from carrying out HTPs. There are fewer examples identified of communities wishing to uphold these practices in their new countries. The literature identifies several factors which impact on change in attitudes and practices: Legality: All host ...» more

Gender in fragile and conflict-affected situations

Literature Review
  • Evie Browne; Huma Haider; Freyja Oddsdóttir; Brigitte Rohwerder; Anna Louise Strachan
April 2014

This rapid literature review, in annotated bibliography format, collates a large amount of literature published in 2013 and 2014 (up to April 2014) on the topic of gender in fragile and conflict-affected situations. It is not a systematic or exhaustive review, but does provide a comprehensive overview of the literature available. It includes all types of available written ...» more

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex rights in national human rights institutions

Helpdesk Report
  • Evie Browne
March 2014

NHRIs almost unanimously take a universal human rights stance which is validated and backed up by the UN. This institutional support allows NHRIs to criticise governments for failing to support certain human rights. NHRIs often emphasise that LGBTI rights are contained within existing UN rights principles, particularly the rights to privacy, health, life, freedom from ...» more

Evaluations of scaling up

Helpdesk Report
  • Freyja Oddsdóttir
March 2014

Factors that affect the success of scaling up include: Politics: A number of evaluations suggest that political support is a key success factor, and offer recommendations on how to build this support. Demonstrating how the programme will help achieve key government goals, as well as building personal connections with government officials. Decentralisation can make scale up ...» more

Practical guidance to integrate gender into public financial management

Helpdesk Report
  • Emilie Combaz
March 2014

A medium-sized body of rigorous literature provides guidance on how to integrate gender into PFM systems successfully. Guidance on effective approaches: - Overall requirements are: securing the known enabling factors (such as sustained political support, sufficient capacities and conducive institutional arrangements); adapting to context; involving a range of stakeholders ...» more

Evidence of impact of emergency cash transfers on gender and protection

Helpdesk Report
  • Evie Browne
February 2014

Key messages: The major trends and gaps in the evidence in this report are: On the whole, ‘gender’ is used to refer to women. More recent papers include more analysis of how CTs impact men, especially on if they find it disempowering for women to be favoured as beneficiaries. Gender analysis is not deeply ingrained into emergency CT programme evaluation. Many papers include a ...» more

Defining social protection systems

Helpdesk Report
  • Róisín Hinds
February 2014

There is no common definition and a lack of clarity among the available literature of what the selected organisations consider these to be. Some organisations advocate a child-sensitive approach to social protection (for example UNICEF and Save the Children), while others take a right-based perspective (such as SIDA and IDS). Some of the research think tanks contacted indicated ...» more

Increasing financial investment in women and girls through gender responsive budgeting

Helpdesk Report
  • Róisín Hinds
February 2014

Overall, evidence indicates that it is difficult to attribute financial change to GRB initiatives. There are a limited range of impacts attributed to GRB, however less specific details provided on why initiatives have been successful. Drawing from the literature that is available, some of the identified successes, and factors contributing to their success, include: South ...» more

Benefits of urbanisation in Asia

Helpdesk Report
  • Evie Browne
February 2014

This report reviews selected literature on urbanisation in East, South and South-East Asia, and draws out its developmental benefits and lessons for donors. There is a strong evidence base on urbanisation and urban poverty, but mostly looking at the development challenges of increasing urbanisation. Since the literature largely takes a negative or problem-solving approach to ...» more

Gender in community-driven development

Helpdesk Report
  • Evie Browne
February 2014

Elite capture is a significant concern. The evidence is clear that 'uncontrolled' CDD will not necessarily benefit women, the poor and other disadvantaged groups. Women's participation is a central problem as they do not usually have the time and/or confidence to contribute to village planning processes. To reach women and other disadvantaged groups, CDD needs to have explicit ...» more

Gender in Political Economy Analysis

Helpdesk Report
  • Evie Browne
January 2014

An initial review of the literature indicates that gender is not systematically included in PEA. This was also conveyed by a number of experts consulted for this report, who stated that few if any PEAs to their knowledge had included a gender analysis, with the issue usually treated only in passing. The report nevertheless highlights the existing examples of gender-oriented ...» more

Disability inclusion in social protection

Helpdesk Report
  • Brigitte Rohwerder
January 2014

Key Findings: Three types of programmes: i) targeted specifically at people with disabilities; ii) mainstream programmes; and iii) targeted mainstream programmes explicitly including people with disabilities. Targeting: programmes can target all disabled people, or be means tested for a particular level or type of disability, or targeted at children with disabilities. ...» more

Social transfer evaluation syntheses

Helpdesk Report
  • Evie Browne
January 2014

This paper includes cash transfers, cash-for-work, asset transfers and pensions. It excludes all other types of social protection, such as microfinance, food-for-work, school feeding, vouchers, and insurance. It lists meta-analyses, systematic reviews, syntheses and meta-evaluations, and excludes single programme evaluations. This report does not include primary research ...» more

Post-graduation from social protection

Helpdesk Report
  • Evie Browne
November 2013

This paper reviews the results of social protection graduation programmes. It highlights whether people who leave the programmes are lifted sustainably out of poverty, and what changes they experience in their lives and livelihoods. The first part of the report reviews general lessons about how graduation happens and whether there are any impacts on employment, and the second ...» more

State fragility and social cohesion

Helpdesk Report
  • Evie Browne
November 2013

This report reviews the relationship between social cohesion and state fragility – focusing on literature from 2010 onwards. There is no clear empirical understanding in the literature of how social cohesion contributes to state resilience or fragility, as it is very difficult to measure, and to assess independently other variables that impact on state fragility. Key points ...» more

Community-based social protection

Helpdesk Report
  • Evie Browne
October 2013

This report reviews the use and effectiveness of community-based social protection (CBSP) mechanisms, and examines how they are integrated into formal social protection schemes and what impact this might have. It begins with a loose definition of the terms used, followed by a section on the evidence on how effective CBSP appears to be. The following section presents the main ...» more

Women’s and girls’ benefits from market-oriented agriculture in Uganda

Helpdesk Report
  • Emilie Combaz
October 2013

Knowledge about women’s and girls’ benefits from commercial agriculture is limited but sufficient to form the basis of this report. Internal obstacles include: ownership, tenure and access in relation to land; a gendered division of labour and time; unequal domestic decision-making power; interactions between poverty, the harvest cycle and the food market; and changing ...» more

Social inclusion in productive safety net programmes

Helpdesk Report
  • Emilie Combaz
October 2013

Evidence is scattered and quite limited, with a heavy slant towards Ethiopia. Multi-country literature offers the following on social inclusion: Lessons for projects, programmes and policies: - Community participation: beneficiary outreach is key. Participatory targeting, project selection and monitoring are useful, though attention needs to be paid to exclusion, ...» more

National databases of the poor for social protection

Helpdesk Report
  • Sumedh Rao
October 2013

There is very scant literature on creating or unifying registries to make up a national database of poor households or individuals to be used for social protection programmes (expert comments). Literature on registries tends to relate to the benefits of civil registration (i.e. the registering of births and deaths), or how better to target and register the poor. This report ...» more

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