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, corruption or elite capture. – Each type of targeting can have positive or negative impacts; a combination tailored to context is useful. – Supporting broader types of public works helps to include people who cannot take part in demanding or time-consuming physical labour. – Implementation: lessons include addressing women and men’s experiences; strengthening staff skills and participatory design; training staff; maximising linkages between social protection and programmes for empowerment, capacity and skills; rigorous M&E; and dedicating resources to anti-discrimination. – Transformation: strategies against political capture include clarity and transparency, a complaints mechanism and external oversight. Tailored interventions can counter inequalities inside households, e.g. individual entitlements for women. – M&E is understudied. Capacity-building, community involvement and high-quality light evaluations are useful. – Policies must be equity-based. Programmes have worked in low-income crisis or fragile contexts.
- Interventions for specific groups:
– Women and children: policies can address gendered risks. Entry points include quotas, the organisation of worksites (especially childcare) and wage modalities. Targeting should disaggregate households by individual. – Other groups: solutions are identified for youth (e.g. skills training), persons with disabilities (e.g. social assistance and empowerment), and pastoralists (e.g. accounting for mobility).
A case study on Ethiopia offers lessons on: interventions for specific groups (with regard to gender, HIV/AIDS, pastoralists); participation and selection (the politics of inclusion, the selection of participants, participation, graduation); and M&E.
