4. UNHCR notes with concern that although the country acceded to the 1951 Convention and the 1967 Protocol in 1999, incorporation of the 1951 Convention obligations into national legislation and normative acts has been slow and to date Kazakhstan has failed to comply with its obligation to give full effect to the Covenant in the domestic legal order, inter alia providing for effective judicial and other remedies for violations of these rights

United Nations High Commission for Refugees

Sub-Saharan Africa has just experienced one of the best decades of growth since the 1960s. Between 2000 and 2012, gross domestic product (GDP) grew more than 4.5 percent a year on average, compared to around 2 percent in the prior 20 years (World Bank various years). In 2012, the region's GDP growth was estimated at 4.7 percent- 5.8 percent if South Africa is excluded (World Bank 2013). About one-quarter of countries in the region grew at 7 percent or better, and several African countries are among the fastest growing in the world. Medium-term growth prospects remain strong and should be supported by a rebounding global economy. The challenge of youth employment in Africa may appear daunting, yet Africa's vibrant youth represent an enormous opportunity, particularly now, when populations in much of the world are aging rapidly. Youth not only need jobs, but also create them. Africa's growing labor force can be an asset in the global marketplace. Realizing this brighter vision for Africa's future, however, will require a clearer understanding of how to benefit from this asset. Meeting the youth employment challenge in all its dimensions, demographic, economic, and social, and understanding the forces that created the challenge, can open potential pathways toward a better life for young people and better prospects for the countries where they live. The report examines obstacles faced by households and firms in meeting the youth employment challenge. It focuses primarily on productivity, in agriculture, in nonfarm household enterprises (HEs), and in the modern wage sector, because productivity is the key to higher earnings as well as to more stable, less vulnerable, livelihoods. To respond to the policy makers' dilemma, the report identifies specific areas where government intervention can reduce those obstacles to productivity for households and firms, leading to brighter employment prospects for youth, their parents, and their own children.

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Youth Employment in Sub-Saharan Africa

Over the last decade, a policy revolution has been underway in the developing and emerging world. Country after country is systematically providing non-contributory transfers to poor and vulnerable people, in order to protect them against economic shocks and to enable them to invest in themselves and their children. Social safety nets or social transfers, as these are called, have spread rapidly from their early prominence in the middle-income countries of Latin America and Europe increasingly to nations in Africa, Asia and the Middle East - and today, over 130 developing countries have made investments in social safety nets an important pillar of economic development policies. The statistics and analysis in The State of Social Safety Nets 2015 capture this revolution, and reveal it in many dimensions at the country, regional, and international levels. This latest edition of a periodic series brings together a large body of data that was not previously available, drawing on the World Bank's ASPIRE database and other sources. Why have so many countries made a firm commitment to incorporate social safety nets as part of their social and economic policy architecture? Because social safety nets work. This report also reports on the rigorous evidence that demonstrates their impact, and also points the way to making them even more efficient and effective at meeting their development goals. This latest edition of a periodic series brings together a large body of data that was not previously available, drawing on the World Bank's ASPIRE database and other sources to examine trends in coverage, spending, and safety nets program performance.

The state of social safety nets 2015

Increasing educational attainment around the world is one of the key aims of the Millennium Development Goals. Cash transfer programs, both conditional and unconditional, are a popular social protection tool in developing countries that aim, among other things, to improve education outcomes in developing countries. The debate over whether these programs should include conditions has been at the forefront of recent global policy discussions. This systematic review aims to complement the existing evidence on the effectiveness of these programs in improving schooling outcomes and help inform the debate surrounding the design of cash transfer programs.
Our main objective was to assess the relative effectiveness of conditional and unconditional cash transfers in improving enrollment, attendance and test scores in developing countries. Our secondary objective was to understand the role of different dimensions of the cash transfer programs, particularly the role of the intensity of conditions and the effects of priming (with respect to the importance of children’s schooling) in cash transfer programs.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.4073/csr.2013.8

Relative Effectiveness of Conditional and Unconditional Cash Transfers for Schooling Outcomes in Developing Countries: A Systematic Review

Cash transfer programmes are a popular social protection tool in developing countries that aim, among other things, to improve education outcomes in developing countries. The debate over whether these programmes should include conditions has been at the forefront of recent policy discussions. This systematic review aims to complement the existing evidence on the effectiveness of these programmes in improving schooling outcomes and help inform the debate surrounding the design of cash transfer programmes. Using data from 75 reports that cover 35 different studies, the authors find that both conditional cash transfers (CCTs) and unconditional cash transfers (UCTs) improve the odds of being enrolled in and attending school compared to no cash transfer programme. The effect sizes for enrolment and attendance are always larger for CCTs compared to UCTs, but the difference is not statistically significant. When programmes are categorised as having no schooling conditions, having some conditions with minimal mon...

Conditional, unconditional and everything in between: a systematic review of the effects of cash transfer programmes on schooling outcomes

Reducing child undernutrition is a key social policy objective of the Ethiopian government. Despite substantial reduction over the past decade and a half, child undernutrition is still high. With 48 percent of children stunted, underweight, or wasted, undernutrition remains an important child health challenge. The existing literature highlights that the targeting of efforts to reduce undernutrition in Ethiopia is inefficient, in part because of the lack of data and updated information. This paper remedies some of this shortfall by estimating levels of stunting and underweight in each woreda for 2014. The estimates are small area estimations based on the 2014 Demographic and Health Survey and the latest population census. It is shown that small area estimations are powerful predictors of undernutrition, even controlling for household characteristics, such as wealth and education, and hence a valuable targeting metric. The results show large variations in share of children undernourished in each region, more than between regions. The results also show that the locations with larger challenges depend on the chosen undernutrition statistic, as the share, number, and concentration of undernourished children point to vastly different locations. There is limited correlation between the shares of children underweight and stunted across woredas, indicating that different locations face different challenges.

/pdf/small-area-estimation-of-child-undernutrition-in-ethiopian-3cweqtd4rq.pdf

Small area estimation of child undernutrition in Ethiopian woredas.

From the Victorian poor laws in nineteenth century Britain to the post-war recovery of the 1940s, public works programs have historically played an important role as countercyclical interventions to address seasonal and short-term unemployment. In recent times, the role of public works has broadened, because globalization and economic integration, while expanding opportunities for all, has also increased the exposure to and transmission of risk, especially to the poorest. Public works are now being used increasingly across the developing world as an essential part of the social protection toolkit to respond to risk and persistent poverty. And recent flagship public works programs in Argentina, Ethiopia, India, and elsewhere have sparked even greater interest in their effective use in other developing-country contexts. This book provides a comprehensive overview of public works programs as a safety net instrument and their impacts. It also provides a practical review of program design features and implementation methods, and a compendium of operational and how-to knowledge, combining technical expertise with ongoing country experiences. The book thus fills a major knowledge gap in this field. To date, much attention has been devoted to making the case for improved public works, with less attention paid to the how-to aspects. The target audience of the book includes policy makers and practitioners in national and sub-national governments, donors and international organizations, and nongovernmental organizations, particularly those working in countries where a new wave of social protection interventions has been seen in recent years (e.g., Ethiopia, Ghana, Rwanda) or is likely to emerge in the future (e.g., countries emerging from the Arab Spring in the Middle East, like the Arab Republic of Egypt).

Public Works as a Safety Net: Design, Evidence, and Implementation

Ethiopia has made considerable progress in maternal, newborn, and child health in terms of healthoutcomes and health services coverage. This study examined how different groups have fared in the process. It alsolooked at possible factors behind the inequalities. The study examined 11 maternal and child health outcomes and services: stunting, underweight,wasting, neonatal mortality, infant mortality, under-5 mortality, measles vaccination, full immunization, moderncontraceptive use by currently married women, antenatal care visits, and skilled birth attendance. It explored trendsin inequalities by household wealth status based on Demographic and Health Surveys conducted in 2000, 2005,2011, and 2014. The study also investigated the dynamics of inequality, using concentration curves for differentyears. Decomposition analysis was used to identify the role of proximate determinants.The study found substantial improvements in health outcomes and health services: Although there is still a considerable gap between the rich and the poor, inequalities in health services have been reduced. However, child nutrition outcomes have mainly improved for the rich. The changes observed in wealth-related inequality tend toreflect the changing direct effect of household wealth on child health and health service use.The country’s efforts to improve access to health services have shown some positive results, butattention should now turn to service quality and to identifying multisectoral interventions that can change outcomes for the poorest.

/pdf/examining-changes-in-maternal-and-child-health-inequalities-4cti9ztxhr.pdf

Examining Changes in Maternal and Child Health Inequalities in Ethiopia

Adaptive social protection (ASP) helps to build the resilience of poor and vulnerable households to the impacts of large, covariate shocks, such as natural disasters, economic crises, pandemics, conflict, and forced displacement. Through the provision of transfers and services directly to these households, ASP supports their capacity to prepare for, cope with, and adapt to the shocks they face, before, during, and after these shocks occur. Over the long term, by supporting these three capacities, ASP can provide a pathway to a more resilient state for households that may otherwise lack the resources to move out of chronically vulnerable situations. Adaptive Social Protection: Building Resilience to Shocks outlines an organizing framework for the design and implementation of ASP, providing insights into the ways in which social protection systems can be made more capable of building household resilience. By way of its four building blocks, programs, information, finance, and institutional arrangements and partnerships, the framework highlights both the elements of existing social protection systems that are the cornerstones for building household resilience, as well as the additional investments that are central to enhancing their ability to generate these outcomes. In this report, the ASP framework and its building blocks have been elaborated primarily in relation to natural disasters and associated climate change. Nevertheless, many of the priorities identified within each building block are also pertinent to the design and implementation of ASP across other types of shocks, providing a foundation for a structured approach to the advancement of this rapidly evolving and complex agenda.

/pdf/adaptive-social-protection-building-resilience-to-shocks-2bbdsxuso1.pdf

Colin Andrews

Papers

Small area estimation of child undernutrition in Ethiopian woredas.

Public Works as a Safety Net: Design, Evidence, and Implementation

Examining Changes in Maternal and Child Health Inequalities in Ethiopia

Adaptive Social Protection : Building Resilience to Shocks

Public Works as a Safety Net: Design, Evidence, and Implementation