When people think about overseas aid, it can conjure up images of food parcels being handed out, children receiving vaccinations or ambassadors cutting ribbons in newly constructed schools. Yet under the leadership of the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID) – soon to be merged into the new Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) – the UK taxpayer was involved in a lesser known yet pioneering endeavour: helping governments to construct their own social welfare systems.
Access to social protection is crucial to protect us all from poverty and deprivation
In the UK, most of us take for granted that we have access and legal rights to a wide array of support, which is funded through a combination of taxpayer money and individual and employer contributions. This support, referred to as social protection (social welfare in the UK) aims to ensure every citizen is protected from the risks and shocks we could face at each stage of life; from not receiving the right care and nutrition in early childhood through to the risk of poverty in old age.
For example, even before we are born, mothers with UK citizenship have access to free ante-natal care through the NHS. Then, once a child is born, caregivers have the right to access a weekly payment of £21 for their first child and £13.95 for each additional child until they reach the age of 16 (or 19 if in education or training).
The concept of social protection is still emerging in many poorer countries
However, if you happened to be born in a lower income country, the chances of access to social protection drop enormously. As a child born in Africa, you would have just over a one in ten chance of getting any access to social protection. It is no surprise then that your chances of surviving birth or past your fifth birthday would also be dramatically reduced. If you are lucky enough to survive childbirth, without access to an adequate regular income during early childhood, you would likely end up being one of the 144 million children under the age of five that are currently growing up physically too short for their age due to chronic malnutrition. (Read more about the importance of nutrition here).
Maintaining DFID’s legacy of advancing social protection overseas
We welcome the UK Government’s commitment to poverty reduction and leaving no child behind as per its manifesto. Delivering on that commitment will require that, as DFID finds its new place within the FCDO, its legacy of leadership in advancing social protection globally still is at the very forefront of its strategy.
It is for this reason we must celebrate and sustain the leading role DFID played in supporting governments to establish their own social protection systems. From Malawi to Mozambique, Nigeria to Nepal, DFID has been a global leader, working with governments, NGOs and other partners to help pilot, set up and strengthen effective and accountable programmes that reduce poverty, improve health outcomes, and help children attend school. These investments are focused towards governments themselves taking on and financing the programmes through their own domestic resources, to become part of the ongoing “social contract” supporting cohesion between state and citizen.
Continued leadership in helping build strong social protection systems is not only essential for the world to meet the Sustainable Development Goals around poverty reduction and other human development outcomes. As the COVID-19 pandemic has shown, governments with strong social protection systems are far better able to respond to shocks. It was recently estimated that if all countries in the world had child benefits in place (which Save the Children strongly advocates for), it would have allowed governments to easily scale up support to as much as two thirds of all households globally, and three quarters in sub-Saharan Africa.[1]
Social protection programmes are also critical for helping the poorest households in the world to adapt to and protect themselves from the impacts of climate change. With the UK hosting COP26, the annual global Climate Change Conference in 2021, we must look more into the vital role social protection plays in this regard. The UK have set an example as a thoughtful and progressive aid donor and now we must take the opportunities that the FCDO affords us, to blend development with diplomacy for a stronger future for all children.
