new IDS Bulletin on social protection
A new IDS Bulletin has just been published with the title “Social Protection for Social Justice”. It mirrors the title of the conference held at IDS in April of this year, and organised by the Centre for Social Protection. The Bulletin is a collection of papers from that conference and structured around its four themes, being (1) democratic governance, social protection and social contracts, (2) social protection to address underlying drivers of vulnerability, (3) social protection and climate change, and (4) social protection and redistributive justice. In culmination, the Bulletin presents a broad overview of current debates in social protection and provides a strong argument for pushing those discussions beyond conventional boundaries towards more aspirational thinking around social protection. As is argued in the introductory article, coverage of social protection should not only be extended by increasing the numbers of beneficiaries of programmes but more so by institutionalising such programmes, making them claims- and entitlement-based and by building social contracts between institutions and its citizens.
