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What are the challenges to scaled up social welfare policies?
At the conference, "Strengthening National Responses to Children Affected by AIDS: What is the role of the state and social welfare in Africa?" participants described the important dillemmas that thwart adequate social welfare responses to children affected by AIDS, including the following:
- Limiting sectoral approaches that only include a few sectors and exclude other important ones. Historically, Social Welfare and Community Development Sectors are rarely supported or included.
- A lack of political will on the part of donors
- Resources that privilege growth and are spent in fragmented ways; Governments, multilateral agencies, donor partners and NGOs create fragmented responses
- Nations have no clear framework or strong national leadership in responding to children affected by AIDS. National frameworks, systems and accountability are needed or this chance to make strategic decisions will be lost.
- The lack of demand among civil society and insufficient political will and public demand, which are both critical to mobilizing government responses; The challenge to making children a real political priority is that there are time lags between policies being effective and being seen as effective.
- Weak institutions; Developing nation governments have important institutional shortcomings, such as being ineffective and lacking critical capacity; relying on diffused and uncoordinated programs; lacking technical solutions; still implementing outdated laws and procedures; and suffering from the pillaging of their work force and deaths.
- There is a chronic lack of resources devoted to evaluation, which means that there is inadequate evidence showing exactly what works. We have tons of pilot programs that have no hope of ever going to scale. Moving forward, in order to deliver programmes efficiently, improve implementation and respond effectively, programmes must budget for evaluation.
According to Professor Peter Townsend from the London School of Economics, at the international level, the orthodox economic strategy, which is driven by multinational organizations and bilateral donors, is that of debt cancellation and trade policies for developing nations. However, these economic strategies and structures have been determined at the apex of power and do not necessarily favor developing nations, nor do these indirect policies help the poor and most vulnerable. While bilateral donors and multinational organizations argue that indirect methods are going to pay off, there is no reliable information showing how they trickle down to reach the extreme poor. Evidence of growing inequalities between the rich and poor both within and between states does, however, exist. Thus, an alternative to this orthodox view is needed. It will require scientific and technical work and policy change at the World Bank, the IMF and within the G8.
Moreover, Townsend argues, in contrast to developing nations, the rich countries of the North have had welfare systems for many years because rich countries have realized that redistribution and transfers are clearly necessary. In fact, some countries direct 15% of GDP or higher to social welfare expenditures (e.g. Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Poland, Switzerland)1, while the poorest nations (Ethiopia, Kenya, Mauritania, Mozambique, and Zambia) direct only 0.7-5% of GDP to social welfare.2 (Canada directs 8.4%, the US 8%, and the UK 13.7% of GDP to social welfare expenditures.)1 Of course, governments require the infrastructure, human resource and technological capacity to provide social welfare assistance, but can gain knowledge from countries such as Brazil and South Africa where policies have been developed and implemented. In South Africa, the system is government built and run and the number of grant recipients has increased by 2 million per year. (Professor Townsend presented on welfare policies in developing nations at the Wilton Park Conference in November 2005. I served as the conference rapporteur.)
References
1. Social Safety Nets Primer Notes, No. 25. World Bank. 2006.
2. ILO. World Labour Report 2000. Income security and social protection in a changing world. Geneva, International Labour Office, 2000.
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