Shock Responsive Social Protection

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This document aims to support strategic players at country level to engage in the topic of shock responsive social protection. Specifically, this document aims to:

• Introduce the key stakeholders and counterparts, across sectors, that can play a role – via enhanced coordination, and by improving their own programming – in better addressing the needs and handling the pressures on the system imposed by covariate shocks
• Clarify the rationale in terms of why this topic is important and why ‘business as usual’ is no longer a sustainable strategy
• Provide a strong framing to support decision-makers to assess the potential roles that can be played by social protection programs and their underlying systems in different shock-prone contexts, and the analytical tools to understand potential tradeoffs in these design choices
• Set out system strengthening measures, design and implementation tweaks’and preparedness actions along each of the social protection building blocks
• Stylize the key steps required to advance shock responsive social protection

While the document aims to be comprehensive, it does have several caveats and limitations:

• The materials focus predominantly on the role of social protection vis-à-vis other complementary sectors (namely DRM/emergency/humanitarian). However, there may be cases where social protection may have no role; the materials for this curriculum does not look at the actions required by other sectors to respond in these contexts (e.g. enhance early warning systems)
• The materials primarily focus on social assistance (while acknowledging the fundamental role that can be played by social insurance and by social care services)
• The materials are not a comprehensive "how-to" manual on every single relevant topic or every single context (but it does provide links to the most useful literature for those who want to know more)