Published ahead of the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty on 17 October, UN Women issued the 2024 World Survey on the Role of Women in Development Report. This is the UN Secretary-General’s Report, which is mandated by the Economic and Financial Committee (Second Committee) of the UN General Assembly, and focuses on macroeconomic policy, sustainable development, financing and poverty eradication.
Presented every five years, the Report’s executive agency, so to speak – UN Women – note that it provides an important opportunity for research and in-depth assessment of a theme related to gender equality and economic and social policy, “for the UN Member States”.
This 2024 edition focuses on Harnessing Social Protection for Gender Equality, Resilience and Transformation. The Report underscores, among other critical aspects, the widening gender gap in social protection, which is leaving women and girls more vulnerable to poverty, noting that while levels of social protection have increased since 2015, gender gaps in such coverage have widened in most developing regions.
The report suggests that the recent gains have benefited men more than women, and notes that up to two billion women and girls are without access to any form of social protection.
While this may not be widely known, and is not necessarily noted as such in the report, one of the most basic forms of healthcare for future generations, is maternal health. Without maternity protection, entire social structures – families, children, households, communities, and nations, indeed generations, can be rendered disabled.
Even on that score, the Report shows the dismal state of maternity protection across the globe. Despite advancements, more than 63 per cent of women worldwide still give birth without access to maternity benefits, with the figure soaring to 94 per cent in sub-Saharan Africa.
The Report points out that lack of financial support during maternity leave, not only places women at an economic disadvantage, but it effectively perpetuates poverty itself, across generations.
One of the Reports premises, a raison d’etre in a sense, which was at the heart of the research and discussions by global experts and UN Women’s own analysts, is that a gender analysis of opportunities, risks and levers for protecting and promoting rights “along the social protection delivery chain” is largely missing.
The report therefore aims to fill this gap by looking at how delivery mechanisms – including eligibility, registration, and enrolment processes; monitoring, participation and accountability payments; and service delivery and case management – can be strengthened to reduce discrimination, address multiple and intersecting inequalities and empower women and girls in all their diversity.
To that end, the report reviews evidence on barriers and enablers, including ways in which digital and data innovations can be harnessed to increase women’s access to social protection, as well as the role of women’s organizations in demanding access, sensitizing communities, supporting last mile registration and monitoring and accountability.
The report addresses the ‘great finance divide’ currently curtailing the ability of many developing countries to invest in gender-responsive social protection systems through greater domestic resource mobilization and complementary international support.
It notes that currently, global social protection expenditure remains insufficient to guarantee national social protection floors, let alone to provide progressively higher levels of protection to as many people as possible. The report seeks to explore good practices to increase domestic resources from taxation and social security contributions – focusing on doing so in gender-equitable and sustainable ways.
Clearly calling out that many countries have the means to create fiscal space domestically, the Report notes that low-income countries are unlikely to be able to raise on their own the additional USD 77.9 billion, or 15.9 per cent of their GDP, required for the implementation of a basic social protection floor.
The Report also discusses the need for global measures, including debt cancellation, reform of the lending practices of multilateral development banks, equitable global tax accords which ensure multinational corporations pay their fair share, as well as an increase in official development assistance.
This seminal Report on social protection is not only a means for reflection for member states of the UN, or for the more than 60+ offices, funds and mechanisms of the world’s premiere multilateral entity. It is a necessary tool with which to hold all human rights duty bearers accountable.
As such, this evidence-based, well researched, and necessary Report fails in one critical regard: it did not factor into its varied consultations, let alone the calculations undertaken and the evidence provided, the realms of social protection means which religious institutions and religious civil society organisations, actively play in, and contribute to – and have done for centuries.
To provide a small sample of how fellow entities (lest one be accused of not understanding the and Faith Communities in Health Emergencies published in November 2021 (prompted by the UN worldview) take the myriad forms of social protection means of/by religious institutions, I mention the following: in its Strategy for Engaging religious leaders, Faith-based organizations Covid-19 dynamics), the World Health Organisation (WHO) acknowledged its engagement of these constituencies, in supporting national governments during health emergencies.
The goal, notes the WHO was/is, “to enable more effective responses by strengthening collaboration between the WHO, national governments and religious leaders, faith-based organizations, and faith communities, resulting in more people being better protected from health emergencies and enjoying better health and well-being, including improved trust and social cohesion”.
For the World Food Programme (WFP) just one Church partner (the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints, also known as the Mormons) donated, in 2022 alone, $32 million to help provide food and other assistance to 1.6 million people in nine countries. WFP partners with a whole host of other religious actors in its advocacy, as well as, crucially, its service delivery.
Similarly, UNICEF (the United Nations Children’s Fund) acknowledges its partnerships with faith-based organizations (FBOs) in a variety of ways, including raising and receiving funds (for UNICEF work), advocacy, program implementation, and collaboration on a range of issues, such as child nutrition and protecting child refugees – to name but a few.
In their rationale for their long history of partnerships, UNICEF notes that faith-based actors are “uniquely able to reach disenfranchised groups…[and] have also historically played a role in providing food, clothing, shelter, and promoting community development”.
Are none of these entities engaged with advising and supporting governments to enhance social protection means and mechanisms? Or is it that in spite of this (and plenty more evidence on how religious institutions, leaders, and NGOs contribute to the oldest forms of social protection known to human kind), this Report, like most of the research and data on social protection, remains blind and/or silent as to these global, regional and national sectors.
Any understanding of social protection without taking these providers, and the range of services they provide, into account, not only fails in its analysis, but it also omits to mention how religious actors are filling in some of the financial gaps – not necessarily always to the benefit of women’s empowerment and gender equality.
Yet, who is to hold them accountable?
Dr Azza Karam is an Affiliated Professor at the Ansari Institute for Global Engagement with Religion in the University of Notre Dame’s Keough School of Global Affairs, and President and CEO of Lead Integrity, a faith-inspired and women-led global management consultancy.
