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Multiple Gender Dimensions as with
Poverty, Rights, Equality
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INCREASING SOCIAL INCLUSION THROUGH
SOCIAL GUARANTEES
Social Development Department of the
World Bank, in collaboratin with The Department of Social Development &
Employment of the Organization of American States.
Social rights are usually defined in
a general and abstract manner. Therefore, in order to realize them effectively,
policy-makers need to determine the operational scope of each right and the
necessary actions to fulfill it.
The social guarantee approach is
designed precisely to assist governments in this task.
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The social service model in the last
half-century has seen most nations transition from a service delivery model,
with such issues as
Equity - Sectors tend to become
segmented between those who access high quality private provision and those who
don't.
Transparency - When the state is
seen as the universal provider, the process for standard setting is clear. The
state's side of the bargain becomes less clear as the institutional channels
for provision become more diverse.
Accountability - The responsibility
for ensuring citizens have basic services becomes less clear. This risks undermining
the relation between citizens and the state and undermining social cohesion and
solidarity.
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"Social guarantees are
sets of legal and administrative mechanisms that specify entitlements and
obligations the states should fulfill in order to realize a given right. For
example, in order to determine whether the population is exercising the right
to education, it is necessary that a set of educational services, needed to
satisfy this right, are clearly defined and that society as a whole commits to
providing them.
Defining rights as a set of
guaranteed services, gives them concrete meaning and contributes to their
realization.
Since social guarantees protect
fundamental rights, they help societies transition from a corporatist to a
universalist model of social policy, in which the entire population has access
to a set of basic social minimums. These entitlements relate to policies in
areas such as education, health, and housing that in the long run determine the
resources and social capital of the poor."
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World Bank Website Link - Provides
subsite Links to Country Case Studies
A
rights-based approach to social policy implies the introduction of a set of
institutions and policies within a society that secure every member’s reasonable
access to a social minimum. In practice a rights-based approach to social
policy can be seen as incorporating the following elements:
Some of the most successful examples of applying a rights-based approach to social policy have emerged from developing and middle-income countries (India, South Africa, Chile, etc.) Drawing on experiences in South Africa and several Latin American countries, the Social Development Department in collaboration with the Organization of American States (OAS), the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), the UK Department for International Development and the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) is conducting a study on different rights-based approaches to social policy and their role in strengthening the institutional framework for social policy provision in the selected countries (see “Realizing Rights through Social Guarantees”). This study and a subsequent Policy Note “Increasing Social Inclusion through Social Guarantees” will serve as inputs to the OAS Meeting of Ministers and High Level Authorities of Social Development to be held in Santiago, Chile in May 2008. In addition, they will inform the ongoing discussions on the development of a social charter for Latin America.
These studies promoted the idea that a human rights lens can be applied to social policies by introducing a framework of social guarantees i.e. sets of mechanisms that determine specific entitlements and obligations related to certain rights, and ensure the fulfillment of those obligations on the part of the state.
Eight Latin American case studies and the case of South Africa were examined in order to suggest that countries can apply a social guarantee framework to consolidate their existing systems of service delivery.
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