Children and social protection in the Middle East and North Africa

There are a number of interrelated factors involved in poverty and vulnerability in the MENA region. This project briefing reflects the conclusions of a study mapping social protection in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, with a particular focus on policies and programmes that impact children.

The paper notes that supporting children’s access to education is the most common child-specific area of social protection. Furthermore, programmes promoting the nutritional well-being of children under five are also common. On the other hand, the authors underline the following facts:

• food insecurity and vulnerability to rising food prices are common in the MENA region, while demographic pressures and the resulting youth bulge are limiting young people’s work opportunities
• the under-five mortality rate remains significantly high in the poorest countries, while primary school enrolment rates in these countries remains low
• the socio-cultural acceptance of specific gender-discrimination practices in some countries contributes to furthering social vulnerabilities
• food and commodity subsidies generally absorb the greatest share of social protection budgets
  

The document indicates that key challenges to social protection and child-sensitive social protection include political context (i.e. recent protests), financial barriers, monitoring and evaluation, fragmentation in provision and targeting. Identically, the paper suggests the following recommendations: 

• it is important to think about child-sensitive social protection beyond programmes that target children, so as to be better able to take advantage of existing opportunities
• such opportunities might include linking cash transfer beneficiaries to complementary supportive programmes and basic social services
• multilateral agencies should support governments to strengthen their capacity to design more tailored and effective programmes that reach the most vulnerable children
• information sharing across MENA countries is essential and is to be enhanced by programmes monitoring and evaluation, which can help estimating their impacts, particularly on children