Pierre Fallavier

Micro-finance aims at providing access to financial services to the poor. The main component of such services is credit, a service traditionally not extended to the very poor who are deemed credit unworthy because of a perceived high non-repayment risk and significant costs associated with ex-tending tiny loans to borrowers with no collateral. Specifically designed Micro Finance Institutions (MFIs) give access to credit to the "unbankable" and provide them with other adapted financial ser-vices (mainly saving, leasing or insurance). The objective is for the poor to invest in profit-generating activities and increase their overall well being. Through their saving component, local MFIs also help members accumulate and protect their capital, and empower the communities to create people-owned, independent saving-and-lending funds. Successful schemes hence not only provide funding to, but also build up the capacity of communities to manage their own development process.

The main contribution of this chapter is to analyse and present how the current institutional and regulatory settings in Vietnam affect the possibility to offer widespread access to sustainable mi-cro-finance, and how those settings could be improved to contribute to co-ordinated efforts of poverty eradication. Most research efforts have focused on understanding the characteristics and needs of mi-cro-finance schemes at the local level (i.e., what determine the success and failure of micro-finance programs) and the definition of sound practices at the project scale in Vietnam. Little has been written on the characteristics of the necessary macro-environment conductive to the successful dissemination of those sound practices. Policies that positively influence those relationships can be used by govern-mental authorities to provide a facilitating environment to integrate micro-and macro-scale efforts, and by MFIs to expand their operations and adapt their activities to reach and empower a more sig-nificant portion of the extreme poor in Vietnam.

(This is a draft version of a book published by VDM Verlag in 2009)

Since the 1920s, participatory approaches to urban upgrading have demonstrated that involving the urban poor in the physical, social, and economic development of their settlements could improve their living conditions. These housing policies and projects have since been central to urban poverty reduction. Yet, while participatory upgrading is still used on a limited scale, it has failed to become a mainstream component of urban development. This work analyzes some reasons for that failure by investigating the trajectory of an urban poverty reduction program that had much potential for success in Cambodia, but whose results yet fell short of expectations. It connects the results to a critical analysis of international experience with policies and programs for urban poverty reduction.

Policy implications to set up an enabling environment ... A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT 0F ... Abstract ................................................................................................................. ...................... iv Important Working Definitions ............................................................ ...

Policy implications to set up an enabling environment ... A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT 0F ... Abstract ................................................................................................................. ...................... iv Important Working Definitions ............................................................ ...

ABSTRACTWhat began in 2013 as the eruption of a political struggle between forces loyal to President Salva Kiir, a member of the Dinka ethnic group, and then–vice president Riek Machar, a Nuer, has splintered into a multifaction conflict. A dizzying array of armed groups have entered the fray, many unmotivated by political leverage that conventionally brings parties to a conflict to the negotiating table. Two years and tens of thousands of deaths after the 2015 signing of the Agreement on the Resolution of the Conflict in South Sudan, with no substantive progress toward meetings its terms, it is unrealistic to think that Intergovernmental Authority on Development’s recently announced High-Level Revitalization Forum will be sufficient to address the drivers of this conflict. Current policy proposals are poorly designed to address escalating intercommunal conflict and cattle raiding, both devastating forms of violence. As measures at the international level continue to be pursued, the conflict resolution strategy should also include a more comprehensive approach incorporating local actors in order to build momentum toward long-term stability. In this article, we highlight gaps in the current dialogue around a political solution in South Sudan, as well as domains that must be part of the next push for peace. (Disaster Med Public Health Preparedness. 2019;13:663–671)

Social Protection Programs for Africa’s Drylands explores the role of social protection in promoting the well-being and prosperity of people living in dryland regions of Sub-Saharan Africa, with a specific focus on the Sahel and the Horn of Africa. Based on a review of recent experience, it argues that social protection policies and programs have an important role in promoting the resilience of the people residing in these areas. Social protection programs, when well designed and carefully implemented at scale, can reduce vulnerability to droughts and other shocks and promote coping capacity. If present trends continue, by 2030 dryland regions of East and West Africa will be home to an estimated 429 million people, up to 24 percent of whom will be living in chronic poverty. Many others will depend on livelihood strategies that are sensitive to the shocks that will hit the region with increasing frequency and severity, making them vulnerable to falling into transient poverty. Social protection programs will be needed in the drylands to provide support to those unable to meet their basic needs. Some of these people will require long-term support, while others will require periodic short-term support because of income losses due to shocks (for example, crop failure following a drought) or as a result of lifecycle changes (for example, loss of a breadwinner). Safety net programs can increase resilience in the short term by improving coping capacity of vulnerable households. Rapidly scalable safety nets that provide cash, food, or other resources to shock-affected households can allow them to recover from unexpected shocks. Scaling up an existing safety net program can be far less expensive than relying on appeals for humanitarian assistance to meet urgent needs. Social protection programs can increase resilience over the longer term by reducing sensitivity to shocks of vulnerable households especially if combined with other development programs. Providing predictable support to chronically poor households and enabling them to invest in productive assets and access basic social services can effectively reduce these households’ sensitivity to future shocks, help them participate in the growth process, and take advantage of the investments made in agricultural and pastoralist activities proposed in the drylands.

Social Protection Programs for Africa’s Drylands explores the role of social protection in promoting the well-being and prosperity of people living in dryland regions of Sub-Saharan Africa, with a specific focus on the Sahel and the Horn of Africa. Based on a review of recent experience, it argues that social protection policies and programs have an important role in promoting the resilience of the people residing in these areas. Social protection programs, when well designed and carefully implemented at scale, can reduce vulnerability to droughts and other shocks and promote coping capacity. If present trends continue, by 2030 dryland regions of East and West Africa will be home to an estimated 429 million people, up to 24 percent of whom will be living in chronic poverty. Many others will depend on livelihood strategies that are sensitive to the shocks that will hit the region with increasing frequency and severity, making them vulnerable to falling into transient poverty. Social protection programs will be needed in the drylands to provide support to those unable to meet their basic needs. Some of these people will require long-term support, while others will require periodic short-term support because of income losses due to shocks (for example, crop failure following a drought) or as a result of lifecycle changes (for example, loss of a breadwinner). Safety net programs can increase resilience in the short term by improving coping capacity of vulnerable households. Rapidly scalable safety nets that provide cash, food, or other resources to shock-affected households can allow them to recover from unexpected shocks. Scaling up an existing safety net program can be far less expensive than relying on appeals for humanitarian assistance to meet urgent needs. Social protection programs can increase resilience over the longer term by reducing sensitivity to shocks of vulnerable households especially if combined with other development programs. Providing predictable support to chronically poor households and enabling them to invest in productive assets and access basic social services can effectively reduce these households’ sensitivity to future shocks, help them participate in the growth process, and take advantage of the investments made in agricultural and pastoralist activities proposed in the drylands.

Cambodia is a predominantly rural society, with 84.3% of its 14 million estimated population living in rural areas. The remaining 15.7% urban dwellers live predominantly in Phnom Penh, which has an estimated population of 1.2 million in 2002 and is about 16 times the size of the second largest city, Battambang. The population in Phnom Penh grows at a faster rate than in the country overall, with an estimated 8% per annum made of a 3% in-migration rate and a 5% natural increase (see Table 1). The country has one of the lowest Human Development Index in Asia (a HDI of 0.517 in 2000), with a life expectancy of 54.4 years, an adult literacy of 71.2%, and a yearly gross domestic product per capita of $1,257. Conversely, it scores high on the Human Poverty Index (42.53), with a high level of mortality and child malnutrition, and a limited availability of public services (Ministry of Planning Cambodia 2000:4-7). Although the HDI is 21% higher in cities than in the countryside, cities are a...

ABSTRACTWhat began in 2013 as the eruption of a political struggle between forces loyal to President Salva Kiir, a member of the Dinka ethnic group, and then–vice president Riek Machar, a Nuer, has splintered into a multifaction conflict. A dizzying array of armed groups have entered the fray, many unmotivated by political leverage that conventionally brings parties to a conflict to the negotiating table. Two years and tens of thousands of deaths after the 2015 signing of the Agreement on the Resolution of the Conflict in South Sudan, with no substantive progress toward meetings its terms, it is unrealistic to think that Intergovernmental Authority on Development’s recently announced High-Level Revitalization Forum will be sufficient to address the drivers of this conflict. Current policy proposals are poorly designed to address escalating intercommunal conflict and cattle raiding, both devastating forms of violence. As measures at the international level continue to be pursued, the...

On August 7, 2002, local authorities in Sangkat Tonle Basac displaced 44 shelters so the municipality could excavate some soil to landscape a nearby garden. The families living in these shelters are among the poorest and most vulnerable in the Basac area. The displacement isolated them even more from access to basic services and to job opportunities and pushed them to live in an overcrowded and extremely unsanitary settlement caught between the rising level of the river and dangerously inundated areas. The PME team conducted a short study to clarify the needs of families living in the communities affected – communities Basac AB, Basac 3A and Basac 3B - and see how to organize a potential temporary resettlement nearby their current living area. For this study we mapped the area, tried to count the families, and conducted interviews with households, community leaders and local authorities to document the current situation, and provide directions for emergency and for long-term action. The results are presented in sections II and IV of this report. While conducting this study, we learnt that much planning had recently been conducted in the Basac area by local community-based organizations (CBOs), and representatives from local authorities, the municipality, and UN-Habitat. The main activity of these communities has been to save money and to prepare lists of beneficiaries for a potential resettlement. Although it was not one of its objectives, a main finding of this study is that this planning process may have been extremely biased by the expectation that everyone coming to live in the Basac could soon be resettled and receive a free plot of land. A market has thus developed for people – poor and not-so-poor – to purchase the documents “proving” they are current residents in the Basac: mainly the temporary resident cards delivered by the Sangkat, and the saving books delivered by the community leaders. Each can be used as a proof of residence to claim eligibility for relocation. Speculators are thus bribing community leaders and Sangkat authorities to obtain such documents. It is extremely difficult to assess the extent of such practices, but results from the many interviews we conducted with poor families show that it should be an extremely serious concern to anyone involved in supporting the local development process. The short family case studies in this document illustrate many of the conditions that figures alone cannot describe. This qualitative information is supported by the results of interviews our team conducted on relocation sites since 2001, where many families mention they had to pay to receive plots which they were not always entitled to. Population figures also call for attention: the demographics reported in the communities likely to be relocated differ significantly from these of other low-income settlements in Phnom Penh. Community leaders report an average household size in the three communities threatened by floods between 14.2 and 15.5 persons while the average is 5.7 persons in other settlements. Meanwhile, the reported family size is only 3.4 to 3.8 persons vs. 5.3 elsewhere. A PME survey of 20 households (11% of the houses in the flooded area) estimated that only 4.9 persons living in each house, and that a total of 246 families live in these settlement, against SUPF’s 752. These numbers point to the fact that (1) the reported figures are inflated, and (2) many people currently in the Basac are not “normal” long-term resident families (typically with two parents, three to four children and one grandparent), but merely temporarily living there expecting to obtain a plot. One or two family members live in the Basac while the others stay in their main place of residence. This is reinforced by the results of our survey which shows a much lower number of inhabitants in the area and family sizes significantly smaller than expected. This speculative process has at least three main negative impacts for planning: 1. It excludes from the local planning process (potentially a relocation) some legitimate residents of the area who are too poor to obtain a saving book or a temporary resident card, although the poor are supposed to be the first beneficiaries of such process. 2. It includes on the lists of beneficiaries for compensation people who are not eligible: better-off families who purchase proofs of residence in the Basac, money-lenders who take people’s saving books as collateral on loans with such high interest rates that they cannot be repaid, and families or friends of community leaders and local officials. This again diverts development aid from its intended beneficiaries. 3. It weakens trust in CBOs and in local authorities as most poor people think that their only way to receive support is to bribe the community leader or local officials. This also directly harms the image of CBOs and of their leaders in other parts of Phnom Penh as community members will associate CBOs with the corrupt…

Since the 1920s, participatory approaches to urban upgrading in developing nations have demonstrated that involving the urban poor in the physical, social, and economic development of their settlements could improve their living conditions. These housing policies and projects have since been central to urban poverty reduction. Yet, while participatory upgrading is still used on a limited scale, it has failed to become a mainstream component of urban development. This dissertation analyzes some reasons for that failure by investigating the trajectory of an urban poverty reduction program that had much potential for success in Cambodia, but whose results yet surprisingly fell short of expectations. It connects the results to a critical analysis of international experience with policies and programs for urban poverty reduction. It explores the issue in two steps: First it analyzes the historical evolution of the policies and practices of urban poverty reduction in developing nations. T...

This paper takes stock of the World Bank's risk and vulnerability analysis from FY2000 to FY2007. It complements recent assessments of Social Protection and Labor (SP&L) sector's lending and analytic activities on labor markets, pensions, social safety nets, and social ...

This paper takes stock of the World Bank's risk and vulnerability analysis from FY2000 to FY2007. It complements recent assessments of Social Protection and Labor (SP&L) sector's lending and analytic activities on labor markets, pensions, social safety nets, and social ...

This poverty analysis identifies the most vulnerable and excluded groups of people living in Phnom Penh, and articulates their needs and priorities to ensure that future benefits of the Project's activities will reach the poorest groups in the city as a whole, and in the existing squatter and urban poor communities in particular.

It provides baseline data against which the impact of future participatory urban planning activities will be meas-ured, and it forms a basis upon which strategies of participatory urban development involving the poorest may be developed, both at the policy and at the project levels.

Specific objectives of the study

This study analyzes the field data presented in the Individual Report Series in a format that suggests directions for improvement both in terms of projects and policy directions to better meet the needs of the poorest urban populations in Phnom Penh. It also meets the following objectives, as set in the terms of reference:

1. The identification of urban poor groups living in a representative selection of urban poor and squatter settlements in Phnom Penh.

2. A participatory identification of the poorest families within each selected settlement, and an analysis of their poverty situations, taking into account UNDP's Human Development Index, people's time perspective on life (i.e., their willingness and ability to invest in a better future), assets, and regularity of income sources among other criteria. The analysis also investigates the extent, nature, and causes of indebtedness, and the extent to which very poor families in existing organized communities are included or excluded from participatory development pro-cesses.

3. The identification and analysis of other urban poor groups who live outside established com-munities. These are mostly:
-street sleepers (those dwelling on street pavements),
-poor people living in small scattered groups in predominantly better off areas,
-those living in recently developed squatter and urban poor areas on the urban fringe,
-inhabitants of multi-occupancy dilapidated buildings, especially in the center of the city,
-rooftop dwellers,
-marginalized communities and people transient in terms of their shelter location because of their critical poverty situation, such as short term renters, riverside or floating communities and those who have migrated to the city, temporarily or permanently, due to indebtedness, lack of employment opportunities, or other factors.

4. From the different groups of excluded urban poor, livelihood strategy case studies are pre-sented to illustrate and appreciate their needs and priorities, and describe how families cope with their present economic and living conditions.

5. This work has been conducted in collaboration with local experts, NGOs and CBOs. It has also built local capacity in designing and implementing an urban poverty analysis by training and involving a local research team.

Niger has been one of the Sahel countries the most harshly hit by recurring weather-related shocks and severe food and nutrition crises since 2005. From 2004 however, there have been major improvements in responding to these crises. The government has developed an early warning system that keeps track of Niger’s ability to produce enough food to feed its people and livestock, and that can now efficiently inform aid actors on potential needs ahead of crises. Since 2008, it has also learned lessons from a range of applications of cash transfers to provide for emergency and long-term protection needs, and developed a national social protection policy with the support of UNICEF and the World Bank in which cash transfers programs are recognized as important instruments.

In Niger, UNICEF has targeted poor and remote areas with social protection programs to help improve equitable access to opportunities. Increasingly since 2010, it has been implementing a free health care system for all children under five and pregnant women, has developed social safety nets targeting these groups, and piloted a community-based approach to reach remote populations. As part of these initiatives, UNICEF took the lead in developing emergency cash transfer programs of a scale larger than earlier tried. From 2010 to 2012, UNICEF and its partners have hence provided small amounts of cash during food insecure seasons to the most vulnerable households with young children to protect their nutritional status. The cash they received allowed families to purchase food and not to consume the supplementary feedings distributed to young children. The programs were accompanied by campaigns of communication for development that promoted essential family practices to improve child feeding, and health and hygiene practices in the villages. While implementing these emergency programs, UNICEF collaborated with the World Bank and the government in developing the cash transfer component of the social safety nets program to address some of the roots of vulnerability from a social protection perspective.

The emergency cash transfer programs have shown success in combating malnutrition as well as in reducing the use of negative coping mechanisms, and UNICEF’s involvement has helped develop a robust system based on lesson from experience. Meanwhile, the WFP has shifted the largest proportion of its distribution activities into cash transfers and developed its capacity to design and manage large-scale transfer programs countrywide. It is likely to be the main implementer of these in the years to come, both for emergency response and resilience building.

Now that it has helped develop as system implemented largely by civil society and government, UNICEF can withdraw from direct implementation and focus on the specific value-added it has developed in cash transfer programming. It will keep a role to accompany such initiatives with child-sensitive initiatives—with the Government through the national social safety nets program, and in collaboration with the WFP and other aid actors. It will further continue its partnership with the World Bank to develop strategies and permanent structures of social protection, including the safety nets program but also joint initiatives in health and education.

This case study analyzes how UNICEF has developed the use of cash transfers in Niger, in response to a series of food and nutrition crises. It reviews the rationale for the approach to both provide humanitarian aid and build the resilience of extremely vulnerable households, following the evolution of practices, and of lessons learned over time. It then leads to thinking about how UNICEF’s role can evolve over time, from being a leader in innovations and developing local capacity to use appropriate transfer mechanisms, to itself taking a step back from direct implementation to best use the lessons it learned and further contribute to helping government address the roots of vulnerability on a large-scale.

This paper examines the academic and practitioner literature on climate-adaptive social protection to provide a foundation for the operational issues discussed in the following sections of the paper. It aims to draw out the linkages between social protection, climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction as a framework for non-specialists to understand how social protection measure are linked to climate change and can help protect from its impacts.

This analysis hence gives an overview of: (i) the growing impact of climate change on people living in the drylands of Africa, especially in the Sahel; (ii) the needs for adapting development practices to climate change across drylands, the particular role adaptive social protection can play, and examples to learn from; (iii) current reflections on tools and on policy guidelines to devise climate-adaptive integrated systems of social protection; and (iv) key issues that remains to be documented on adaptive social protection in the Sahel.

The concepts of adaptive social protection (ASP) grew from the second half of the 2000s, based on a view that social protection could have a transformative role by not only protecting poor households from shocks as these happen, but also reducing their vulnerability ahead of time, and helping strengthen their human and productive capacities to graduate out of poverty. ASP built on this by pointing that in nations vulnerable to the impacts of climate change—e.g., agriculture-dependent subsistence economies—better managing climate risk meant integrating Disaster Risk Reduction with Social Protection, and improving capacities for humanitarian intervention in ways responsive to the impacts of climate changes on current and future risks.

Globally, though elements of adaptive social protection have been developed and tested—for instance in Bangladesh or Ethiopia—none so far has evolved into full-fledge integrated approaches to prevent and manage the risk of recurrent crises brought about by climate change. However, examples can be drawn from the gradual evolution and cooperation of different actors working together in the face of ever more frequent and intense climate-related crises. This is the case in Niger for instance, where a national scheme to prevent and manage food insecurity and disasters is integrating DRR elements of early warning systems and early action with long-term approaches to transformative social protection—through productive, adaptive safety nets, and the capacity to use SP tools of vulnerability analysis and targeting to rapidly scale up existing social safety nets with humanitarian responses during acute crises.

Over the last two to three years, agencies working on social protection in Sub-Saharan Africa have started developing guidelines and toolkits on how to better understand, plan for, and respond to climate shocks through a more adaptive approach to social protection. Though implementation experience and empirical evidence of impacts remains limited, important initiatives are developing across the Sahel that should help improve the conceptual approaches and develop concrete policy and programs, as well as help gather and analyze evidence on the impacts and further potentials of adaptive social protection to be a tool in building the resilience of poor households in front of climate-related chronic stresses and sudden shocks. Within the coming four years, these initiatives are likely to yield useful results, both in practical terms as they will help develop better systems and tools to protect people against the impacts of climate change in the long-term, and in terms of lessons that can then be adapted to other context, as most programs supported will have a strong component of research action and policy work.

This paper reviews the actual and potential contributions and cost of social protection to strengthen resilience to shocks in Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Niger and Senegal, six dry-lands Sahel countries among the poorest in the world and highly exposed to recurrent economic, social and climatic shocks with intensifying and disabling effects on the poor.

It first highlights key vulnerabilities across these nations due to their high exposure and sensitivity to shocks, and to their relatively low coping capacities to overcome these and reduce their long-term vulnerabilities to crises. It then reviews the mechanisms of social protection in each country, underscoring their effectiveness and limitations, and pointing to good practices that could be expanded. Third, it proposes policy and programmatic directions to set up better integrated systems of social protection and risk management that could help build resilience against recurrent shocks and chronic vulnerability. It finally estimates the costs of developing or strengthening the foundations of such systems and proposes directions to fund such initiatives.