80% peoples in world's poorest countries require safety net: World Bank
Islamabad: At least 60 percent of people in developing countries, and nearly 80 percent in the world's poorest countries, lack effective safety net coverage as countries struggle to protect their most vulnerable citizens from the negative impacts of global financial volatility and food and fuel price hikes, said World Bank release on Wednesday.
Sixty six million children around the world go to school hungry and struggle to concentrate and learn, a deficit that can be addressed with school feeding programmes for the poorest. More than 2.8 million newborns die in the first week of their lives. Many of these deaths can be prevented by providing more pre- and post-natal care for mothers and their children. Food insecurity leads to greater family conflict and divorce rates.
Expanding cost-effective safety nets – including cash transfers, food assistance, public works programmes, and fee waivers – to help countries respond to crises and address persistent poverty will be a main item for discussion by finance and development ministers at the World Bank-IMF Development Committee meeting on April 21.
"Safety nets can transform people's lives and provide a foundation for inclusive growth without busting budgets," says Robert B. Zoellick, President of the World Bank Group. "Effective safety net coverage overcomes poverty and promotes economic opportunity and gender equality by helping people find jobs, cope with economic shocks, and improve the health, education, and well-being of their children."
The Bank's new 2011 Atlas of Social Protection: Indicators of Resilience and Equity (ASPIRE) provides the first-ever online snapshot of household-level data on safety nets and other social protection and labor (SPL) programs in developing countries, and was launched together with the Bank's new Social Protection and Labor global strategy for the next 10 years. While sustained growth in many developing countries has pulled hundreds of millions of people out of poverty and into the middle class, this economic progress has yet to reach a majority in the poorest countries that face unemployment, disability, illness, and struggle to protect themselves against economic shocks, persistent poverty, natural disasters, or other crises.
A new strategy for expanding coverage to the poorest people
The Bank's new strategy calls for investing in stronger SPL systems in countries to improve the quality and reach of safety nets and other SPL programs in four areas:
• First, extending coverage to the poorest countries and poorest and most vulnerable people, where the needs are greatest.
• Second, building a coherent and integrated portfolio of national SPL policies and programs that help people deal with multiple risks, and can be scaled up or down in response to crises.
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Truth resides in every human heart, and one has to search for it there, and to be guided by truth as one sees it. But no one has a right to coerce others to act according to his own view of truth. - Mohandas Gandhi
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