RIO DE JANEIRO, March 21, 2014 – Over 200 senior policy makers, including 23 ministers and cabinet-level officials, from 70 developing countries, met to learn from each other’s experiences and from World Bank experts, how to develop well-designed and efficient social protection systems.
A joint initiative was also launched today to capture Brazil’s important innovations in social protection and labor programs aimed to eliminate extreme poverty, and to share the lessons with the rest of the world.
The South-South Learning Forum
The South-South Learning Forum on Social Protection and Labor –co-hosted by the Federal Government of Brazil, the State and Municipal Governments of Rio de Janeiro, German Development Cooperation, the Rapid Social Response Fund and the World Bank — provides a platform for policy makers to share their experience to improve the design and delivery of social protection and labor systems at the policy, program and service delivery levels.
“Brazil is honored to host this event. The path of inclusive development which Brazil has chosen in the last decade has given us the Bolsa Família, a cash transfer program which reached monumental scale and coverage, and also the Unified Register (Cadastro Único), an innovative tool allowing the access of millions of Brazilians to several programs aimed the low-income population,” said Tereza Campello, Brazil’s Minister for Social Development and Fight against Hunger (MDS). “The maturation of these initiatives is making Brazil an international reference on policies to overcome poverty. It has also allowed us to go further and create Brasil Sem Miséria Plan, a multidimensional strategy to tackle extreme poverty which embraces policies of income, health, education, social assistance and labor, among others.”
Many countries spend a substantial share of their GDP on social protection and labor programs with the objective of building resilience for the vulnerable, promoting equity for the poor, and providing opportunities for enhanced productivity. However, most of these programs in the developing world are highly-fragmented and uncoordinated, resulting in inefficiencies, low program coverage, exclusion of vulnerable people, inclusion of the non-poor, inflexibility to respond to shocks, and poor linkages with jobs and productive opportunities.
To overcome these challenges, governments are increasingly focusing on systematic approaches, which focus on policies, programs and delivery instruments that work together in a more coherent and cost-effective way.
“This forum provides a unique platform for sharing global knowledge – so that policy makers and implementers from across the world can benefit from each other’s experiences,” said Arup Banerji, the World Bank’s Director for Social Protection and Labor. “While there’s no one way to implement social protection and labor strategies, there are emerging lessons on what works, what doesn’t and what can be changed and adapted. That is what all the attendees of the forum have emphasized. And Brazil presents an important example of a country which has achieved great success in improving the lives of the poor, because of the power of its ambitions in social protection, but also because of the rigor of constantly evaluating and assessing its programs, seeing what is working well and scaling it up, and improving what needs to be done better.”
This year’s forum puts special emphasis on building effective delivery systems, enrollment and transaction processes and monitoring and information systems to help track and report key results for program administrators to continually monitor and improve them.
Sharing Brazil’s Innovation to the World, the World Without Poverty (WWP) Initiative
The Brazil Learning Initiative for a World without Poverty (WWP) was also launched today. This joint initiative –sponsored by Brazil’s Ministry of Social Development and Fight against Hunger (MDS), the Brazilian Institute for Applied Economic Research (IPEA), International Policy Centre for Inclusive Growth (IPC-IG) of the United Nations Program for Development (UNDP), and the World Bank— aims to capture Brazil’s own experience with social protection systems. This is a follow-up to the Memorandum of Understanding which was signed between the partners during the World Bank Group President’s visit to Brazil last year.
“The WWP comes as a smart and a simple way to share with many countries the main aspects of the design, management and monitoring of these programs and other actions. It will also allow Brazil to improve its programs from the successful experiences of other countries’ knowledge. We are proud to be part of this initiative,” said Minister Campello.
“The implementation of the Bolsa Família Program and Brasil Sem Miséria Plan have generated a wealth of lessons and knowledge on social assistance and poverty reduction that should be systematized and shared among policy makers, managers and technicians of social programs from around the world. Therefore, there is room to accelerate and expand the learning experience from the social policy in Brazil, including informing about innovative solutions which are implemented,” said Deborah Wetzel, the World Bank Country Director in Brazil. “This initiative comes to meet this need, and, together with the MDS, the IPEA and the IPC-IG, the Bank reinforces its commitment to promote development and improve the quality of life of the poorest.”
Brazil has made significant strides in reducing poverty and inequality over the last decade, with social transfers through the Bolsa Família Program, as well as the more recent experience to strengthen the synergies and implementation of a broad set of poverty reduction programs under the Brasil Sem Miséria Plan. The rapid growth in labor income at the lower end of the distribution is also a key contributing factor.
“IPEA, which will celebrate its fiftieth anniversary in 2014, has dedicated itself to Brazilian development, with strong focus on the design and evaluation of strategies for poverty reduction. It is with great honor that the Institute joins the WWP, offering its staff’s efforts to strengthen studies and proposals on that topic. IPEA many publications have revealed considerable poverty and inequality reduction in Brazil in the last years. There were advances in many different dimensions of human development in Brazil, especially in the poorest municipalities and neighborhoods,” said Marcelo Neri, President of IPEA and Minister of Strategic Affairs Secretariat (SAE). “We need to progress continuously, sharing our success and overcoming obstacles and challenges. The WWP promises to facilitate the exporting of lessons and social technologies developed here to other countries, as well as the knowledge exchange among local experiences.”
According to Jorge Chediek, UNDP Resident Representative in Brazil and Director of IPC-IG, “The WWP is an important opportunity to promote South-South cooperation on poverty reduction strategies with other countries. There is a great interest for information about policies that enable effective socioeconomic changes in the livelihoods of people living in poverty. Through IPC-IG, UNDP Brazil wants to expand its participation in this global debate, facilitating knowledge sharing among low- and middle- income countries. This partnership with the World Bank and the federal government will expand and give new dimensions to this valuable cooperation.”
The WWP is directed to practitioners and policy makers in the area of social policy, research organizations, as well as the general public.
For more information, please visit: www.worldbank.org/spl