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The importance of ensuring adequate social protection for children has long been high on the agenda of both the ILO and UNICEF. For children, social protection takes on a special significance, since the negative effects of poverty and deprivation in childhood have ramifications that can last a lifetime.

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Towards universal child grants in risk-prone, fragile and forced displacement contexts

An estimated 160 million children lived in areas of high or extremely high drought severity in 2015, with most of them in Africa and Asia, and more than half a billion children living in zones with extremely high flood occurrence, mainly in Asia (UNICEF, 2015).

Apart from natural disasters, including the impacts of climate change, children are exposed to conflicts and forced displacement. Poverty and conflict are among core drivers for children moving from their homes. In 2016, an estimated one in ten children resided in countries and areas affected by armed conflicts, and 385 million lived in extreme poverty. Approximately 28 million or one in 80 children in the world were forcibly displaced – this includes 12 million child refugees and child asylum seekers, and 16 million children living in internal displacement due to conflict and violence. In addition, 7 million children were internally displaced due to natural disasters (UNICEF, 2018a).

The combination of recurrent crises and poverty reduces the ability of poor families to cope and maintain the investments in human capital development of children and other vulnerable family members. Those living in poverty are often the first to use unsafe water sources and food, to skip meals or to pull children out of school. Children of indigenous peoples and those living in ethnic minority households are at even greater risk of suffering from poverty along multiple dimensions: they are less likely to attend school, and among indigenous children there are disproportionate instances of child labour as well as higher levels of income poverty (ILO, 2017b). Similarly, refugee children are five times more likely to be out of school than other children. Only 50 per cent of refugee children are enrolled in primary school, and less than 25 per cent of refugee adolescents are enrolled in secondary school (UNICEF, 2018a).

The impetus to provide effective coverage in such circumstances is brought into even sharper relief by World Bank predictions that by 2030, nearly half the global share of the world’s poor people will live in fragile or conflict-affected States (World Bank, 2018c). According to the World Bank, more than 87 million children under the age of 7 have spent their entire lives in conflict-affected areas (World Bank, 2018a, p. 75).

Typically, people affected by crisis are supported through the provision of humanitarian assistance. However, the changing frequency, nature and complexity of crises highlight the need to change the modus operandi and strengthen the humanitarian and development nexus. Social protection is increasingly being seen as an option to this end. In this context, recent years have witnessed a growing emphasis on social protection, with a call by the Social Protection Interagency Committee Board (SPIAC-B) at the 2016 World Humanitarian Summit to strengthen the linkages between humanitarian assistance and social protection, the inclusion of social protection in the 2016 New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants and the focus of the 2017 International Conference on Social Protection in Contexts of Fragility and Forced Displacement. These efforts have been guided by commitments to “leave no one behind” and to “work towards common outcomes in humanitarian and development programming”, including through social protection (UNICEF, 2017b), referring also to earlier commitments made at the International Labour Conference as well as in the Sustainable Development Goals and the UN General Assembly’s 2016 Political Declaration on HIV and AIDS.

Support for cash-based approaches in the aftermath of disasters has become mainstreamed; for example, of the 12 recommendations on cash programming in humanitarian contexts, the High-Level Panel on Humanitarian Cash Transfers’ first recommendation was to give more unconditional cash transfers (ODI, CGD, 2015). And cash transfers are increasingly being used as a humanitarian response (see Box 7). While cash alone is not a panacea in humanitarian contexts, it could be an integral part of stabilization, recovery and building up resilience to future shocks. The scope for child grants in such circumstances is huge. In 2014, approximately USD 1.2–1.5 billion out of a total expenditure of USD 25 billion in humanitarian contexts took the form of cash – 5 to 6 per cent (ODI, CGD, 2015).

While much more research is needed in this area, universal approaches may have important implications in these contexts. A system where every child is reached is automatically primed to reach those affected and scale up transfers – including for forcibly displaced populations. Second, a universal approach in fragile contexts where capacity is generally limited and a very high proportion of children are vulnerable could make practical sense, rather than efforts to effectively target. Universal approaches could lay the foundations for a national system that is ready to go to scale during recovery, forming part of the backbone of a fledgling social protection system and helping build the society-State relationship upon which further development and prosperity could be based.