TOPIC: Redefining Social Protection Systems to Prevent Corruption and Ensure Equitable Access

delegates will be tasked with reimagining social protection as a tool not only for poverty alleviation but also for preventing corruption and marginalisation.

QARMAS
1.​ How can governments and UNDP-supported programs enhance transparency and accountability in the delivery of social protection benefits?
2.​ What role can technology play in reducing corruption risks while expanding access to marginalized populations?
3.​ How can social protection systems be made more inclusive and accessible to those often excluded, such as informal workers, people with disabilities,
or indigenous communities?
4.​ What mechanisms can ensure that funds for social protection are used efficiently and do not fall into elite capture or political patronage?
5.​ How can partnerships with civil society, local governments, and international institutions strengthen integrity in social protection systems?
6.​ What best practices from other countries or regions can be adapted to local contexts to balance both anti-corruption and equity goals in social
protection?

ROOT CAUSES

SUBJECT FINDINGS SOURCES

Challenges for implement UNDP Social -​ Gaps in social protection UNDP for Social
Protection Offer -​ weak governance systems Protection
-​ Lack of access can also be caused by more structural issues like https://www.undp.
gender-based discrimination org/sites/g/files/zs
kgke326/files/202
2-11/UNDP-Socia
l-Protection-Offer-
2.0.pdf

-​
EARLY
SUBJECT FINDINGS SOURCES

Definition of Social Protection Social protection refers to the set of policies and programs aimed at preventing or UNEN
protecting all people against poverty, vulnerability, and social exclusion
throughout their life cycles, with a particular emphasis towards vulnerable groups.

TYPE OF SOCIAL PROTECTION Social assistance – non-contributory transfers in cash, vouchers, or in-kind https://gsdrc.org/t
(including school feeding) to individuals or households in need (White, 2016: 1); opic-guides/social
public works programmes; fee waivers (for basic health and education services); -protection/types-
and subsidies (e.g. for food, fuel). of-social-protecti
Social insurance – ‘contributory schemes providing compensatory support in the on/
event of contingencies such as illness, injury, disability, death of a spouse or
parent, maternity/paternity, unemployment, old age, and shocks affecting
livestock/crops’ (ibid.).
Social care services ‘for those facing social risks such as violence, abuse,
exploitation, discrimination and social exclusion’ (ibid.).
Labour market programmes – ‘active (promoting labour market participation)
or passive (ensuring minimum employment standards)’ (ibid.).

SOCIAL ASSISTANCE Social assistance is defined as non-contributory interventions (i.e. the full amount
is paid by the provider) designed to help individuals and households cope with
poverty, destitution, and vulnerability. These programmes target the poor and
vulnerable. Some are targeted based on categories of vulnerability, and some are
targeted to low-income households. They are usually provided by the state and
financed by national taxes (Barrientos, 2010).
1.​ Cash Transfer → are direct, regular and predictable transfers, increasingly
paid through secure electronic systems, such as directly into bank
accounts, mobile phone accounts, or on smart cards.
Cash transfers may take different forms: simple transfers, transfers conditional
upon certain requirements, and transfers combined with the provision of or
 linkages to other services:
-​ Unconditional cash transfers (UCTs) do not have any requirements in
terms of how they are spent or any conditions for when they are received.
They are implemented both at national level by governments and at a
smaller scale by NGOs (HLPE, 2012).
-​ Conditional cash transfers (CCTs) are given with the requirement that
the beneficiary meets certain conditions – often related to human capital
development, such as visiting a health clinic or ensuring children go to
school. In this way, CCTs aim to reduce both short-term food insecurity
and the long-term intergenerational transmission of poverty and
vulnerability (HLPE, 2012: 14; World Bank, 2018b: 7).
-​ Cash plus programmes combine cash transfers with one or more types of
complementary support, based on the understanding that ‘cash alone
cannot alleviate non-financial and structural barriers to improving living
standards and well-being’ (Roelen et al., 2017). These are a fairly new
wave of interventions that have expanded in the past few years. They tend
to focus either on improving human development and human capital
outcomes (e.g. improving nutrition, reproductive health, reducing
violence against women and girls) or on productive inclusion (more
sustainable livelihoods). The ‘plus’ element is provided either as integral
elements of the cash transfer intervention or through offering linkages to
services provided by other sectors.
2.​ In-Kind Assistance → school feeding, free nutritious, lunch, etc.
3.​ Social (non-contributory) pensions → are direct, regular and predictable
payments made to people above a certain age, and often constitute state
pensions.
4.​ Public works programmes → are activities which entail the payment of a
wage (in cash or food), often but not always by the state, in return for the
provision of labour.

SOCIAL INSURANCE are contributory schemes where participants make regular payments to a scheme
that will cover costs related to life-course events (Barrientos, 2010).
There are ongoing efforts to increase the coverage of social insurance beyond the
formal labour market to cover informal workers (the majority of the working-age
 population in most low- and middle-income countries (Holmes and Scott, 2016:
iv)) and other marginalised and vulnerable groups who have tended to be
excluded from formal schemes. These efforts include:
1.​ Non-contributory universal programmes – for example social
pensions, universal health insurance and unemployment assistance,
which are financed out of general taxation.
2.​ Parallel schemes – for example, Tunisia has different pension
programmes for public and private sector workers, while Mexico
has separate contributory and non-contributory health insurance
schemes with eligibility dependent on an individual’s labour
market status.
3.​ Nationally integrated pensions with explicit subsidies – for
example, Chile’s pension system (Winkler et al., 2017: 8)

SOCIAL CARE SERVICES Social care services encompass a variety of activities aimed at ensuring the
physical, mental, and emotional well-being of individuals, including healthcare,
household chores, support for dependents and caregivers, and self-care practices.
Care can be provided by public and private providers (institutional or
community-based, formal, or informal) and by individuals (families or hired
caregivers).

LABOUR MARKET PROGRAMMES provide protection for poor people who are able to work and aim to ensure basic
standards and rights (Barrientos, 2010). These government-led policies and
interventions can be contributory or non-contributory, active (helping people
acquire skills and connect them to labour markets), or passive (helping protect
people against loss of income from unemployment, underemployment,
diminishing real wages, and precarious and informal employment)

MID
PAST INTERNATIONAL ACTION
SUBJECT FINDINGS SOURCES

UNDP Social Protection Offer 2.0 adopts an integrated vision of social protection in line with the imperatives to
achieve the following:
-​ Protect/prevent – by decreasing vulnerabilities to risks and shocks,
ensuring adequate consumption and income and food security, and
preserving access to basic services. The positive impacts of social
assistance and social insurance interventions such as cash and in-kind
transfers, and social care services in many countries around the globe
provide evidence of their relevance.
-​ Empower/promote – by increasing productive capacities and new
capabilities of vulnerable households, including via access to quality
health care and education as well as labour market interventions.
-​ Transform – to build a more just society based on fairness by addressing
structural drivers of poverty, inequality and vulnerability, including by
addressing social norms and promoting a transformation towards an
equalizing, greener and more sustainable way of living.

PRINCIPLES IN UNDP OFFER 2.0 1.​ Gender Equality and women’s empowerment
2.​ Human Rights

ENABLERS 1.​ Financing → Social protection needs sustainable financing that ensures
the implementation of programmes in the long term. While funding
remains a major challenge due to tight fiscal space, more and more
countries are recognizing that social protection is a long-term investment
in social cohesion and human development, rather than an expenditure,
and therefore should be prioritized in budgeting plans. The current
 momentum should be seized by building on the strong willingness of
countries to address the structural issues driving inequalities.
2.​ Digitalization and innovation → Digitalization offers promising options
for the management of social protection programmes and systems and
offers solutions at the most macro and micro levels. At the macro level,
digital solutions will be developed for collecting, cross-referencing and
managing data to improve the effectiveness of targeting and
identification of beneficiaries, as well as the definition of benefit levels.
Likewise, digitalization will be leveraged to better connect fragmented
programmes and lend cohesion to social protection systems. At the micro
level, a key entry point is digitalization of legal identity systems such as
national ID cards. Digitalization also plays a key role in modalities for
delivery of benefits, from mobile phone payment systems (preferably
linked to national ID systems) and electronic wallets to ATM or debit
cards, generation of national identification cards for beneficiaries,
biometric identification modalities, postal system delivery, as well as
systems for verification of benefit delivery. Finally, digitalization will be
used not only to deliver payments, but also receive contributions of
individuals, even informal sector workers, to their own social protection
plans, such as pensions. Due consideration will be given to the existing
digital divide because of gender, age, location, disabilities, or income.
Consideration will also be given to data protection. UNDP has developed
expertise in this area working with specific projects, but also through the
SDG Acceleration Labs.
3.​ Data and evidence → Disaggregated data and evidence are critical
elements for measuring progress and informing design of social
protection interventions. Data and evidence are generated through the
interventions proposed in each entry point and at the same time the
interventions require data and evidence for design and for determining
their adequacy in addressing the issues they are meant to address and
reach the people they are meant to reach.

SOCIAL PROTECTION FOR VULNERABLE

GROUPS
COUNTRY STANCES
SUBJECT FINDINGS SOURCES

CHINA INTERNATIONAL ratifying the United Nations Convention against Corruption (UNCAC) in 12/02/2006 https://www.unod
EFFORT OF PREVENTING c.org/corruption/e
CORRUPTION n/uncac/ratificatio
n-status.html

CHINA PROGRAM China's anti-corruption campaign since 2013 has investigated and prosecuted many high-level
(CORRUPTION) members of the Party, PLA and various institutions across the Party-State-Society spectrum in
Anti Corruption Campaigns China. The far-reaching anti-corruption campaign conducted during Xi Jinping’s tenure has
impacted elite politics in China as well as policy implementation.

DEFINITION OF Corruption can be narrowly defined as “use of public authority for personal gain”. Corruption has
CORRUPTION IN CHINA also evolved to include behaviours that the Party has deemed unacceptable, unhealthy and amoral
over time. One broadly accepted framework of corruption in China classifies practices into three
categories:
• The first category includes graft, bribes, fraud, embezzlement, extortion, smuggling, tax evasion
etc, which are economic crimes meant to increase the personal wealth of officials.
• The second category includes behaviours and practices by members of public institutions to
increase the wealth and power of their institutions and staff through illegal and semi-legal
activities. It includes behaviours considered unhealthy, like spending public money for luxurious
work and lifestyle conditions, extravagance and waste, excessive spending on entertainment and
travel etc.
• The third category refers to preferential treatment or nepotism in personnel appointment and
promotions and favourable treatment of relatives of officials, friends and associates, which
facilitate the creation of personal networks.

CHINA ANTI CORRUPTION -​ The Eight point code, called the “Eight-point Regulation on Improving the Work Style and https://orcasia.org/
CAMPAIGN PROGRAMS Close Interaction with Crowds” : restrict official behaviour, which banned the use of anti-corruption-ca
luxury cars, lavish gifts, reduced banquets, ceremonies, visits and meetings. mpaigns-in-china
 -​ The CCDI conducted 20 inspections in 2013 (11 provinces, 3 government agencies, 4
SOEs, 4 state funded institutions), 39 in 2014, which increased to 41 in 2015, 45 in 2016,
30 in 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2021.
-​ In 2014 and 2015, Operation Fox Hunt and Sky Net, were designed to coerce or cajole
officials and other fugitives who fled China.
-​ The creation of the National Supervision Commission (NSC) in 2018, enforcement
gaps in the campaigns were plugged, with millions of state employees now under the
scanner.
-​ Post-20th Party Congress, widened to the PLA Rocket Force, Ministry of Defence and
even extended to private industries (pharmaceuticals, hospitals, football). Even
anti-corruption agencies (CCDI/NSC)

DIBAO MECHANISM The Rural Minimum Living Standard Guarantee (Rural Dibao) is an important unconditional
cash transfer program to alleviate poverty in rural China. Despite the importance of children’s
nutrition in breaking poverty cycles, little is known about the impact of Rural Dibao on child
nutrition outcomes. Specifically, our results suggest that Rural Dibao improves child
height-to-age z-scores by 1.05 standard deviations and lowers the probability of stunting by 11.9
percentage points. Additional analyses suggest that increased protein intake is the main pathway
through which Rural Dibao participation contributes to better nutrition outcomes. We also find
that the effect of the program is more pronounced among girls, children who are non-left-behind
or live with highly educated mothers, and those from low income families and poor areas. Our
findings suggest that Rural Dibao participation helps improve child nutrition outcomes through
improving diet quality.

The Rural Dibao program, implemented in 2007, is the primary social assistance program in
rural China, aimed at providing monthly cash transfers to poor rural households nationwide. The
eligibility for the program is determined by household per capita income relative to the local
income level, or “Dibao standard,” according to the policy documents of the central
government. However, local officials adopt a community-based targeting approach to determine
eligibility, considering not only annual per capita income but also other economic indicators,
 including property ownership, fixed expenses, and labor conditions (Han and Gao 2019). Upon
approval by the local government, eligible households receive cash transfers to increase their
income to the Dibao standard.

CORRUPTION DEATH Article 383 paragraph 1 (embezzlement) http://www.npc.go

PENALTY IN CHINA (1) An individual who embezzles not less than 100,000 yuan shall be sentenced to fixed-term v.cn/zgrdw/englis
imprisonment of not less than 10 years or life imprisonment and may also be sentenced to hnpc/Law/2007-1
2/13/content_1384
confiscation of property; if the circumstances are especially serious, he shall be sentenced to death
075.htm
and also to confiscation of property.
Article 386 (bribery) https://www.occrp
Article 386 Whoever has committed the crime of accepting bribes shall, on the basis of the .org/en/news/chin
amount of money or property accepted and the seriousness of the circumstances, be punished in a-former-political-
accordance with the provisions of Article 383 of this Law. adviser-sentenced-
Under Chinese law, the sentence is automatically commuted to life imprisonment if he commits to-suspended-deat
h-for-bribery#:~:t
no further crimes during the two-year period, according to the ruling by the Nanning Intermediate
ext=Reported%20
People's Court. by,transferred%20
Embezzlement = a type of financial fraud where someone takes money or assets that were to%20the%20state
entrusted to them and uses them for a different purpose than for what they were intended %20treasury.

BLOCKCHAIN Blockchain is a decentralized digital ledger technology that securely records and verifies any https://www.govpi
EXPLANATION transactions across a network of computers. Unlike many other traditional databases that need to lot.com/blog/bloc
rely on a central authority, blockchain operates on a network where each participant maintains kchain-technology
-in-government-ex
their own copy of the entire ledger.
ploring-potential-a
nd-applications-wi
th-govpilot

COUNTRY THAT HAVE Estonia: Estonia is a pioneer in implementing blockchain technology at the national level. They https://bsvblockch
APPLIED BLOCKCHAIN have integrated blockchain to secure health records, and judicial, legislative, security, and ain.org/6-countrie
s-using-blockchai
 commercial code systems, amongst others. This has significantly improved data integrity, reduced n-right-now/
bureaucracy, and increased the efficiency of public services.

TYPES OF BLOCKCHAIN Permissionless blockchains — also known as trustless or public blockchains — allow anyone to https://www.cnbc.
join and potentially make changes to the blockchain, so long as they are running a particular com/2022/05/16/c
software or a device. hina-blockchain-e
xplainer-what-is-b
In contrast,
sn-.html
permissioned blockchains are usually private and only allow certain participants to be involved
in their use.

CHINA’S STANCE ON In a speech in 2019, the Chinese leader said blockchain was an “important breakthrough in https://www.cnbc.
BLOCKCHAIN independent innovation of core technologies.” As a result of that speech, blockchain was elevated com/2022/05/16/c
to a national priority for China, among other technologies — such as semiconductors — that the hina-blockchain-e
xplainer-what-is-b
country is trying to boost its capabilities in.
sn-.html

ENSURING THE SAFETY OF Once a data is recorded inside a blockchain it is very difficult to change it, blockchain contains of
BLOCKCHAIN 3 elements data : sender, receiver and amount, hash : hash identifies a block and all of its contents,
when a content of a block changes it also changes the hash, previous hash : if a previous block is
tampered it makes the next blocks invalid

TECHNOLOGIES TO Blockchain : The use of blockchain for social protection can be used to monitor and ensure the
SUPPORT SOCIAL transparency of the social protection funding system while reducing opportunities for corruption.
PROTECTION Conventional systems often suffer from limited transparency, making it challenging to monitor
how funds are allocated, how they are spent, and whether they actually reach their intended
allocation, while on blockchain each transaction is registered on a shared ledger that can be
accessed by all members of the network. When governments or NGOs disburse aid (cash, food
vouchers, or services), every transaction is recorded on the blockchain. citizens, auditors, and
watchdogs can see how much was allocated, to whom, and when.
Logistics Drone : China is significantly advancing its use of drones for logistics, focusing on
various applications such as last-mile delivery, regional transport, and emergency services to
address challenges like urban congestion and difficult terrain. Leading companies like Meituan
and the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation are developing and deploying
sophisticated drones, supported by government initiatives and significant investment in the
low-altitude economy. Recent milestones include the first nationwide operating certificate for
low-altitude logistics granted to Meituan and the successful maiden flight of the
Caihong-YH1000 cargo drone. (can be used to transport logistics that are needed to provide
social protection in areas whether it's the more developed areas or less developed areas)

Flying Cars : China's flying cars (or, more accurately, autonomous electric vertical takeoff and
landing (eVTOL) aircraft) are in operation, with companies like EHang and XPeng AeroHT
conducting regular demonstration and commercial test flights for tourism and other services in
cities such as Guangzhou and Shanghai. While commercial large-scale operations are still in the
future, China has granted commercial operating licenses and is developing pilot zones,
positioning itself as a leader in the emerging flying taxi market, with projections for wider
adoption within the next few years. (can be used to help transport workers to help provide social
protection in remote areas)