The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the vulnerabilities of the lives and livelihoods of millions of informal economy workers across the globe. Without access to social protection that provides the necessary cushioning against household level and covariate shocks, informal workers and their families have limited means to cope with the pandemic's economic, social, and health impacts. This UNDP report, produced in partnership with ILO, shows how some African governments are exploring innovative ways to extend social insurance coverage to workers in the informal economy and the challenges that lie ahead. The report was released at a virtual side event during the UN 59th Session of the Commission for Social Development – CSocD59. It is available for download in English and French. Check out the report  Watch the launch event.

UNDP continued to work closely with partners to advance inclusive and shock-responsive social protection in the region, including with ILO and UNICEF under the UN Regional Issue-Based Coalition on Social Protection. On 30 November, the Coalition organized a high-level Ministerial Forum, which brought together high-level representatives from 20 countries in the region, representatives of employers and workers organizations, civil society, and experts to discuss the future of social protection in the region, with a focus on four critical areas: Coverage, Shock-responsiveness, Financing, and Governance. Dr. Khalida Bouzar, ASG and Director of the UNDP Regional Bureau for Arab States, moderated the session on Financing, with the participation of Ministers and the World Bank. The session underscored expanding the social protection financing base, including through progressive tax and contribution-based mechanisms, rationalizing public spending, and leveraging alternative means of financing. For more details, see the Ministerial Forum Declaration and the commitments made by participants to advance social protection reforms post-COVID-19. Read the Declaration.

The UNDP Afghanistan: Socio-Economic Outlook 2021-2022 examined the likely socio-economic impact of the sudden stop in external financial support. Already the poorest country in Asia, Afghanistan's annual per capita income declined from US$650 in 2012 to US$508 in 2020 and is expected to drop precipitously over the next years. By mid-2022, 90 percent of the population may be affected by poverty, while an estimated US$2 billion would be needed to lift people in extreme poverty up to the poverty line. Moreover, restrictions on women's employment could reduce GDP by an additional 3 to 5 percentage points. The report calls for mobilizing all available local resources, including female aid workers whose deployment is severely restricted in most provinces, alerting that failing to invest in women and girls' education will have serious socio-economic consequences for years to come. It also underscores social protection as key to meeting immediate basic needs and setting the foundation for future economic and social development. Explore the Report.

This study provides an in-depth analysis of the socio-economic impact of COVID-19 across countries in the Eastern Europe and South Caucasus region, with a focus on Micro, Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (MSMEs) while zooming into the worst affected sectors, including Tourism and Hotels, Restaurants and Caterings (HORECA) sectors. In addition, the report analyzes the vulnerability of households caused by the interconnected impact of high levels of informality, low quality of jobs, and high reliance on remittances. The report outlines three transformative pathways for a COVID-19 recovery: 1) Combine job growth with greener economies; 2) Build resilient infrastructure and develop innovative energy policies; 3) Implement social protection mechanisms to shield vulnerable people against future economic shocks and climate-related and demographic shifts. Access the Study.

This paper provides an outstanding portrait of what happened with inequality over the last 30 years in one of the world's most unequal regions. The study covers the observed trends and the main drivers of inequality, including the role performed by earnings and cash transfers in the inequality decrease of the 2000s. It also analyses how wage gaps (between high and lower-skilled, urban and rural, male and female workers) behaved over the period and the comparative capacity of fiscal policies to reduce inequality. The vast differences in education quality, the gaps in house ownership, the deceleration of female labor force participation, and stagnation in conditional gender wage gap are sources of concern for a region that experienced improvements in the 2000s – yet that have been insufficient and have slowed down in the last years.  Check out the paper here.

Faced with multiple development challenges that thwart the untapped potential of natural resources to promote green and inclusive growth in Liberia, UNDP Liberia initiated a review and redesign of its Inclusive Growth portfolio by seeking to apply a systems approach. This involved new conceptualizing, engaging partners, and integrating projects aimed at sustaining and improving production from natural resources with initiatives seeking to increase the growth in (private sector) value addition and inclusion (especially the youth and women in the informal economy). The systems approach spurred a change in mindsets and the way of working, unearthing the need for better integration of the portfolio at three levels: 1) integration of thematic areas, for example, ensuring that initiatives to improve production fosters the participation of youth and women in the informal economy; 2) integration across systems, for example, linking systems that generate natural resource products with systems that add value; 3) integration across the portfolio, for example, linking integrated area development projects with efforts to create an enabling macro-environments. Want to learn more about this initiative? Get in touch with the Africa team.

UNDP has seen increasing demand for support from countries in the Arab region on digital transformation, further amplified due to the impacts of the current COVID-19 pandemic. To respond to these demands, UNDP (under the leadership of the Inclusive Growth Team), in partnership with Estonia’s e-Governance Academy, has developed a Digital Landscape Assessment (DLA) tool to support countries to assess their digital landscape within the framework of the SDGs. The main objective of the tool is to help countries mainstream digital transformation into their development planning frameworks, including sector strategies, and advance implementation efforts. The tool has been applied in the State of Palestine and Jordan and is currently being used in Iraq and Kuwait. In the State of Palestine, the extensive assessment was conducted in consultation with 19 entities, including Ministries, Universities, and the private sector, and is expected to inform its next national development plan and digital roadmap. Read the State of Palestine DLA Report.

Sustainable urban and spatial planning is key to achieving the SDGs. In summer 2021, UNDP Serbia, with support from the Istanbul Regional Hub, engaged in assessing six urban project proposals for the Belgrade (Serbia) Concert Hall from an SDGs perspective. The difficulty was that no guideline or framework existed for such a task. Thus, in a three-week time, the team successfully developed, tested, and applied a new methodology for assessing all six architectural proposals from an SDG lens, illuminating their strong and weak points. The proposed methodology was developed based on the Rapid Integrated Assessment (RIA) tool and complimented by SDG Complexity Analysis. Want to learn more about this project? Reach out to focal points in UNDP Serbia here and the Istanbul Regional Hub here and here. 

Led by UNDP Regional Office for Latin America and the Caribbean with the support of the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID), this project aimed at promoting multidimensional approaches to public policies to foster social cohesion both as a means and as an end to achieve the 2030 Agenda. Based on case studies from Bolivia, Mexico, the Dominican Republic, Chile, and Honduras, the project proposes an innovative Social Cohesion Index as a starting point for measuring social cohesion in Latin America. The index is composed of three dimensions: social inclusion, governance, and belonging. The measure allows comparison between countries in the region in terms of relative achievements towards desirable thresholds in the indicators that make up the dimensions.  Based on the Index, UNDP developed a theory of change and proposed a comprehensive policy strategy, or "Policy Combo," to promote social cohesion across the SDGs. The results of the initiative are presented in three publications, complementary to each other, and developed in consultation with a broad base of national, international, and regional actors. Learn more.