The International Politics of Social Protection and It's Impacts on Nepal

Abstract

Nepal has long maintained social protection programmes and has been quite sympathetic with the encouragement of social protection in various international agreements adopted over the past 15 years. Most notable has been the recommendation of the International Labor Organisation in 2012 on social protection floors, followed by the inclusion of social protection as an agreed target for eradicating poverty in the United Nations Agenda for Sustainable Development. Since then, increasing international impatience with the inadequate financing of social protection in many countries has led to expanded support by the World Bank and other development institutions, and reform of policy guidance on how the International Monetary Fund (IMF) should engage with its member countries on social spending. As a result, when Nepal undertook a huge sum of loan from IMF in 2021, one agreed condition was to expand the coverage of Nepal’s child grant to all children of 0-5 years of age across the country. Nepal fulfilled all the policy conditions for the loan through its four-year period except for the one on expansion of the child grant. To help understand this outcome, this paper, based on secondary information and discussions with key staff of selected relevant organisations, examines past and contemporary official texts that raised expectations about expanding the child grant and then documented their disappointment. The main message from Nepal’s experience is that there is a long way from the political adoption of shared principles to the realisation of country programmes, and that politics within the government, ultimately drive national policies whatever their international pedigree.