FIGURE 5. Expenditure by fund category for Social development and resilience (2019-21) Million US$ $0.2 $0.7 Regular Resources Bilateral/Multilateral funds Government cost sharing
$3.1
Source: PowerBI/ATLAS. Data of 2021 as of 21 July 2021.
Finding 1. Social protection: UNDP has capitalized on strategic partnerships to provide technical support and advice to the Government’s efforts to tackle informal youth employment and strengthen its social protection system. One notable value addition was the use of the recently-established UNDP Acceleration Lab team in Ecuador to pilot innovative methodologies and solutions to reduce labour informality and promote youth enrolment in social protection schemes. However, while these different interventions create the enabling conditions for the country’s social protection systems to become more inclusive, they have not yet ensured effective access to social protection for traditionally excluded groups. This outcome aspires to guarantee priority groups and historically-excluded populations effective access to high-quality social and protection services. UNDP contributions mainly focused on the creation of a more favourable institutional environment to improve the reach of national non-contributory social protection programmes. UNDP has collaborated with the International Labour Organization and UN Women to implement the ‘Expansion of the Social Protection System for Young Men and Women in Informal Situations’ joint project in Quito, Guayaquil, Loja and Machala. This aims to strengthen the integration of youth into the social protection system and grant them access to decent work. Implemented since January 2020, the joint project has developed a contribution-based scheme to incorporate young people into the social security system under the current social protection programme in each of the target municipalities. According to interviews, this model is paving the way for decentralized autonomous governments (GADs) to have a roadmap for the economic inclusion of youth, including migrants. The project also contributed to the compilation of international good practices to allow Ecuador to extend social security coverage to informal workers. Furthermore, with the support of the Central Bank of Ecuador, the project facilitated the development and promotion of a financial inclusion strategy targeting informal workers in the four pilot areas. There are hopes that, once the strategy is tested, it can be scaled up at national level through integration into the next National Development Plan.
Chapter 2. findings
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