Cash transfers are a widely used form of social protection, providing effective and efficient ways to reduce poverty and support well-being. Evidence suggests that cash transfers can reduce intimate partner violence (IPV) across a wide range of programs and contexts, yet there is little guidance for design or implementation components in cash transfer programs that would maximize these reductions. Based on research into pathways of impact between cash transfers and IPV, this issue brief offers recommendations on cash transfer programming to increase gender-sensitivity and responsiveness to IPV prevention.

Global crises are becoming the new normal. From climate change to the contemporary food price crisis, vulnerable populations – and especially rural people – are facing increasingly difficult odds of flourishing. Such challenges are even more pronounced where there is conflict, whose multidimensional nature demands to direct more attention to its drivers and impacts. Over the past decades, social protection has contributed to development outcomes, such as those related to poverty reduction, food and nutrition security, and gender equality. Besides, social protection systems have proven to be effective also in addressing covariate shocks, as exemplified by the responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. There has instead been limited operational research regarding social protection’s contributions to peace. In order to start addressing this gap, this paper discusses how social protection can sustain peace efforts by understanding peace not as an outcome but, rather, as an ongoing process. The paper argues that the contributions that social protection can make to peace can be divided between two overlapping scenarios: “working in conflict” and “working on conflict”. While the former refers to efforts aimed at offsetting the impacts of conflict, the latter relates to interventions that intend to deliberately address its underlying drivers. The working paper also recognizes that social protection interventions in a conflict-affected context can potentially be harmful and fuel social tensions in the absence of adequate consideration of local power dynamics. It therefore calls for social protection strategies and programmes to be conflict-sensitive – beyond the “do no harm” – to make explicit contributions to peace.

Gender considerations in the design and delivery of social protection programs are critical to meet overall objectives of reducing poverty and vulnerability. We provide an overview of the policy discourse and research on social protection and gender in low- and middle-income countries, focusing on social assistance, social care, and social insurance. Taking a ‘review of reviews’ approach, we aggregate findings from rigorous evaluations on women's health, economic, empowerment, and violence impacts. We show there is robust evidence that social assistance has beneficial effects across all four domains. In addition, there is emerging evidence that social care has positive impacts on women’s economic outcomes, but scarce evidence of its impacts on other domains. Aggregated evidence on the impacts of social insurance are lacking. Key design elements facilitating positive impacts for women relate to gender targeting; quality complementary programming; replacing conditionalities with soft nudges; ensuring the value, frequency, and duration of benefits are sufficient; and gender-sensitive operational components. We close with a discussion of evidence gaps and priorities for future research.

Over the last five years, there has been increasing interest from global stakeholders in the relationship between cash transfers and gender-based violence, and in particular, intimate partner violence (IPV). Interest has grown both within the development and humanitarian spaces, although empirical research is mainly concentrated in the former. A mixed-method review paper published in 2018 found that, across 22 quantitative or qualitative studies in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), the majority (73%) showed that cash decreased IPV; however, two studies showed mixed effects, and several others showed heterogenous impacts (Buller et al. 2018). A more recent meta-analysis of 14 experimental and quasiexperimental cash transfer studies found average decreases in physical/sexual IPV (4 percentage points (pp)), emotional IPV (2 pp) and controlling behaviors (4 pp) (Baranov et al. 2021). A feature of this literature is the high representation of evaluations from Latin America, primarily government conditional cash transfer programs. In addition, programming was generally focused on poverty-related objectives, and none of the programming was explicitly designed to affect IPV or violence outcomes more broadly.

The State of Social Safety Nets 2018 Report examines global trends in the social safety net/social assistance coverage, spending, and program performance based on the World Bank Atlas of Social Protection Indicators of Resilience and Equity (ASPIRE) updated database. The report documents the main social safety net programs that exist globally and their use to alleviate poverty and to build shared prosperity. The 2018 report expands on the 2015 edition, both in administrative and household survey data coverage. A distinct mark of this report is that, for the first time, it tells the story of what happens with SSN/SA programs spending and coverage over time, when the data allow us to do so. This 2018 edition also features two special themes †“ Social Assistance and Ageing, focusing on the role of old-age social pensions, and Adaptive Social Protection, focusing on what makes SSN systems/programs adaptive to various shocks.

Today, around the world, there are 5 million young men and women living with HIV. Opportunity in Crisis: Preventing HIV from early adolescence to young adulthood examines the state of the HIV epidemic among young people, highlighting the challenges they face and presenting solutions informed by evidence of what works with different age groups and in different epidemic settings. The report outlines key steps towards building a continuum of HIV prevention that can help keep children HIV-free as they develop into young adults.