G20 2025 Development Group Ministerial

Highlights

For the first time ever, the G20 has agreed to a Ministerial Call to Action on social protection, signed at this year’s G20 meeting of development Ministers on Friday 25th July 2025 in Mpumalanga, South Africa. The Call to Action includes a concrete target to support the scale up of social protection coverage by 2 percentage points every year.  

Globally, with just one in 4 children living in households with some form of social protection, and national funding and aid to the sector remaining limited, this Call to Action is crucial to foster the scale up of household coverage, particularly across Africa. 

As Africa’s population grows, governments will need to ensure sustained and adequate investment in households, particularly those with young children and adolescent girls, to build the human capital required for the future. Social protection supports families to invest in their children, access jobs and support businesses, and protect themselves against climate change and other shocks. Social protection is a fundamental right for every child, and this Call to Action reinforces commitment to uphold that right. 

This G20 Call to Action signals a clear intentionality to the world – that social protection is vital and that more must be done to prioritise it.

As a member of the global inter-agency coordination group on social protection (SPIAC-B), UNICEF stands ready to track implementation of this commitment to scale up and to report back to future G20 meetings.