Social Policy
UNICEF Social Policy & Social Protection programme works to reduce child poverty & vulnerability by strengthening inclusive & shock-responsive social protection systems, generating evidence for policy reform, & promoting equitable & sustainable investment
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The Challenge
Years of conflict, economic deterioration and pressure on essential public services, and increasing frequency of climate-related shocks, including floods, droughts and displacement, have increased poverty and vulnerability among children and families in Yemen
An estimated 69 per cent of children in Yemen experience multidimensional poverty, facing at least two overlapping deprivations.
With a stark disparity between children living in rural (81 per cent) and urban (36 per cent) areas. Public expenditure has contracted sharply over the past decade, from about 40 per cent of GDP in 2007 to around 11 per cent in 2020, severely constraining the capacity of public institutions to finance and deliver essential services. Fiscal constraints and declining external financing are placing additional pressure on social services and social protection systems, making equitable and efficient use of limited public resources increasingly critical for children. Poverty and gender norms shape coping strategies in Yemen: girls are withdrawn from school for early marriage, boys enter child labour, and women have limited control over household resources and restricted mobility, constraining access to cash assistance and services. Among the most vulnerable groups, children with disabilities face heightened exclusion and barriers to accessing social services and social protection programmes. This is due to stigma, systems that are not disability-inclusive, as well as data scarcity, which limits the ability to design and implement adequate programming for children with disabilities.
UNICEF supports evidence-based social policies, stronger social protection systems and sustainable public financing to address child poverty and vulnerability and protect essential investments in children.
The Solution
1. Child Poverty, Evidence and Policy
Social Policy generates and promotes the use of evidence on multidimensional child poverty, socioeconomic vulnerabilities, inequalities and emerging risks to inform policy development, reform, planning and implementation across UNICEF programme areas. This includes multidimensional child poverty analysis, child-focused composite indices, subnational poverty profiles, socioeconomic monitoring, and policy analysis and dialogue. Social Policy works across sectors to translate this evidence into policies, programmes and institutional reforms that address the multiple deprivations affecting children. The programme supports the translation of evidence into policy reform, resource allocation decisions and programme design to ensure that the needs of disadvantaged children are systematically addressed.
2. Public Finance for Children and Sustainable Social-Sector Financing
In an increasingly constrained fiscal environment, UNICEF supports governments to maximize the impact of limited resources and protect essential investments in children by strengthening child-responsive planning, budgeting and public financial management and advance public finance reforms that prioritize investments in children. This includes budget and expenditure analysis, costing, fiscal-space and financing analysis, expenditure tracking, domestic resource mobilization and innovative financing. Social Policy provides cross-sectoral public finance support to health, nutrition, and other child-related sectors to strengthen the adequacy, efficiency, equity, transparency, accountability and sustainability of public investments in children.
3. Inclusive and Shock-Responsive Social Protection
UNICEF advances inclusive, adaptive and shock-responsive social protection policies, institutions and systems that better reach vulnerable children and families, including children with disabilities and households affected by economic, humanitarian and climate-related shocks. The programme promotes stronger cross-sectoral linkages between social protection and health, nutrition, education, WASH and other essential services to improve access, address multiple vulnerabilities, strengthen resilience and improve outcomes for children.
The Unconditional Cash Transfer Programme (UCT) implemented by UNICEF, with World Bank funding, served as a primary delivery platform for social assistance, reaching 1.45 million families. UNICEF and partners are preparing a new phase of the programme that will strengthen its child-sensitive design and promote stronger linkages with nutrition outcomes.
UNICEF is strengthening integrated social protection systems through innovative Cash Plus programmes that combine cash assistance with case management, referrals, and behaviour change support to improve outcomes for vulnerable children and women. Building on successful implementation since 2019, UNICEF is advancing nutrition- and education-sensitive approaches across targeted districts in Yemen, reaching vulnerable children and women with tailored support that improves access to essential services, promotes child nutrition, school enrolment and retention, strengthens household resilience, and enhances coordination between social protection and sectoral service systems as a scalable model for national programming. The approach demonstrates how integrated social protection can contribute to improved human capital outcomes while strengthening local service delivery systems.
4. Institutional Strengthening, Policy Reform and Partnerships
Through partnerships, policy dialogue and institutional strengthening, UNICEF supports national and sector institutions to translate evidence and policy priorities into effective, adequately financed and sustainable programmes. Specifically, UNICEF continues to support the Ministry of Social affairs and Labour (MoSAL) and other key social protection institutions such as Social Welfare Fund (SWF), Social Fund for Development (SFD), the Social Protection Consultative Committee (SPCC), and the Handicap Care and Rehabilitation Fund (HCRF) to strengthen institutional capacities, policy frameworks, coordination and accountability and to advance evidence-based policy and institutional reforms for children. It also aims is to advance the social protection agenda and bridge the humanitarian-development-peace nexus through enhancing coordination and unified SP mechanisms and tools such as registries, targeting criteria, and transfer modalities.
Across all areas of work, UNICEF promotes disability-inclusive social protection and public policies to ensure that children with disabilities can access social assistance and essential services on an equal basis.
Through this upstream and cross-sectoral work, UNICEF helps reduce child poverty and vulnerability by ensuring that evidence informs policy, public resources are invested equitably in children, and national institutions are equipped to deliver inclusive, sustainable, shock-responsive and resilient social protection and social services for every child.