Realizing Rights through Social Guarantees: An Analysis of New Approaches to Social Policy in Latin America and South Africa

This study considers social guarantees as tools for social policy design and service delivery that can advance the protection and fulfilment of social and economic rights. It suggests ways to develop and explore a range of policy options that improve the delivery of social services from a rights perspective, while furthering social inclusion and democratic governance. The application of a social guarantee framework was studied by researchers in collaboration with the World Bank and the Chilean Foundation for Overcoming Poverty (FUNASUPO).

Social guarantees are sets of legal or administrative mechanisms that determine specific entitlements and obligations, related to certain rights, and ensure the fulfilment of those obligations on the part of the state. Social guarantees have five key characteristics:

1. they have a legal expression that results in an explicit state responsibility;
   
2.  they are constructed in reference to a specific rights-holder;
   
3.  they involve mechanisms of access and redress;
   
4.  the mechanisms that they envision are defined in a precise manner;
   
5.  they are flexible and revisable. As a result, they facilitate reducing opportunity gaps across social groups.

This paper examines the experiences in four Latin American countries: Peru, Uruguay, Guatemala, and Chile, in the application of a human rights approach to social policy. A South Africa case study was added in response to an expressed interest on the part of Latin American and South African policymakers to engage in south-south exchange and learning. This framework is used to evaluate the experience in health provision in all the case study countries. In various countries, the case studies also examine elements of education (Uruguay, Peru, and Guatemala) social protection (Uruguay), food policy (Peru), and housing (South Africa). A rights-based approach to social policy comprises the following features:

• The definition and widespread communication of rights, entitlements, and standards, which enable citizens to hold public policymakers and providers to account for the delivery of social policy;
  
• The availability of mechanisms of redress which citizens can utilise if they are unable to enjoy specified entitlements or social minimums; and
  
• A commitment to the equitable delivery of the specified rights, entitlements, and standards to all on a universal basis.

A social guarantees approach means that there is an emphasis on redress, i.e. the availability of administrative, judicial or quasi-judicial channels through which citizens can claim agreed-upon benefits, particularly through 5 sub-guarantees:

• Sub-guarantee of access: rights-holders are able to access the set of defined services.
  
• Sub-guarantee of quality: social services are delivered according to established quality standards
  
• Sub-guarantee of financial protection: individuals, who cannot afford the costs of receiving the service, would still be able to access it through financial commitments from either public or private sources.
  
• Sub-guarantee of participation and continuous revision: the guarantees and sub-guarantees are continually updated according to the availability of resources, changing risks, political and social consensus, and the advancement of science and technology. This requires defining the rights and duties linked to this participation, and identifying the stage/s of political or programming cycle in which civic participation shall take place.
  
• Sub-guarantee of redress: redress ensures that individuals or groups can claim access to the guaranteed services, as well as claim the fulfilment of each sub-guarantee.
  

The paper concludes that “a social guarantees approach offers a number of promising avenues to strengthen the delivery of social policy. In particular:

1. The sub-guarantees framework outlined above can serve as an organizing scheme for monitoring and reforming social programs. By focusing attention on specific dimensions of service delivery, it can help to identify blockages to the realization of economic and social rights, and suggest strategic measures to correct them.
   
2. It makes it possible to monitor progress toward the realization of economic and social rights, independent of input or outcome dimensions. The inputs and targeted outputs of social policy cannot be determined fairly on a cross-country basis due to the varying fiscal and economic capabilities of different countries. The material reviewed here suggests that sub-guarantees can provide a framework for monitoring the strength of the social, legal, and policy arrangements underpinning the realization of economic and social rights within individual countries. A social guarantees monitoring framework will simultaneously guide policy toward a stronger social contract and framework for citizenship, and provide a means of measuring the degree to which a rights perspective is considered in social policy.
   
3. The social guarantees approach makes space for the process of social dialogue needed to reach an agreement on the concrete benefits to be associated with the fulfilment of social and economic rights. The participation of the [economically] poor and voiceless in this process is critical, and its promotion is an area where more experience and effort is needed.
   
4. It increases transparency and accountability. Given their precise nature, social guarantees contribute to reducing administrative “discretionality”, and patrimonialism. They contain clear definitions of rights and right holders, institutional arrangements, operational mechanisms, and budget allocation.
   
5. It facilitates the adaptability of benefits to a country’s social, economic and political conditions. Social guarantees can be modified or updated without harming the values they protect, because they take into consideration aspects such as culture, availability of resources, public consensus, etc. Therefore social guarantees are flexible, adaptable, and make it possible to avoid falling back on standardized solutions.”