Ipea participates in a conference in Egypt on the reform of care systems

Photograph of the speakers present on the presentation podium with a screen in the background highlighting the speaker

The event was organized by the Ministry of Social Solidarity of Egypt, the League of Arab States, and UNICEF

The deputy director of International Studies at the Institute for Applied Economic Research (Ipea), Fábio Véras Soares, attended the 1st Regional Conference on the Reform of Care Systems, organized by the Ministry of Social Solidarity of Egypt, the League of Arab States and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF). The event, held in Cairo on February 26th and 27th, presented different models and reforms of social care, social assistance, and social protection systems in the Arab countries. Discussions focused topics such as the deinstitutionalization of children, the training of social workers and other professionals in the sector, and the intersectoral integration of the care and social protection systems.

During the conference, Mr. Soares presented a study by researchers Karen Pereira and Fernando Araújo on the best practices for integrating social protection and child protection in Egypt, Iraq, Morocco, Tunisia, and Brazil. In the sessions, mediated by the Egyptian minister of Social Solidarity, H.E. Dr. Nevine El-Kabbaj, cases from Tunisia and Jordan were presented by Mr. Brahim Driss, representative of the Ministry of Social Affairs of Tunisia, and Manuel Rodriguez, Chief of Social Policy and Social Protection at UNICEF Jordan, respectively.

Ipea researchers have a long history of collaboration in evaluating programmes and supporting evidence-based debate around social protection system reforms in the Middle East and North Africa region, including, in addition to Egypt, countries such as Algeria, Bahrain, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Oman, Sudan, Tunisia, and Yemen.

During his mission, Mr. Soares strengthened ties with government actors and the United Nations system, especially UNICEF. He stated that these partnerships will be bolstered by Ipea’s current administration through the International Policy Centre for Inclusive Development (IPCid), a new unit of the Department of International Studies that facilitates knowledge exchange and advisory services to international partners across all of Ipea’s areas of expertise”, he said.

The technical knowledge amassed by Ipea researchers in monitoring, evaluating and proposing reforms of social protection systems in Brazil and other countries is of great interest to the governments of Arab countries. During the conference, Egypt’s Minister of Social Solidarity commented that Brazil’s Bolsa Família programme was the greatest source of inspiration for the Takaful programme, the Egyptian government’s initiative for conditional cash transfers for children.

Rafael Osorio, Deputy Director of the Department of Social Studies at Ipea, supported the design of monitoring instruments for Takaful’s conditionalities across the health and education sectors between 2017 and 2019, visiting Egypt four times during these endeavours.

Link to the study presented in the conference

More about the conference here:

 

2023-03-08 10:19 by IPC-ID

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