Towards a Feasible Social Security System in Kenya
Timeframe: Jul 2004 - Dec 2005
Funder: Chr. Michelsen Institute
Developing countries are devoting increasing attention to social security as part of their poverty reduction policies. This project investigates planned and existing social security arrangements in Kenya to mitigate the contingencies of its citizens, with emphasis on the masses of poor people, including the ways in which the poor themselves try to tackle unexpected adversity. The basic thesis is that for Kenya's social security system to be feasible in the current circumstances of economic crisis, formal and informal mechanisms will have to be combined.
While recognising the normative foundation of social security in the international human rights regime and taking its point of departure in the vulnerability of poor households the project looks at various definitions of social security. It enumerates formal state-based and market-based systems, as well as informal membership-based systems in civil society and traditional kinship-based systems. The project seeks to substantiate that the feasibility of social security arrangements in the present economic circumstances hinges on the combination of formal and informal sub-systems.
Programme
Human Rights Programme
Jan 1983 - Dec 2010
