Ghana National Social Protection Policy.

The National Social Protection Policy is a national policy with a cross-sectoral approach. The Policy defines social protection for Ghana as “a range of actions carried out by the state and other parties in response to vulnerability and poverty, which seek to guarantee relief for those sections of the population who for any reason are not able to provide for themselves”. To this end, the purpose of this Policy is to deliver a well-coordinated, inter-sectoral social protection system enabling people to live in dignity through income support, livelihoods empowerment and improved access to systems of basic services. Therefore, the objectives of this Policy are (i) reduce by more than half the proportion of men, women and children living in all forms of poverty; (ii) achieve full and productive employment for all, including young people and people with disabilities; and (iii) substantially increase access to formal social security for Ghanaians in working age and older persons.
In order to reduce extreme poverty, effective and efficient social assistance will be provided with a special emphasis on children, pregnant women, disabled, and elderly, through the implementation of key programmes such as Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty Programme; the National Health Insurance; Labour-Intensive Public Works Programme as a key social employment strategy; Basic Schools Capitation Grant to promote access to education, social assistance and employment; and the School Feeding Programme to achieve educational participation, nutritional, employment creation and social cohesion purposes. The Government shall identify social protection interventions that respond to the needs and priorities of the population, particularly the extremely poor. The collaboration between public institutions, the private sector and civil society organizations will be strengthened at the national, regional and district levels to create social employment opportunities. Skills development, income generation and job creation programmes and opportunities will be provided to persons living in situations of extreme poverty, vulnerability and exclusion. Household and community capacities will be strengthened to improve the access to services, enhance their future prospects, and realize basic human rights. Social welfare and facilitation endeavours will be made to provide access to physical, social, economic, political and other services. Access to formal social security and social insurance will be improved to address the needs of poor and vulnerable groups. Gender equality and women’s empowerment will be integrated into the social protection policy to improve women’s empowerment and livelihoods, women’s rights and access to justice, women’s leadership and participation, and to promote gender equality in trade and industry.
Emergency assistance will be provided to those in need, with regard to disaster preparedness, climate resilience and anticipatory interventions. The linkages between disaster preparedness, risk management and social assistance will be strengthened to integrate social protection into disaster risk reduction and management.
The implementation process consists of short, medium and long-term targets in the First Phase of 15 years. The Ministries, Departments and Agencies shall undertake policy interpretation, programme identification, technical coordination, research, and monitoring and evaluation roles within their sectors. Inter-Ministerial Coordinating Committee on Decentralization provides a mechanism for policy coordination in the context of the local governance system to strengthen inter-sectoral cooperation at the national level. The sub-national organizations, the Regional Coordinating Councils and local authorities shall have the responsibility for implementing social protection in response to their particular geographical context and collaborate with private and civil society entities in the implementation process. An overarching Monitoring & Evaluation Framework will be designed to track inter-sectoral, inter-programme performance in social protection according to the objectives, strategies and interventions of the policy in a time-efficient manner.