Course Code: C125

Course Title: Food security and social protection

College: SOAS CEDEP

Course Director: Colin Poulton

Course Description: This course investigates issues related to the provision of social protection (or in its older formulation, social security) in developing countries. Today, deprivation in developing countries remains persistent and severe while individuals, households, and communities are confronted with new sources of vulnerability resulting from increased exposure to market fluctuations, financial and economics crises, environmental degradation, new epidemics and other complex emergencies. It is thus for good reason that social protection in developing countries is primarily concerned with the prevention of extreme deprivation and the removal of vulnerability. On the other hand, it is also important to consider the contribution social protection can make to a nation's long-term developmental trajectory. Throughout this module, we will consider trade-offs and synergies between two distinct features of social protection: (a) its short-run protective (safety net) dimension; (b) its promotional dimension and influence on long-term development goals of economic development and political empowerment.

The issues to be covered are conceptual and normative, as well as empirical and practical. Because hunger and starvation are the most acute manifestations of deprivation, the issue of food security will provide a prism through which to review and discuss the challenges, dilemmas and opportunities of building a social protection system in developing countries. Because the distribution of welfare in a society is the result of intertwined economic and political processes, we will address both the economics and politics of food security and social protection. Our focus will be on social policies that address poverty and vulnerability in rural areas.

By the end of this course, you should be able to demonstrate knowledge and understanding of:

• Inter-linkages between Food security and Social Protection

• Conceptual and normative issues underpinning social protection in the context of developing countries, including the role of public action in social protection.

• Frontier issues on social protection, including its contribution to longer-term developmental goals (economic development, empowerment and good governance)

• Food Security

• Food security and its relationship to the concepts of vulnerability, hunger, malnutrition and poverty

• Factors influencing livelihoods, and the role of livelihoods, entitlement and vulnerability analysis for interventions in different food security contexts, including how markets operate and affect food security and vulnerable households.

• Food security crisis, their main causes and various interventions put into place to mitigate its social, economic and political impact

• Factors influencing nutritional status and malnutrition and various food security conceptual frameworks used for food security analysis by policy-makers

• Social Protection

• Widely used social protection instruments, including their main features and intended channels to address vulnerabilities, as well as trade-offs concerning the choice between them.

• Options and challenges faced by policy makers in the design and implementation of social protection instruments in practice, including intended and unintended impacts on resource allocation decisions, production incentives and the consumption patterns of beneficiary households.

• Various public and private financing methods and the impacts of government versus donor investment on the sustainability and legitimacy of programmes

• The politics of social protection and the ways in which policy, history, political actors and socio-economic factors can affect the scope, characteristics and support for social protection interventions

• Methodological issues in assessing the impact of social protection programmes and empirical evidence of their impacts by type of instruments, including the reasons for failure and success and lessons for future programme

• The rights-based approach social protection and its relationships with governance issues in developing countries

Assessment: Exam 100%

Course Credit: All SOAS CeDEP short course students receive a certificate of completion. Students of SOAS CeDEP Short Courses who may wish to transfer credit to Certificate, Diploma or Masters-level programmes are advised to select short courses which also act as Core Modules on CeDEP's various programmes.

Course Study Hours/Duration: 240 hrs over 35 weeks

Schedule of Availability: Feb - Oct (Enrolment deadline prior to Feb start - 30th November)

Delivery Mechanisms: Print; CD-Rom; Online Discussion

Cost: £960

How to apply: To enquire about applying for this course, or for any other information, please contact the Course Administrator using the online Enquiry Form below