Advocating for universal social security: how to win hearts and minds

If Article 22: “Everyone, as a member of society, has the advocates of universality argue for right to social security” universal social security to ‘help the Article 25: “(1) Everyone has the right to a standard of poor’, we should not be surprised when living adequate for the health and well-being of policymakers conclude that ‘targeting the himself and of his family, including food, clothing, p. [...] Targeting the housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of poor to help the poor appears intuitive unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old and most policymakers are unaware of age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances the evidence on the ineffectiveness of beyond his control. [...] For example, analysis to support the incorporation of those at the top of the welfare distribution within a universal social security system could highlight: the high rates of undernutrition that are commonly found across the top 40 per cent of the population (e.g. [...] in Kenya, 57 per cent of the top quintile of the population do not eat iron-rich foods on any given day12); the struggles that families at the top of the welfare distribution have in paying for energy or in providing their children with extra-curricular activities, books and toys; the costs of higher education; or, the high costs of accessing health services. [...] Indeed, the demise in the use of social security over the past 40 years and the gradual rise in the popularity of social protection – as seen in Figure 2-8, which shows the frequency with which both terms have been used in literature over the past century – has probably been the result of the neoliberal push against conceptualising social security as a basic human right.