Summary

In crisis conditions, social security benefits, public health and nutrition programmes, and social services act as social, health and economic stabilizers thereby curtailing the potential social and economic depth of the recession, through avoiding poverty, ensuring continuity in services, and stabilizing aggregate demand.

The international community should not just repair the problems identified by the crisis in global financial, monetary and economic systems, but should be advocating and supporting the development of a social protection floor to protect people during the crisis, and thereafter.

A social protection floor could consist of two main elements that help too realize respective human rights:

* Essential services : ensuring the availability, continuity, and access to public services (such as water and sanitation, health, education, and family-focused social work support); and

* Social transfers : a basic set of essential social transfers, in cash and in kind, paid to the poor and vulnerable to enhance food security and nutrition, provide a minimum income security and access to essential services, including education and health care.