Explore our assignments. Our assignments provide expert guidance, policy advice, and capacity strengthening to improve social protection systems. Our outputs are the results of our assignments, such as country case studies, technical reports, and policy briefs.
GIZ has commissioned STAAR to produce an Interactive Tool, based on the ‘Guidance Note for Gender-Transformative Social Protection in Crisis Contexts.’
The Interactive Tool examines how social protection systems can address challenges — including low school enrollment, gender-based violence (GBV), and barriers to entering the labour force, that women and girls face along their life course.
July 2022 – October 2023
STAAR supported UN Women to integrate gender, inclusion, and protection components within Lebanon’s National Poverty Targeting Program (NPTP) and other social protection schemes.
The assignment focused on gender equality, addressing sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV), and strengthening protection against sexual exploitation and abuse (PSEA). An embedded adviser provided technical support, capacity-building, field monitoring, reporting, and coordinated advocacy on gender and social inclusion throughout the assignment.
The assignment enhanced coordination among key stakeholders, including UN Women, WFP, and the Ministry of Social Affairs (MoSA). It contributed to mainstreaming gender within Lebanon’s social protection response, though challenges persisted due to political tensions and limited resources. Training efforts underscored the need to strengthen relationships between contracted firms and social workers, while field monitoring ensured better tracking of programme results and outputs.
August 2022 – January 2023 (finished)
Supportin”The Ukraine Cash Working Group requested technical assistance from STAAR to support humanitarian cash and social protection linkages by supporting coordination between cash actors within the Cash Working Group, building relationships and engaging with the government on alignment with social protection systems, and identifying gaps and opportunities for further technical assistance.
Since the escalation of conflict in Ukraine in February 2022, the Ukraine Cash Working Group has scaled up its capacity to coordinate the rollout of multipurpose cash assistance. To support this agenda, the requested support included mapping the humanitarian cash and social protection responses in Ukraine, assessing the alignment between programmes, identifying blockages to further integration, and exploring opportunities to transition to a more social-protection-led response.
The assignment provided actionable recommendations, including convening a government working group on social protection to improve communication and information sharing between the Ministry of Social Policy (MOSP) and humanitarian actors. Medium-term priorities included establishing shared data systems and de-duplication mechanisms. “g Humanitarian Cash and Social Protection Linkages for the Ukraine Cash Working Group
