February 2024 – August 2024
STAAR, in partnership with Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing (WIEGO), supported the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) to better understand the role that social protection can play in supporting informal workers and advancing gender equality, and to identify opportunities for FCDO teams to engage on this agenda across different country contexts.
The assignment involved the design and delivery of two internal learning sessions and the publication of an intranet blog to enhance FCDO’s understanding of informal employment. It explored the extent of social protection coverage for informal workers across different geographies, highlighted the benefits and challenges of extending coverage, and shared good practices—particularly multi-sectoral approaches linking social assistance, social insurance and labour market policies. It also addressed implications for policy priorities such as gender equality, disability inclusion, taxation, jobs and economic development, and health financing.
The assignment involved undertaking initial scoping with selected FCDO posts to identify priority areas for further support. This laid the groundwork for potential follow-on technical assistance assignments to deepen FCDO’s engagement with social protection and informality in both programming and policy development.