The corporate WFP Social Protection Strategy 2020-2030 frames WFP’s social protection work in the context of second-generation country strategic plans (CSP). Within the strategy, WFP’s role as a solutions analyst is determined. WFP supports governments around the world to understand their policy challenges and support the articulation and implementation of suitable policy solutions that underpin the direction of programmatic and administrative efforts in social protection.
The Strategic Plan (2017-2021) marked a major shift for WFP by aligning its strategic goals to SDG2 and 17, leaving the setting of specific strategic results to country offices with the view to ensure strong alignment with national priorities as part of the country strategic planning. This large step forward for WFP – shifting from being a doer to increasingly taking on an enabling role – requires a sophisticated understanding of national processes for developing and implementing public policy, including social and fiscal deliberations. Moreover, the shift represents a new potential business model for WFP, including increased attention to inter-agency collaboration mechanisms (as exemplified by the projects under the Joint Fund for the 2030 Agenda) and new potential resource channels (strengthening contributions from host governments to cover the cost for technical assistant).
Likewise, the corporate Strategic Plan 2022-2026 is envisaged to further assert WFP’s changing lives agenda, and this, the organization’s role in development. Within this strategy, WFP’s contribution to social protection systems will be emphasized as a way to deliver development outcomes at scale.
In recognition of the growing demand from governments to WFP country offices within the region for highly specialized support in social protection, especially in the context of the medium-long term response to a prolonged, multidimensional crisis in the region (economic, climate, migration factors, combined with structural socio-economic inequalities), the provision of this policy and technical expertise has been ensured since 2021 through the creation of a Regional Strategic Policy Advisor – Social Protection position. The need for this specialized skillset is still very much required moving forward.