Integrated Policy
To Leave No One Behind we have to fast track SDG gains while mainstreaming issues related to human rights, gender, youth, the environment, and people living with disabilities. The Fund’s ‘whole-of-society’ approaches, and its agility and responsiveness, has assumed even greater relevance since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Why Integrated policy for SDG acceleration
The investment strategy is based on driving transformation, understood as delivering solutions that accelerate the SDG progress through unlocking systemic policy shifts that improve the situation of the most vulnerable. The focus is on identification and activation of “leverage points” - those policy and/or institutional changes that produce a catalytic “chain-reaction” across sectors and stakeholder groups. The joint programmes aim to spearhead systemic changes that yield social impact across the whole spectrum of the SDGs with the spotlight on social groups left behind.
The impact of joint programmes contributes to progress on multiple SDGs, producing catalytic results at scale within reduced timeframes. Given the interdependence of the SDGs, joint programmes facilitate change by working across sectors and silos through an integrated, multidimensional approach that addresses vulnerabilities across the whole life cycle and among priority target groups.
ADAPTING AND RESPONDING TO COVID-19
COVID-19 increased the salience of social protection for the most vulnerable. For this reason, the Fund to provided an opportunity for re-purposing 20% of programme budgets in 2020 to adapt and respond to the pandemic. The priority was to support the most vulnerable, build back better, and contribute to SDG acceleration by:
- Designing and institutionalizing comprehensive social protection systems that mainstream human rights to address inequalities, vulnerabilities, and systemic poverty;
- Making social protection systems more adaptive and resilient in preparation for future shocks due to pandemics, natural disasters or climate change;
- Facilitating innovation that “break down the silos” and produce coherent, just and sustainable policy outcomes.