Locations
Countries
Developing modern and interoperable social registries
The Inclusive Growth and Sustainable Finance Team at the UNDP Regional Hub has been supporting countries in the region in their efforts to build or reform their social registries. Social registries are operational backbones of social programs. They provide a unified window for families to access social benefits and services that can help them cope during difficult times. They are often the first point of contact between the State and many poor individuals and households.
Guatemala is building a new social registry to support a range of social interventions. This effort began as an inter-agency project led by UNDP Guatemala, with technical support from the UNDP Regional Hub. The Regional Hub was also part of the technical board for the project to build the National Registries of Vulnerable Persons in Trinidad and Tobago.
Brazil, Ecuador, and Peru are also working to improve their social registries, enhancing interoperability with other administrative registries, strengthening staff training, and reinforcing legal frameworks. These reforms have required massive efforts from governments, sometimes supported additional funding from the World Bank. UNDP has been contributing to these efforts with financial support from the UNDP Poverty and Inequality Funding Windows mechanism.
UNDP has played a relevant role in strengthening social protection systems in the region, helping governments improve targeting, efficiency, and effectiveness of social programs.
Strengthening the use of multidimensional measures for policy making
Since 2022, Belize has embarked in the process of improving their poverty reduction measures in the country through evidence-based policies. In that year, the country launched its national MPI and, ever since, has been conducting workshops with key stakeholders to advocate for the use of the MPI as a policy tool, and more recently, explored an analysis of microsimulations to build a government monitoring dashboard. Belize’s efforts to promote the use of the MPI have gone hand in hand with UNDP support, which has also supported the process of improving monetary poverty measurement.
Guatemala began their journey with a study on multidimensional poverty and social protection, showcasing the potential of the MPI as a policy tool. Building on this, UNDP worked closely with the new government and the Ministry of Social Development to strengthen national capacities to estimate and apply the MPI. Thanks to this collaboration, the index became a key tool for monitoring Mano a Mano (hand-in-hand), a flagship program to reduce poverty and malnutrition. In parallel, UNDP also supported the country in updating its methodology for measuring monetary poverty.
UNDP continues to support inclusive growth and sustainable social protection systems in the region.