What role for emergency basic income in building and strengthening rights-based universal social protection systems?

Abstract

During the COVID-19 pandemic there were a great many social protection policy responses. There were also calls for emergency basic income (EBI) to be adopted as a mitigation response. However, it seems that only one country adopted an EBI. Nonetheless, EBI is likely to feature in future policy discussion and action, especially as a crisis-mitigation tool. This has implications for the future of rights-based social protection. Consequently, this article aims to examine whether EBI would comply with international social security standards and whether it could contribute to building and strengthening rights-based universal social protection systems.