Introduction
Social protection is a comprehensive concept linked to human social security, extending beyond the fulfillment of basic physiological needs to the realization of a sense of security, dignity, and belonging. This concept is rooted in the economic and social rights enshrined in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It constitutes one of the foundations of the concept of inclusive development, in which every individual has the right to participate in and equitably benefit from its benefits. From this perspective, social protection is not a favor granted by ruling regimes, but rather a right of individuals and a duty of the state; no country can achieve economic or political stability without the psychological and social stability of its people.
Since its inception in the late 1950s with Social Insurance Law No. 92 of 1959, Syria’s social protection system has undergone a gradual evolution that failed to overcome a deep structural flaw that predated the war by decades: This system was based on an implicit social contract centered on subsidizing basic goods and providing public services on a large scale, but it lacked a clear conception of social protection as a track independent of general social policies, as well as an integrated vision linking its various components to one another and to economic policies. This design flaw, more than the scarcity of resources itself, led to a system that addressed the symptoms of poverty with palliative measures of limited impact, rather than being an integral part of a development vision aimed at tackling its root causes.
With the outbreak of the war in 2011, this already faltering system suffered a double blow: the need for it escalated to an unprecedented degree at a time when the state’s capacity to provide it had declined. The multidimensional poverty rate in Syria stood at 5.5% in 2010, while the Syrian Center for Policy Research reported that the extreme poverty rate (based on a cash poverty line) exceeded 50% in 2023. ) More significant than the magnitude of this decline is the fact that the war did not merely cause a contraction in social protection resources; it brought about a qualitative transformation in the very structure of social protection itself: The fragmentation of authority and the proliferation of zones of control dismantled the concept of a unified national system, replacing it with parallel and competing systems, access to which is determined by geopolitics, loyalty, and local affiliations, rather than by the principle of citizenship and equal social rights.
Today, as the Syrian government and new leadership move toward a free-market economy, accompanied by comprehensive price liberalization and the complete removal of subsidies, Syria is transitioning from a context of war to a new phase that is no less complex, in which the need for social protection is increasing at the very time that the state’s traditional tools for providing it are shrinking. From this perspective, this paper examines the evolution of social protection in Syria through three stages: its reality and structural gaps before the war; its transformations and fragmentation during the years of conflict; and the requirements for its reconstruction in the current transitional phase. It seeks to answer the fundamental question: How can a comprehensive social protection system be built in Syria, one based on a balanced distribution of roles among the state, civil society, the private sector, and international partners, that simultaneously addresses the complexities of the transitional phase and the diverse needs of the affected population?
Social Protection in Syria Before the War
Origins and Evolution of the State’s Role
The history of social protection in Syria has taken various forms. Social insurance was first introduced in the Syrian Arab Republic in 1959 under Law No. 92, issued on 6 April of that year, which established the Social Insurance Institution as an independent public entity as part of the wave of socialist reforms. Law No. 92 of 1959, as amended, continues to provide the main framework for the national social insurance program covering the public, private, and mixed sectors. This program includes old-age pensions, disability benefits, and survivor benefits. It is supplemented by a fragmented system consisting of smaller, supplementary programs provided by companies to members of certain occupational groups.
Since the mid-1980s, Syria has moved toward adopting a unified administration of the social insurance system through the gradual phasing out of separate insurance programs for public sector employees, military personnel, members of the internal security forces, and customs officials. The General Social Insurance Institution has become the main social insurance fund in Syria, covering a growing number of occupational groups from the public, private, and mixed sectors. The Ministry of Social Affairs and Labor oversees the General Social Insurance Institution, which operates under a tripartite structure comprising employers, labor unions, and the government, and is headquartered in Damascus.
The National Social Insurance Program was funded by contributions from employed participants in the labor market and contributions from their employers, with different conditions applying depending on the sector. In the public sector insurance program, the responsibility for contributions is divided equally between the insured person and the employer, whereas in the private and mixed sectors, the employer bears the lion’s share of the cost. Consequently, this program takes the form of a system based entirely on contributions paid on a pay-as-you-go basis, which in turn provides specific benefits. Since 2001, the insurance fund has been authorized to invest 50 percent of its surplus funds.
In addition to the primary social insurance program, certain professional groups receive social insurance through professional associations. The role played by these associations varies by profession; for example, most doctors and engineers are not registered with the General Organization for Social Insurance and therefore rely on their professional association (union) for social insurance coverage. Contributions to social insurance programs administered by professional associations are paid only by the insured individuals themselves, not by their employers. In addition, some employers in the public sector offer company-specific social insurance programs to their employees. However, these programs are not widely used due to a lack of information about social protection and how it works.
Throughout its successive five-year plans, Syria adopted an approach aimed at universalizing social services by investing in the horizontal expansion of their various components. Development plans from the first through the ninth adopted social policies specific to the areas of education, health, and living conditions. This focus led to a notable improvement in the quantitative indicators for these sectors; however, there was a noticeable lack of a clear definition of the concept, framework, and model of social policies, including the absence of clear, measurable, and time-bound social objectives in these plans. Furthermore, these plans neglected issues of poverty and social protection. Social policies were addressed in isolation, without an integrated approach within a comprehensive framework that linked them to one another on the one hand and to economic policies on the other; they focused on infrastructure components while neglecting issues of development balance (both sectoral and geographic).
Weak collaboration between the state and civil society in policymaking and implementation has contributed to the weakening of the implicit social contract and the institutional arrangements under which the state provided a minimum level of essential services and goods to broad segments of society. Since the 1980s, mechanisms of accountability have largely been absent, while the role of civil society has declined. At the same time, the role of the state has shifted toward policies of trade liberalization with a reduced productive role, a shift that has exacerbated inequality and injustice. More importantly, non-material resources, such as prestige, dignity, and influence, have not been subject to fair redistribution policies.
The year 2005 marked a major turning point in the development of social policies in Syria. The Tenth Five-Year Plan for Economic and Social Development (2006–2010) translated the Syrian state’s adoption of a “social market economy” approach into policy. In terms of social policies, the plan was characterized by a number of distinctive features that set it apart from its predecessors. It combined a comprehensive forward-looking vision for the Syrian economy and society with specific sectoral strategies, and sought to reconcile the economic and social dimensions of development by focusing on human development, institutional reform, and the adoption of pro-poor economic policies. Its objectives and indicators were also formulated with reference to the Millennium Development Goals. For the first time, the plan included direct policies addressing poverty and social protection, alongside targeted policies for social development at sectoral levels. It was also distinguished by the adoption of clear, measurable, and time-bound objectives, as well as by the distribution of development roles among the public sector, the private sector, and civil society organizations.
In terms of priorities, the plan’s social component focused on advancing the social and service sectors through a broad package of policies. These included reforming the education system and strengthening its links to the labor market; improving the labor environment and related legislation to encourage the transition from the informal to the formal sector; and developing the health system while expanding the scope of health insurance and coverage. It also included the formulation of policies for urban and rural development, and population and family planning. It further sought to expand the social security system to cover low-income and marginalized groups, and to establish social safety nets, welfare programs, and direct cash assistance for poor households. In addition, the plan reviewed existing subsidy and assistance systems with the aim of promoting social equity and improving the efficient allocation of resources. It also targeted poor regions through measures to improve their economic, social, and service conditions. Finally, the plan introduced specific strategies to improve the status of women, youth, and children, as well as programs to promote the inclusion of people with disabilities and guarantee their rights.
Despite the integrated approach to social policy adopted by the Tenth Five-Year Plan within a broader development vision, the plan failed to achieve most of its objectives. This can be attributed to a number of reasons. Foremost among these was institutional dysfunction: key institutional reform programs were not implemented, while weak performance and coordination, limited accountability, and the absence of participatory processes persisted. This undermined the opportunity to establish a new social contract and allowed influential forces to obstruct social transformation, reducing the plan in practice to a conventional economic reform program. Furthermore, the preparatory discussions surrounding the plan did not evolve into a broad societal dialogue capable of laying the foundation for a new social contract based on inclusive development and the principles of social justice and citizenship. Many reforms were implemented to benefit influential groups at the expense of marginalized groups. Liberalizing economic reforms accelerated, while social and institutional reforms intended to benefit poor and marginalized groups were delayed or stalled. Economic growth was not accompanied by sufficient job creation. Instead, labor force participation declined for several reasons, including the decline of the agricultural sector, inadequate working conditions that encouraged early retirement and reduced women’s economic participation, and the rising enrollment rates in secondary and higher education. Despite horizontal expansion in the health and education sectors, there was no corresponding qualitative improvement in health and educational outcomes, largely due to weak institutional performance. This was accompanied by a gradual retreat from universal subsidies in favor of targeted support. Targeting, however, was not implemented until after the end of the plan period and was introduced in a fragmented manner. Pro-poor policies and redistributive measures more broadly were also implemented ineffectively, as illustrated by a tax reform that was not pro-poor and relied heavily on indirect taxation.
Social protection provided by the state had traditionally relied primarily on an implicit social contract based on subsidies for key consumer goods such as bread, fuel, and electricity. In the context of relatively low-income economies, these served as a safety net for poor and marginalized groups. The state also supported agricultural producers of strategic commodities such as cotton and wheat, provided public services in health and education, maintained public-sector employment, and ensured relatively adequate water and sanitation infrastructure. Beginning in the 1980s, however, the state gradually began a withdrawal from providing subsidies and public services. This process was accelerated in the first decade of the 2000s with the rapid implementation of liberalizing economic reforms, which largely lacked a broader development vision and gave limited consideration to social justice.
The state nevertheless continued to provide social security and insurance, including pensions for public sector employees and a part of the formal private sector. Such protection, however, largely excluded Syria’s extensive informal sector. After 2006, the government launched modest, targeted programs to provide cash assistance to the poor or to specific geographic areas. These programs remained inefficient and had limited impact, such as the program targeting Syria’s most deprived eastern region. In contrast, Syrian society increasingly relied on informal social protection linked to civil society. These included loans and rotating savings associations organized through workplaces or neighborhoods, in addition to charity. Kinship-based protection also played an important role in supporting poor and marginalized groups, including the significant role of remittances sent by expatriates to their families.
Components of Social Protection Prevalent Before the War
Social protection in Syria took fragmented forms, deviating from its general framework and integrated components. Most of these components are considered legacies of the socialist economic system, under which the Syrian state functioned as a welfare state. The more recently established social market economy, however, did not succeed in developing adequate protection mechanisms for the growing segments of the population living in poverty, leaving them vulnerable to economic shocks and natural and humanitarian crises. Social security in Syria can be divided into three main components:
Social Safety Nets:
Social assistance in Syria, which can be classified under the framework of social safety nets, includes the following components:
- Income-generating programs for the poor (small and microenterprises): Although Syria lacked a public works component, which is considered an essential part of social security systems, microfinance and small-scale financing expanded significantly during the ten years preceding the war. This expansion was driven by the introduction of specific legislation regulating the sector, the wider geographical spread of financial service providers, and growth in the number of beneficiaries. However, the range of services remained limited. Government programs focused primarily on subsidized lending, rehabilitation, capacity-building, and training programs, without expanding into other services such as insurance and savings. Furthermore, the sector continued to rely on traditional collateral that most poor households did not possess and failed to develop alternative guarantee mechanisms.
- Direct Cash and In-Kind Transfers Targeting Poor Households: Cash transfers were introduced relatively late in Syria. They were not formally introduced until 2011, under Legislative Decree No. 9 establishing the National Social Assistance Fund. This came approximately five years after the launch of the Tenth Five-Year Development Plan (2006–2010), which was supposed to establish mechanisms similar to a social safety net from the outset to mitigate the impact of the economic reforms included in the plan on population groups expected to be adversely affected by subsidy reform, labor market reform policies, and liberal economic policies aimed at creating the conditions for a free-market economy. Although the theoretical implementation of the fund’s components began in 2008, direct support activities targeting poor households did not begin until 2011 and lasted for only one year. During that period, a number of shortcomings in the Fund’s operations became apparent, including weaknesses in the tools and mechanisms adopted to identify eligible poor households, as well as questions regarding the government’s commitment and capacity to sustain the Fund’s components. Consequently, the cash assistance component for poor households was suspended in 2012, despite the growing need for such assistance as broad segments of the population were affected by the crisis in Syria.
Syria had introduced targeted food assistance for the poor at an earlier stage by providing free food rations to segments of the population living in border areas affected by Israel’s occupation of part of Syrian territory. The objective was to keep residents in their areas and reduce their displacement to other regions. Nevertheless, food assistance did not emerge as a formal component of social protection until the onset of the drought crisis, which affected large areas of Syria and had a particularly severe impact on the eastern governorates and the Syrian Badia. In response, the Syrian government, in cooperation with the World Food Programme, intervened to mitigate the crisis’s impact on poor households by providing food baskets to assist residents and help them remain in their areas, thereby reducing displacement.
- Social Insurance: Social insurance in Syria takes the form of a semi-cooperative system designed to mitigate certain risks faced by workers and to provide a source of income in old age. It is characterized by several features:
- Mandatory Coverage: Coverage under the social insurance system does not depend on the consent or choice of the worker or employer; rather, it is mandatory by law.
- Direct State Oversight: The General Organization for Social Insurance, which operates under the Ministry of Labor, is responsible for administration and oversight. This differs from the tripartite governance model generally envisaged for social insurance funds, under which workers’ unions, employers, and the state are all represented.
- Joint contributions by workers and employers: Each bears a portion of the premiums for each type of insurance.
- Coverage of specific risks: Social insurance coverage in Syria covers work-related injuries, old age, disability, and death.
- Social insurance does not cover important components such as unemployment insurance, unemployment benefits, or health insurance.
- Social insurance coverage remains weak or absent for workers in the informal, unregulated private sector.
Health Insurance: Health insurance in Syria was relatively new. It had a limited start in 2006 and was launched as a formal project in mid-2010 , four years after work on the initiative had begun. In 2008, only 0.1% of the population was covered by private health insurance. As for social health insurance, which was limited to public sector employees and established under Legislative Decree No. 65 of 2009, it covered only around 700,000 Syrian citizens by 2014. This was due to several factors, most notably low awareness of insurance, low incomes among Syrian citizens, and the failure or lack of marketing efforts by private insurance companies to promote this type of coverage. Legislative Decree No. 65 of 2009, which amended Article 158 of the Basic Law for State Employees No. 50 of 2004, marked an important milestone toward expanding insurance coverage. It enabled public entities to enter into health insurance contracts for their employees and their family members, in accordance with their regulations, with the Syrian General Insurance Corporation. At the time, 13 insurance companies were operating in the Syrian market: one state-owned company and 12 private companies, including two takaful (solidarity) insurance companies.
This analysis of the components of Syria’s social safety nets, and the gaps in coverage, coordination, and sustainability that characterized them, reveals a number of structural features that help explain their limited impact. The absence of essential components such as health insurance and public works, coupled with the multiplicity of institutions responsible for their implementation and oversight and the lack of adequate coordination among them, resulted in a fragmented system whose different components were rarely treated as part of an integrated framework. This, in turn, weakened their actual impact on the targeted groups. In addition, these programs lacked clear criteria and stages for entering and exiting assistance schemes—that is, mechanisms for phased targeting—which created a risk that the most vulnerable groups would remain outside the scope of coverage. Furthermore, their high fiscal cost, particularly the burden of commodity subsidies on the public budget, put their sustainability at risk, which explains the growing trend in recent years toward subsidy rationalization measures. These systems also lacked clear and transparent targeting criteria. There is widespread skepticism, backed by some evidence, regarding their effectiveness in actually reaching the poor, as demonstrated by an evaluation of the National Social Assistance Fund’s work. Finally, viewing these programs as government handouts that are suspended and reinstated at the whim of political decisions, rather than as rights guaranteed by law and the constitution, left them vulnerable to policy fluctuations rather than providing a stable and reliable safety net for vulnerable groups.
Social Services Provided to the Poor:
The state previously provided various social services within an official discourse that described them as rights guaranteed to citizens by the Constitution. In principle, no distinction was made between rich and poor in terms of access to these services. These included services provided free of charge, such as healthcare, education, and sanitation, as well as services provided at nominal or subsidized rates, such as drinking water, household electricity, telecommunications, and certain basic food commodities. However, the comprehensiveness of this discourse does not necessarily mean that the state adopted a fully rights-based approach, or that the system it provided was equitable or effective in reaching those most in need. General and untargeted subsidies benefited the well-off as much as, or even more than, poor households, given the absence of clear targeting mechanisms. This limits the extent to which the system can be considered a successful model of social protection despite its broad formal coverage.
In this context, the Syrian state fully subsidized certain food staples through its public budget regardless of the quantities consumed, most notably bread. It also subsidized part of households’ consumption of sugar and rice, with each family member allocated a specific monthly quantity through a “voucher” system. This mechanism provided universal coverage rather than specifically targeting vulnerable groups. Drinking water was also supplied at prices below cost, with rates calculated on a sliding scale based on consumption tiers, while sanitation services were provided free of charge. The state also subsidized energy prices, such as electricity, which was priced according to progressive consumption brackets designed to take into account the consumption patterns of poor households. Fuel prices were also subsidized and, despite price increases in recent years, were still provided to consumers at below-cost prices.
Decent Work:
Decent work is one of the most important components of social protection. It encompasses issues related to labor income, working conditions, labor market regulation, and legislation protecting labor rights, as well as issues of gender equity and child labor.
The labor market in Syria is regulated by two main laws. The first is the Basic Law for State Employees No. 50 of 2004, which applies to employees of the state, the public sector, and the joint sector. The second is Labor Law No. 17 of 2010, which applies to employees in the private and cooperative sectors and, in some cases, to employees in the joint sector.
In addition to these two laws, certain limited categories are governed by special regulations, such as the Basic Civil Servants Law No. 135 of 1945 and its amendments, as well as special regulations specific to employees of educational institutions, universities, and research centers. Furthermore, the Trade Union Organization Law No. 84 of 1968 establishes the framework for the creation and roles of trade unions, while the Social Insurance Law No. 92 of 1959 regulates matters related to exit from the labor market and work-related injuries, covering employees in the government and public sectors, as well as those in the private, cooperative, and joint sectors.
These laws regulate the mechanisms for entering and exiting the labor market; the relationships and rights of the parties to the employment relationship; wage entitlements and payment; the guarantees and protections afforded to workers; and the mechanisms for resolving disputes arising between the parties to the employment relationship.
In summary, the social protection system in Syria that was in place before the war faced a set of interconnected structural problems. Their analysis reveals profound shortcomings that went beyond mere resource constraints and extended to flaws in the very conception and design of the system. Although budget figures may superficially indicate the state’s continued presence in this area, the reality reflected a genuine decline in its role, resulting from weaknesses in both the regulatory and legislative environments and the absence of an equitable and coherent distribution of roles among different actors.
The government has remained the primary actor in this system, while the private sector’s social responsibility has remained weak. The efforts of civil society and international organizations, despite their importance, were also limited, lacked sustainability, and had limited impact, given the absence of any genuine developmental role for them. This imbalance in the distribution of roles and responsibilities, combined with the system’s reliance on unsustainable components and the absence of empowerment mechanisms, led to the fragmentation of efforts and weakened their cumulative impact.
This structural deficiency becomes even more apparent when considering the conceptual foundations of the policies themselves. There was no clear distinction between social policies and social protection, which resulted in poverty and social protection issues being overlooked as distinct policy fields requiring direct attention. Social policies were also addressed separately from one another, without an integrated approach that would bring them together within a comprehensive vision, either in relation to one another or in relation to economic policies. This fragmentation was reflected in a tendency to prioritize the quantitative expansion of services over their quality, to emphasize physical infrastructure over investment in human capital, and to neglect issues of balanced development at both the sectoral and geographic levels. The weak operating environment for local communities further reinforced these shortcomings by limiting the ability of local actors to overcome this fragmentation and compensate for the lack of a comprehensive vision.
One of the most prominent manifestations of this conceptual imbalance was the treatment of universal subsidies, in practice, as though they constituted development policies in themselves. Whereas, in reality, they amounted to policies and measures intended to mitigate the impact of inadequate development. In other words, they represented a response to the symptoms of poverty rather than a remedy for its underlying causes. This confusion helps explain the persistent imbalance in the distribution of efforts and spending across the different components of social protection. The greatest attention and spending continued to be directed toward social safety nets, while insufficient attention was paid to decent work and the labor market—the component best equipped to address the root causes of poverty. As a result, this component remained insufficient to meet expectations or to reduce pressure on the other components of social protection.
Taken together, these factors point to a common underlying problem: as designed and implemented, the social protection system addressed the symptoms of poverty and social vulnerability with palliative measures with limited impact, rather than functioning as an integral part of a comprehensive development vision that targets the root causes of this vulnerability.
Social Protection During the Years of War
The need for social protection mechanisms intensifies during crises, when large segments of the population are affected, and needs increase substantially, particularly among affected and displaced groups. In such contexts, providing the necessary conditions to meet these needs and strengthening mechanisms for adaptation, coping, and social integration among displaced populations and host communities become key priorities.
The reality in Syria reveals that social protection mechanisms, including both governmental and non-governmental instruments and components, have become significantly weakened and dysfunctional over the past years of war. As a result, certain social phenomena that had existed only to a limited extent before the crisis became more widespread, particularly among the most vulnerable social groups and in social environments most affected by the protracted crisis. This included food insecurity, violence, early marriage, and internal displacement on a scale unprecedented in Syria in terms of its causes, scale, and repercussions. Addressing these challenges requires the establishment of effective protection mechanisms, beginning with assessment, monitoring, and identification of needs; proceeding to the development of emergency or preventive intervention plans; and then followed by monitoring, evaluation, and measures to ensure the sustainability of services. Such an approach would contribute to advancing toward the ultimate objective of building an integrated social protection system.
During the war, despite the urgent need for a social protection system capable of mitigating its effects on the large segments of the population affected, resource constraints and budget deficits led to a deterioration across the system’s various components. This was reflected in the deterioration of decent work conditions, as evidenced by rising unemployment rates, a widening gap between nominal and real incomes, and more women being forced to enter the labor market to cover household spending shortfalls. Child labor and school dropout also became more widespread as the costs of education increased. Social services likewise deteriorated significantly, as out-of-pocket spending on education and healthcare surpassed government expenditure, alongside a significant deterioration in housing-related services, particularly electricity and drinking water.
Poverty and unemployment indicators clearly reflect the extent of this deterioration. The proportion of the population living below the extreme poverty line increased from approximately 1% in 2010 to more than 50% in 2023, meaning that half of Syria’s population had become unable to meet their basic food needs. Meanwhile, the unemployment rate rose from 8.6% in 2010 to 57.7% by the end of 2014, bringing the number of unemployed citizens to 3.72 million, which negatively affected 12.2 million Syrians in their households. ) The unemployment rate subsequently declined gradually to approximately 23.6% in 2023, although this did not necessarily reflect a genuine improvement in access to decent employment, but rather the exit or emigration of large numbers from the labor force.
In a notable paradox, the state reactivated its traditional policy instrument of subsidies, not so much as a social policy but as a tool for political and social containment. Subsidies peaked in 2013, reaching approximately 70% of the general budget, while bread subsidies alone amounted to 347.24 billion Syrian pounds. At the height of the crisis, subsidies in their various forms accounted for nearly 40% of the budget. Meanwhile, the shares allocated to other essential sectors, such as education (which had accounted for more than 18% of total public spending shortly before 2010) and health (which stood at approximately 5% during the same period), declined as a proportion of total spending. This reflected a forced reallocation of available public resources toward emergency interventions at the expense of other productive and service sectors.
However, this deterioration cannot be understood merely as a decline in available resources or as a weakening of the state’s fiscal capacity. It also represents a qualitative shift in the very structure of social protection during the war. The fragmentation of political authority and the emergence of multiple zones of control led to the disintegration of the notion of a unified national social protection system and gave rise to parallel arrangements that varied depending on the controlling authority in each area.
Consequently, social protection during the war was no longer merely a weakened system but evolved into a set of fragmented and competing systems in which was shaped by geopolitics, loyalty, economic capacity, and local affiliations rather than by the principle of citizenship and equal social rights.
A Proposed Vision: Toward a Comprehensive Social Protection System
The future of social protection remains uncertain, even though its broad direction is becoming increasingly clear in light of the new Syrian government and leadership’s orientation toward a free-market economy and the beginning of the implementation of its policies and principles, beginning with price liberalization and the complete removal of subsidies on previously subsidized goods.
Therefore, this paper presents a proposed vision for a comprehensive social protection system based on a balanced distribution of roles among relevant actors. Such a system should help mitigate the impact of economic crises and economic transformations on vulnerable and marginalized population groups, while supporting their reintegration into society and the development process. A successful approach to social protection should include two broad categories of policies and interventions.
The first consists of preventive and proactive policies and measures aimed at preventing individuals and households from falling into situations where they require urgent support. These include decent work policies designed to create sustainable employment opportunities that provide a minimum level of income sufficient to protect individuals and households from poverty and deprivation, as well as social insurance covering retirement, old age, and disability. They also include health insurance policies that ensure access to adequate health care, and social service policies that contribute to enhancing social well-being and improving quality of life.
The second category consists of remedial policies, which address the current reality of groups that have already fallen into poverty, deprivation, or situations requiring social and emergency assistance. These policies and measures include social safety net components such as subsidy programs, social assistance, and other forms of interventions. The figure below categorizes the different components of social protection.
To implement this approach, the paper proposes the following policies:
- Linking social protection policies to development
Social protection policies are increasingly viewed as a key driver of development. Sustainable economic growth can only be achieved if it is equitable and inclusive. Consequently, the state’s role in shaping economic policy should link the goals of economic growth with those of justice, equality, and equal opportunity. This calls for a reorientation of both economic and social policies and a repositioning of economic growth within a broader development framework.
Social security systems should be regarded as an economic necessity, and social security as a prerequisite for growth rather than a burden on it. The global financial and economic crisis demonstrated the role of social security programs as automatic social and economic stabilizers, and showed that countries with robust social security systems were better positioned to cope with the social impacts of crises. For example, cash transfers and other social security instruments can stimulate domestic demand, build human capital, and enhance labor productivity, thereby contributing to the promotion and sustainability of economic growth.
Properly integrating social protection into Syria’s development policies requires establishing a new conceptual framework for development that defines its vision, principles, and foundations. This would enable all components of social and economic policy to pursue shared objectives rather than operating in contradiction or conflict with one another. This also necessitates reviewing existing macroeconomic and sectoral policies, examining their social objectives and implications, and assessing their impact on different population groups, particularly the most vulnerable. While no economic policy can be entirely free of adverse effects, the aim should be to adopt those that contribute to achieving greater social gains while creating fewer social costs.
Planning for social protection and its integration into the core of Syria’s development policies should begin from the recognition of social protection as a human right. This entails a state commitment to the principle of universal coverage, complemented with targeted programs for the poor based on clear strategies to move them out of poverty and enable their active participation in the development process.
The alignment and integration of social protection policies with broader social and economic development policies are essential for improving citizens’ living conditions. From a social protection perspective, poverty extends beyond material deprivation to encompass multidimensional poverty. Social protection should therefore not be understood simply as the provision of assistance to support poor households. Rather, it should protect broad segments of Syria’s population who live just above the national poverty lines, and therefore at risk of falling into poverty when confronted with economic, natural, and human-induced crises and shocks, as occurred during the drought crisis of 2006–2009 and the armed conflict that began in March 2011 and lasted until 8 December 2024.
- Policies for Reforming Social Protection Systems
Reforming Syria’s existing social protection systems requires a comprehensive review covering all components and operational mechanisms, as well as an assessment of the results achieved and the key challenges facing the system.
At the administrative and institutional level, greater coordination and integration of roles are required, alongside efforts to eliminate duplication and transition from reactive mechanisms to sustainable social safety nets. It is also important to establish a national social protection observatory supported by databases that enable the identification of target groups, monitoring, and impact assessment.
Institutional and administrative reform cannot be complete without parallel reform at the legislative level. Existing legislation relating to social protection issues must be effectively implemented, including constitutional provisions, labor legislation, and other legal frameworks governing social and economic rights. Efforts should also be made to review and amend a number of existing laws that are no longer consistent with best practices in the field of social protection, particularly those related to the regulation of civic action and the role of civil society organizations. Such reforms should broaden participation and strengthen these organizations’ ability to contribute to service delivery and social accountability.
In parallel with legislative reform, the effectiveness of any social protection system remains contingent on the quality of its targeting mechanisms. Particular attention should therefore be given to involving affected groups, particularly women, poor households, and the most vulnerable, in the design and evaluation of these mechanisms. This also requires the establishment of clear and transparent targeting criteria based on the economic and social characteristics of the target groups, while considering regional, gender, and livelihood disparities. This would help minimize exclusion and misallocation and ensure that assistance reaches those genuinely entitled to receive it.
Finally, the success of these administrative, legislative, and targeting reforms depends on securing necessary funding and the diversification of its sources. In this context, the state bears responsibility for securing the financial resources necessary to provide a minimum level of social protection, while simultaneously working to design a solidarity-based financing system that distributes responsibilities and financial burdens among the government, the private sector, and civil society.
It is also essential to integrate social objectives and impacts into all fiscal reforms, particularly those related to the public budget, subsidy restructuring, and employment policies. Spending on social protection should be regarded as a long-term investment in human capital rather than merely as consumption expenditure or a social burden. This approach becomes even more important considering that, in the years immediately preceding the war, subsidies accounted for approximately 17.5% of the total public spending, illustrating the financial burden of the untargeted public subsidy model and underscoring the need to seriously consider a transition to more sustainable and effectively targeted interventions.
Achieving a balanced distribution of responsibilities, however, depends on whether the state possesses the necessary institutional and financial capacities to fulfill its regulatory and financing functions. The Syrian state is emerging from years of war with limited financial and institutional capacities, damaged infrastructure and administrative systems, and scarce public resources, all against a backdrop of debt, sanctions, and economic collapse. These conditions effectively limit its ability to finance the transition to a comprehensive social protection system without external support and clear transitional phases. At the same time, the weakness of existing oversight and coordination institutions, together with the absence of a unified national database to identify target groups, means that building these capacities, rather than assuming that they already exist, must constitute a necessary first step in any reform process.
As for the fair and balanced distribution of roles, the state should provide the appropriate legislative environment for social protection, facilitate the work of civil society organizations, and promote corporate social responsibility in the private sector. It should also ensure coherence between social protection and economic policies within a comprehensive vision for inclusive economic and social development, provide protection during times of crisis, and guarantee a minimum level of income security consistent with the cost of living, as well as access to social services.
As for nongovernmental organizations, they can contribute to fostering national dialogue on social protection and participate in sustainable development efforts, poverty alleviation, and efforts to reduce unemployment. They can also exercise oversight over the work of executive authorities and serve as intermediaries between the executive branch and the public to raise awareness of rights and responsibilities.
It is important for the private sector to comply with social protection legislation, particularly provisions relating to decent work standards, women’s employment, minimum wages, social insurance coverage, and healthcare. It should also contribute to the provision of social services, including health and education, and participate in dialogue and awareness-raising around social protection issues. Particular importance should also be given to ensuring that businesses take environmental considerations into account in the course of their economic activities.
As for the role of international partners, it is encouraged to be focused on supporting state efforts to adopt best practices across the different components of social protection, facilitating knowledge exchange and the transfer of expertise from successful experiences in expanding the scope of social protection coverage; and providing financial and technical assistance to Syria to ensure a minimum level of social protection.
The views represented in this paper are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Arab Reform Initiative, its staff, or its board.
