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.