Governments have increasingly recognized social protection as a key policy instrument to build a more productive, protected and healthy population in Asia and the Pacific. In 2020, ESCAP member States endorsed the regional Action Plan to Strengthen Regional Cooperation on Social Protection (Action Plan), which serves as a shared vision, strategy and platform for promoting partnership and peer learning and identifying needs for capacity development. The Action Plan sets out 12 national actions that underpin the achievement of more inclusive and comprehensive social protection systems, ranging from upholding the right to social protection in legislative and regulatory frameworks, to ensuring a more effective design, coordination and delivery of social protection schemes.

To support member States in the implementation of this first ever regional Action Plan, ESCAP has been mandated to develop a regional platform to facilitate peer learning as well as take stock of the readiness of countries to implement the Action Plan and achieve more inclusive and comprehensive social protection systems. Pilot stocktaking initiatives are being conducted in four countries across Asia and the Pacific, (Cambodia, Maldives, Mongolia and the Philippines) to share national experiences and pathways towards this vision.

The first part of the stocktaking consists of a brief report that showcases the Maldives’s policies for promoting social protection and its overall readiness to implement the national actions of the Action Plan. A second part of the stocktaking exercise involves a national consultation with selected participants from the Ministries in the Maldives that work on social protection. The purpose of the consultation is to discuss and validate the findings of the draft stocktaking report on the Maldives, including its recommendations for achieving the objectives of the Action Plan.