Morocco COVID-19 Social Protection Emergency Response Project
The objective of the Morocco COVID-19 Social Protection Emergency Response Project is to mitigate the negative impacts of the COVID-19 crisis by providing and strengthening emergency cash transfer programs to support poor and marginalized households. The project includes four components: (1) Tadamon, an emergency cash transfer program that provides financial support to informal sector workers, (2) Tayssir, a cash transfer program that provides financial support to poor families to help keep children in school and reduce the number of dropouts, (3) institutional improvements to the cash transfer programs and support for the creation and eventual implementation of a Family Allowance Program, and (4) contingency emergency response.
The project aims include effective targeting and coverage of beneficiaries, enhancing the efficiency and transparency of social protection programs, promoting financial inclusion, and mitigating the adverse effects of the pandemic on the most marginalized groups in Moroccan society. The project seeks to implement a comprehensive and responsive social protection system that can provide immediate relief and pave the way for long-term resilience in the face of future crises.
BIC monitored this project alongside our partner, and we identified the following issues:
Barriers to accessing project benefits. Targeted beneficiaries of the project identified that cash transfers were difficult to access due to the distance they needed to travel to the capital of the province where benefits were disbursed, which was compounded by travel restrictions due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition, many of the targeted beneficiaries were unable to access project benefits due to technological barriers, such as a lack of internet access or the absence of telephone and/or smartphone.
Risks of gender-based violence (GBV). Cash transfer projects can increase GBV, as acknowledged in Bank documents. To help alleviate these risks, the Tadamon program incorporated electronic registration and enrollment for the cash transfer programs to access the grievance redress mechanism (GRM), in order to limit interaction between staff and beneficiaries. However, surveys conducted by the partner identified that a large portion of targeted women beneficiaries lack access to the internet or the means to access these measures.
Persons with disabilities have not been properly considered in project benefits. The project documents do not specify how persons with disabilities will benefit from this project. The Project Appraisal Document (PAD) contains no reference to persons with disabilities and the Stakeholder Engagement Plan (SEP) only acknowledges that persons with disabilities are among the “vulnerable or disadvantaged groups” without providing specific information on how they will be targeted in outreach and consultation. This is a significant limitation because the third component of the project provides cash transfers to help improve the resilience of poor and marginalized communities, yet it is not clear how the project will target persons with disabilities, nor the measures that will be taken to make the project activities and benefits accessible to these groups.
Stakeholder Engagement. Stakeholders such as marginalized families, community leaders, local organizations, and civil society groups have not been adequately engaged in project design and implementation. These groups could provide valuable information about the specific needs and priorities of the target beneficiaries and help shape the program's design and implementation. For instance, a more robust and comprehensive stakeholder outreach and consultation could have identified barriers to accessing funds that were highlighted in our monitoring or identified community concerns about how the amount of cash transferred under the Tadamon component is not sufficient to meet the needs of the target population.
Child protection. The Tayssir program aims to contribute to child protection through providing funds to families that will help to support keeping girls in school longer, thus reducing early marriage and improving educational outcomes for girls. The project also contributes to early childhood education. However, the project does not take a holistic approach to supporting a more comprehensive child protection system outside of the education system. During project design, the project team should have consulted with CSOs that focus on the rights of children and coordinated with government ministries involved in aspects of child protection to better understand the needs of children and additional measures that could strengthen the overall child protection system.
IBRD is financing the total cost of the project, US$ 400 million
Establish a child-friendly GRM. The GRM should be designed in a way that is able to receive complaints about GBV and sexual exploitation, abuse, and harassment (SEA/H) in a sensitive manner for children. It should also be accessible to children (schools, child clubs, etc.), with staff trained on how to appropriately handle child SEA/H, GBV, etc.
Prepare a GBV prevention and mitigation plan. Due to the high risk of GBV in cash transfer projects, the World Bank and Borrower should prepare a standalone GBV prevention and mitigation plan. While some specific GBV prevention measures were incorporated in the project design, they fail to acknowledge the unique barriers that women in Morocco face, such as a lack of access to a telephone or computer.
Consider persons with disabilities. It is important to recognize the disproportionate and compounding effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on persons with disabilities, and to design and implement appropriate measures to address those impacts. The World Bank should consider persons with disabilities in a systematic and cross-cutting way and integrate disability in the design of the family benefit program as well as the social protection system.
Engage with stakeholders to tailor project design to the local context. The World Bank and the implementing agency should conduct more comprehensive stakeholder outreach and consultation in order to better understand the target population and address potential barriers to accessing funds. This should be done in a way that is accessible to and inclusive of marginalized groups, including persons with disabilities, and considers gender disparities.
Engage with children and children’s rights organizations. For effective child protection measures, the World Bank and implementing agency should actively engage and seek input from child rights organizations to align with child protection standards and include children in consultations and outreach around the project. Furthermore, the Bank should establish effective communication and collaboration channels with child protection civil society organizations and government agencies for a cohesive approach to child protection within the project.
