ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the socio-economic insecurity of large sections of the population living in the South. It care about insecurity because it has hazardous effects on individuals and societies, it 'is instrumentally bad, shortens people's time-horizons, makes them more opportunistic and narrows their choices'. Over the past decade, national governments and international institutions have increasingly turned to social protection as a key strategy to fight poverty and hunger. This is visibly expressed in the unanimous adoption of the International Labour Organization's (ILO) 'Recommendation Concerning National Floors of Social Protection' in the summer of 2012. This international initiative, as well as several national initiatives, is proof of collective and public responses to socio-economic insecurity. Another big difference between member and non-member countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) lies in the fact that social assistance schemes in the latter typically do not grant a living wage or even an income above the poverty line.
