In this open access book, Matthew Greenslade sheds some much-needed light on the damage being done by the World Bank's insistence on pursuing a poverty-targeted approach to social protection in lower income countries, while also describing some of the successes in the grassroots fights for a more universal approach.

All this is organized around the true story of Stephen Kidd, an ex-missionary who cut his teeth fighting for indigenous land rights in Latin America, then survived an assassination attempt, and ultimately went on to be a leader in the global fight for universal social protection.

Incorporating perspectives from academia, NGOs, CSOs, and activists, Greenslade shows, through Kidd's story, nearly half of the world population, the overwhelming majority in low-income countries, does not have access to the sorts of welfare and benefits programs that protect many people in the Global North. This means little to no protection in vulnerable times of life or against crises such as pandemics and climate-related events, and much less chance of building sustainable economies and the transition to low-carbon growth. Governments in the Global South are working to fill this gap, but all too often, their World-Bank-led support from the Global North pushes poverty-targeted programmes that are error-strewn, can cause social unrest, and can ultimately set back the development of universal social protection systems for years, if not decades. Yet as Greenslade also shows, collaborations among the United Nations, NGOs, academia, and practitioners such as Kidd are supporting Global South governments in pushing for more sustainable, home-grown, human-rights-aligned, universally available systems of development and protection. In the face of the ever-growing global challenges of the climate crisis and rising inequality, the urgency of these initiatives cannot be overstated.

The eBook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by the Act Church of Sweden.