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This article explores some of the shared dimensions of fragility experienced by Myanmar and Nepal to illuminate the challenging contexts in which social protection policies and programmes have taken shape. Both countries have adopted a universalist, rights-based vision in their approaches to social protection, with social pensions and child benefits at the forefront of social protection programming. At the same time, both countries are employing incremental strategies to overcome political, social, and administrative obstacles, while demonstrating that fiscal space is available. The politics of social protection policy making are obvious, and consistent engagement by progressive social policy advocates in these countries will be necessary to seize opportunities, and to ensure continued investment in building inclusive, effective, and accountable social protection systems.

In 2016, the government of Myanmar began the implementation of the National Social Protection Strategy Plan (NSPSP). This is a significant step since it addresses social assistance for the majority of the population outside the formal sector for the first time in a systematic manner, moving beyond the few fragmented social transfers in place earlier. The adoption of the strategic plan was propelled by a combination of political factors. Technically, it builds on the life cycle approach of the International Labour Organization’s (ILO) Social Protection Floor Initiative (SPFI). It follows a universal, basic income security approach. This article offers cost calculations based on three different social protection transfer options: a social pension, an education grant and a combined mother and child benefit. The calculations conclude that such transfers can easily be covered from the government’s fiscal budget, and the fiscal and gross domestic product (GDP) shares would actually decrease over time, given population growth dynamics. This reinforces the political and social case for universal social protection in Myanmar.

The article examines the approaches to poverty of the UN development decades, with a focus on the current 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Using the “5 R” criteria of global social policy discourse, the article’s main point is that a coherent analysis of poverty is absent from the agenda. While the agenda does address redistribution, social rights, and resource consciousness, and makes important contributions to social protection and care policy, it makes only superficial reference to the need for regulating of the economy. The main lacuna of the agenda, however, is that it does not address the issue of relationality – the systemic asymmetries in economic, social and political power. As a result, it is weak on policy, and there is the risk that poverty eradication will remain an elusive goal, even beyond 2030, despite the agenda’s transformative remit.