Politics of Social Protection: The Case of Graduation Programming from Productive Safety Net Programme in Tigray Region, Ethiopia

The study is aimed at exploring the main actors and their motives in promoting ambitious graduation plans from Productive Safety Net Programme in Ethio-pia. The results show that the main actor behind promoting graduation is the government through its agencies and institutions with limited involvement from Development Partners. The main driving force behind the high interest to pursue graduation is the Growth and Transformation Plan (GTP) that aims to graduate all Public Works beneficiaries by 2014 with aspiration to enable the country to be self-sufficient and avoid food-aid dependency. This increased political commitment to promote graduation in Tigray region. Though gradua-tion is justified technically, the study found that political considerations out-weigh technical food security and social protection decision making which might compromise the livelihood of chronically food insecure households. The current politicised graduation system increases the possibility of graduat-ing households slide back to chronic or transitory food insecurity due to the vulnerable nature of rural livelihoods as a result of natural shocks and people’s multiple deprivations. Although PSNP is considered as one of the social pro-tection initiatives in developing countries that represent ‘revolution from the South’ believed to be basis for broadening and institutionalizing social protec-tion provisioning; the study argues that the current graduation system prevents institutionalization of social protection in Ethiopia which might lead to prolif-eration of short term targeted interventions or emergency relief systems that do not address the root causes of poverty and vulnerability of the rural poor.