Egypt’s National Social Protection Response to Vulnerable Groups during COVID-19

摘要

Since March 2020, the Coronavirus has widely spread in Egypt and negatively affected people’s lives, especially the vulnerable groups. The government, pr ivate sectors, and social societies had played significant roles in supporting the needed groups to overcome the crisis. The present article has studied the Eg yptian authorities’ measures implemented to mitigate the pandemic’s neg ative impact on the vulnerable groups—women, children, and informal workers. C onfronting the sudden crisis, the Egyptian government swiftly responded the m ost by being the first country to empower women and financially support informal workers. However, some flaws appeared during operations as a result of poor infrastructure. We proposed some recommendations, for instance, incr ease transparency in Takaful and Karam Programme’s operations and extend the coverage of the programme; prevent school drop-outs in child laborers, and build a complete informal workers’ database that shall help reduce vulnerabi lity and build resilience to future sudden shocks in Egypt.