In this paper we review a selection of different instruments that address various aspects of risk and vulnerability. Specifically we look at: social pension insurance; social health insurance; microfinance/insurance; public works programmes; conditional cash transfers; cash transfers and school feeding.
For each instrument we describe the instrument, locate it within the risk and vulnerability (R&V) and social protection agendas, and provide one or two case studies. These instruments and cases were chosen to reflect the diversity of risk and vulnerability-reducing interventions in terms of the dimensions illustrated in Table 1 in the Annex. Specifically, we aim to highlight how each instrument addresses different types of poverty (active versus chronic poor); different types of risk (subsistence versus production); and different elements of social protection (protection, prevention, promotion and transformation). This paper should be considered a complement to a previous paper (Sabates-Wheeler and Haddad 2005) that mapped out and linked different risk and vulnerability concepts.