Protective measures provide relief from deprivation. They are narrowly targeted safety net measures in the conventional sense –aiming to provide relief from poverty and deprivation to the extent that promotional and preventive measures have failed to do so. In particular, protective measures include social assistance for the ‘chronically poor’, especially those who are unable to work and earn their livelihood. This equates most closely to mainstream ‘social welfare’. Social assistance programmes typically include targeted resource transfers – disability benefits, single-parent allowances, and ‘social pensions’ for the elderly poor that are financed publicly – out of the tax base, with donor support, and/or through NGO projects. Other protective measures can be classified as social services. These would be for the poor and groups needing special care, including orphanages and reception centres for abandoned children, feeding camps and provision of services for refugees and Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs), and the abolition of health and education charges in order to extend access to basic services to the very poor. In the Disaster Risk Reduction context protective measures also includes
emergency feeding programmes, support for reconstruction, and restocking assets.