Social justice covers a number of aspects and revolves around some common social issues. In ensuring social justice, the government takes steps and measures to improve already existing reforms or systems in various departments including civil justice, criminal justice, family justice, and so on and so forth. There are many services that the government of UK may support, endorse or improve in order to ensure social justice. These include social transfers, pension provision, and risk management. There is a need to work directly with certain social protection systems to increase the poor population’s self-help capacity.
Challenges Faced by Governments Implementing Social Justice Policies
The implementation of social justice is not the duty of a single person or a single entity that exists in a society. It is the responsibility that must be undertaken by the government and then extended down to each individual where everybody participates according to their own capacity. Implementation of social justice policies faces hurdles that are actually the components of the social justice regime. These include;
– Human rights
– Equity of opportunities
– Social safety
– Poverty reduction
– Capacity and empowerment
– Misuse of social justice
A government’s job is not complete without regulating the mechanisms it creates for ensuring or guaranteeing social justice. So, it acts as a regulator as well as a negotiator of national interests. Moreover, it must strive to mitigate individual and group conflicts that serve to sabotage the process of development.
Social protection systems are devised to support families so that they are ready to face the challenges of life. Ensuring equity of opportunities is one big challenge for the government of UK because it requires fair distribution of wealth and resources. The government must also create safety nests for vulnerable groups of the society when these families are not able to enjoy their basic rights for development.
The aim should be to employ more and more young people in the workforce in order to ensure that they start earning as soon as they leave school. This ensures poverty reduction despite the rapid population growth rate and other associated risks. The government may develop a common development fund or something like this to fight poverty and to make young people more actively involved in community work for the betterment of their living circumstances.
The importance of work
Implementation of social justice is possible only if everyone is aware of his or her capacity and the contribution they can make for the betterment of their society. This is where the importance of work comes into play. Capacities can be revived or reinforced by the government in addition to empowering key actors that can actually bring about a change. Moreover, misuse of social justice should be eradicated from the society and especially from the workplace. Organisations that exist merely to exploit people and their skills in the name of social justice have to be annihilated in order to stop misuse of social justice.
Supporting disadvantaged people
Low-income families are more vulnerable to risks that reduce the quality of life, such as illness, incapacity and old age. These groups also become the first victims of natural disasters like earthquakes and floods. These are social as well as economic risks and to minimize their impact, the government can take action to support these under-privileged or disadvantaged people. One strategy that the government may employ is poverty reduction strategy that serves to ensure social protection. The local population should be made to participate in decision making and for this the government must empower with the required resources to fight poverty as a first step.