A/66/265 beneficiaries. Persons living in poverty face several obstacles and costs in gaining access to official documents. Documents may be expensive, and accessing them difficult for individuals who do not have a fixed address or lack proof of identity. This is particularly common in developing countries, where some of the most vulnerable and excluded people, particularly women and ethnic minorities, are not registered at birth. Obtaining documents also requires additional interactions with public officials who often lack sufficient understanding of the specific needs and circumstances of persons living in poverty. Anecdotal evidence shows that social benefit administrators are often inconsiderate or unsympathetic towards beneficiaries, who in addition to bureaucratic hurdles must overcome gaps in education, literacy and communication when seeking to comply with often complex and opaque requirements. 53. Onerous conditions are often attached to the receipt of social benefits in order to gain political support and assure the public that only the “deserving” poor are receiving support. For example, some conditional cash transfer programmes in lowand middle-income countries pay cash to heads of households (generally women) in exchange for their commitment to do something in return, such as enrolling children in school and ensuring their attendance, or participating in health programmes. Although these conditions do encourage investment in human capital, they also impose additional burdens on women, whose needs are often ignored in designing the programme. The lack of a serious gender approach may perpetuate gender stereotypes about traditional household roles and responsibilities, and trigger domestic violence. 40 54. In some of these programmes, non-compliance with conditionalities results in the immediate cancellation of benefits, without first assessing the reasons for non-compliance. Often, this also means that the family cannot reapply to the programme, notwithstanding its needs and the reasons behind its failure to comply. 55. Conditionalities undermine the autonomy of beneficiaries and reinforce the stereotype that persons living in poverty are incapable of responsible decisionmaking. Evidence shows that with sufficient resources, poor households would make the same investments in education and health in the absence of conditionalities.41 Thus, the additional administrative costs involved in designing, implementing and monitoring compliance with conditionalities would be better invested in extending and supporting public services. 56. Another condition that is increasingly being adopted by States is the requirement that those who receive unemployment, single parent or disability benefits participate in employment or training programmes. While transferring skills and knowledge required for reintegration into the workforce may be an important objective, often these programmes are implemented in the absence of enabling conditions, such as the provision of childcare facilities, or without consideration of structural barriers such as the realities of the current labour market, characterized by high unemployment and rapidly modernizing industries. Programmes place a heavy emphasis on “graduation” from benefits to employment, without giving due consideration to the actual needs of the beneficiaries and often without providing __________________ 40 41 16 See A/HRC/11/9 and A/65/259. Armando Barrientos, “Conditions in antipoverty programmes”, Journal of Poverty and Social Justice, vol. 19, No. 1 (2011), p. 19. 11-44449