What does the Grand Bargain 3.0 mean for Cash and Voucher Assistance?

Grand Bargain latest developments 

At the end of its Annual Meeting on the 20 June 2023, the 66 Signatory donors and aid agencies agreed a new iteration of the Grand Bargain for the next three years. Participants expressed the importance of continuing the Grand Bargain because it is the only platform where donors, member states, and international and local organisations come together to address the need to improve effectiveness and efficiency of humanitarian action.  

Despite achievements made since the inception of Grand Bargain 1.0, it was recognised that challenges remain – including insufficient amount of quality funding, the lack of progress in ensuring participation of affected people and limited direct funding to local actors. 

Reflecting this, new commitments agreed at the Annual Meeting included: 

Focus area 1: Continued support to localisation, participation of affected communities, and quality funding. 

Focus area 2: Catalysing sector wide transformation through the Grand Bargain. This includes scale up preparedness and anticipatory action, better integration of technology, innovative financing and strengthened partnerships across sectors.   

Gender and risk sharing will continue to be cross-cutting issues progressed across all areas of the Grand Bargain. For example, Signatories agreed to integrate new approaches to share risks with their partners, paying attention to the risks identified by local and national actors. 

Is this good news for humanitarian cash and voucher assistance (CVA)? 

This should be good news as the Grand Bargain 3.0 priorities and many CVA priorities are closely aligned.  

It’s important to note that a commitment was made to increase the use of cash assistance in the original Grand Bargain agreement in 2016, and that Signatories are still signed up to this. The use of cash has been an important enabler of the Grand Bargain priorities, particularly ‘localisation’ and ‘the participation revolution’ which headline as priorities in the next phase.   

In a separate process, BHA and CALP recently convened a High-Level meeting drawing attention to the need to refresh and renew cash policy commitments. The meeting saw the launch of a process to define new areas of focus where collective action can drive forward practical change. Work will initially focus on defining commitments related to people-centred response and locally led response.   

CALP and the Grand Bargain Secretariat have been discussing the new Grand Bargain 3.0 and the cash policy dialogue. It’s clear there are lots of potential linkages and synergies, while nothing is yet agreed we need to explore all such opportunities and capitalise on them,  generating win-wins for both processes. 

Want to know more? 

Find out more about Grand Bargain 3.0 .

Read more about the high-level meeting which launched a collective process for refreshing cash and voucher assistance-related policy commitments and the planned dialogue.

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