Alignment and Complementarity Between Humanitarian Cash Transfers and the Social Protection System in Ukraine

There are significant similarities between humanitarian cash transfer programmes and the social protection system in Ukraine, but key obstacles impede leveraging the social protection system to deliver humanitarian cash transfers.

This report examines the alignment and complementarity between humanitarian cash transfers and Ukraine’s national social protection system in meeting the needs of vulnerable populations following the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. It employs the “unbundled” framework developed by Seyfert et al. as a methodological tool. Central to our analysis, this framework deconstructs the delivery chain of cash assistance into distinct components, allowing for a nuanced examination of how humanitarian cash transfers programmes interact with and leverage Ukraine’s social protection system. The framework is particularly adept at illustrating the varying degrees of integration between humanitarian efforts and Government-led social protection mechanisms. It covers a spectrum ranging from no integration to full integration through four distinct categories: Standalone Parallel Systems, Shadow Alignment, Piggybacking, and National Systems-led responses. The framework allows outlining recommendations for the Government and humanitarian actors to better align systems and enhance coordination throughout each element of the delivery chain of cash assistance.

While the report highlights plenty of good practices within each element of the delivery chain of cash assistance, several crosscutting systemic challenges preventing further alignments remain. These include revising data protection laws to facilitate sharing recipient data with humanitarian organisations (within a data protection framework) and encouraging Government leadership within humanitarian coordination structures.

On the former, revising data protection laws would clear up a key blockage to directly funding social protection programmes as it would allow verification that intended beneficiaries received assistance through Government programming. Additionally, it would facilitate discussions on using the Government’s information management system for deduplication purposes. It would create better interoperability, information sharing, referral mechanisms for case management, complaint mechanisms, and monitoring and evaluation analysis. Finally, it would allow for better aligning vulnerability and registration assessments, enabling a means-testing approach using access to relevant registries such as the State Tax registry, the Pension Fund registry, and the IDP registry.

On the latter, encouraging Government leadership within humanitarian coordination structures would facilitate discussions on key topics for improvement. These include gaps within the social protection system that hinder more effective categorical targeting and designs of CVA programmes, taxation issues blocking most national organisations from implementing cash as a humanitarian aid modality, and collaboration on outreach and referral mechanisms.

In summary, the Ukraine humanitarian response provides a prime opportunity to further linkages between humanitarian cash transfers and the Government social protection system.