Cash Transfer Actors in Nepal – NRCS Mapping Exercise

Each year Nepal faces a series of natural disasters, including floods, landslides and food insecurity, causing immense hardship and challenges to communities in the affected districts. The Nepal Red Cross Society (NRCS) as the auxiliary to the government is first responder to the needs of the affected households. Whenever a natural disaster occurs, such as a flood or landslides, resulting in house damage or destruction, the normal channel of relief support from NRCS is in-kind, providing household kits, food and other non-food items. Whilst this intervention has proved effective, this type of humanitarian assistance is now under review, with alternative response mechanisms being considered.

The NRCS has embarked on a process to improve their emergency response capacity to meet the needs of disaster-affected populations. To include (but not restricted to) strengthening the processes, systems and knowledge required to implement effective cash transfer programmes. A vital component of this learning process is the development of accurate market baseline data to improve the response analysis to articulate response modalities and mechanisms.

This analysis is an extract from a Household Economic Security deployment in March, with a specific focus on the flood recovery in the south western Nepal. Even so, the information gathered can be relevant to actors considering cash transfers as part of the earthquake response in Kathmandu and other affected areas.