Responding to the COVID-19 Crisis: Linking humanitarian Cash and Social Protection in practise

This paper seeks to demonstrate practical ways in which NGOs are linking their humanitarian work to social protection and the added importance of this in the context of COVID-19, following from the earlier work of CCD outlining the role of NGOs to
improve the access to and delivery of social protection in crises and the COVID-19 advocacy paper. This is written for signatories of the Grand Bargain, particularly those engaged in the cash sub-working group on social protection and humanitarian cash. This paper highlights that there is much more to be done but that NGOs have a crucial role to play and what follows are some of the ways in which CCD can engage. Through our collaboration as a network, many CCD members, as a collective or as individual
agencies, with the support of donors and partnering with civil society, have already taken on board the Grand Bargain’s principles over recent years and aligned their humanitarian programming with social protection programmes in their respective countries of intervention. CCD has identified the following five areas as critical to linking humanitarian CVA responses with social protection in general, which are even more pertinent in the context of the COVID-19 response.

These include:
1. Strengthening coordination between
humanitarian actors and government social
protection entities
2. Filling gaps in governments’ social
protection responses to COVID-19
3. Allowing continuity of existing social
protection delivery during crises through
improving preparedness
4. Supporting the capacity of governments in
social protection (e.g. to design, adapt,
strengthen, scale up, and provide technical
support and technological integration)
5. Encouraging social accountability in social
protection programming