The Red Cross is preparing to provide humanitarian assistance to migrants ready to depart Honduras for Guatemala as part of a migrant caravan.
©Johannes Chinchilla / IFRC. 

Conflict, economic crisis and natural disasters have forced people on arduous and risky journeys across multiple borders in search of safety, security and livelihoods. In 2020, the number of people forcibly displaced soured to a record high of over 80 million – nearly double the number a decade earlier. This trend is worsening and the effects of climate change threaten to displace up to 200 million people by 2050.  

Increasingly, cash and voucher assistance (CVA) is being used to meet the needs of people on the move. It has been used at scale in various contexts from the 2015 European migration crises to ‘los caminantes’ from Venezuela. Equally, it has been used in other mixed migration crises, such as Central America, the Sahel, the Mediterranean, and the Horn of Africa. Currently, CVA is one of the main forms of assistance to the displaced populations in Ukraine and the surroundings countries.  

There are many perspectives and definitions about what it means to be a migrant and how humanitarians should respond. Intentionally, we are not using a single definition for now as the discussion on CVA and migration is in its early stages a language is evolving.  

Documenting and sharing evidence will help improve response effectiveness. This page houses a useful selection of resources related to migrants and the use of CVA. It will be updated as conversations evolve within humanitarian CVA spaces. 

Current priorities 

We aim to contribute to progress on this issue by:  

• Supporting evidence generation at regional and global levels;  
• contributing to practical solutions to delivering CVA to migrant populations; and  
• convening evidence-based discussion on the key issues.