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Social Protection

The prevalence of long term and recurrent crises pushes humanitarians to look for more effective, efficient, and sustainable ways to respond.  Linking social protection and humanitarian response - or developing more flexible social protection systems to respond to crises – could potentially address underlying poverty, build resilience, speed response and support localisation of humanitarian action.  Yet, where crises are most severe and long term, social protection systems are often weakest. What is the role of humanitarian (and other) actors in supporting an effective whole of cash response? What opportunities does the extensive use of social protection systems as a response to the economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic provide for strengthening linkages with CVA?

Context

The State of the World’s Cash 2020 report found:

  • Working with, through and alongside social protection systems is now considered key to strengthening the humanitarian-development nexus and humanitarians are increasingly active in this space
  • Practitioners find that the three biggest challenges to effective linkages are: (i) lack of coordination between the actors involved, (ii) social protection systems are not designed to respond to crises, (iii) humanitarian practitioners lack expertise in social protection
  • Critically, there is no ‘one size fits all’ solution to linking CVA and social protection. Trade-offs between efficiency, effectiveness, accountability, and sustainability must be considered to ensure the best outcomes for people living in crisis and depends on context, existing systems, and timeframe. Linking will not always be appropriate and social protection systems may not meet all needs. In many contexts, in the short to medium term at least, humanitarian programming will be required to fill gaps.

Current Priorities

The CALP Network has invested intensely in this thematic area over the last few years. We will continue to work closely with the SPIAC-B Working group on linking humanitarian (cash) assistance and social protection (formerly the Grand Bargain Sub-Workstream on Social Protection) and with the SocialProtection.org platform and the Online Community Social Protection in Crisis Contexts to develop evidence, produce capacity building materials and provide technical support to coordination actors.

Community of Practice

SocialProtection.org hosts a dynamic and collaborative online community of practice (CoP) bringing together individuals from diverse backgrounds interested in expanding social protection in crisis-prone areas. The CoP offers a space to exchange documents, insights, and news in order to progress and learn together. Its inclusive and member-led approach offers organisations and individual members a forum to increase learning and outreach, facilitating the exchange of experiences and expanding knowledge. A discussion group hosted by dgroups.org complements these activities by connecting users rapidly via email.

SPACE

There are a wealth of relevant resources from ‘Social Protection Approaches To Covid-19: Expert Advice’ (SPACE) published in the CALP library.

 

Latest

Striving for E-Payments at Scale in the Philippines

Report

As the Philippines experienced economic growth in the early 2000s, it still saw a rise in poverty. The Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps) is a conditional cash transfer program that aims to provide short-term poverty alleviation for poor households. The program emerged out of the country’s...

2013

E-Payments in Uganda with Limited Infrastructure

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The 2005 Uganda Chronic Poverty Report argued that households in chronic poverty show a range of deficits that include deficient consumption and malnutrition, limited access to health and education, and limited voice and influence. For many of these households social exclusion reinforces their...

2013

Building Orphan Competent Communities: Experiences from a community-based capital cash transfer initiative in Kenya

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As a result of the increasing number of orphans in sub-Saharan Africa, numerous programmes have been initiated to facilitate the care and support of orphaned and vulnerable children. This paper reports on a community-based capital cash transfer initiative in Kenya and explores its role in building orphan...

2013

Theories of Change for Cash Transfers

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While there is a large body of literature examining social protection and cash transfers’ (CT) impacts on poverty reduction and development, there is much less on understanding the mechanisms and pathways by which this happens. This report gathers together examples from the literature which attempt to...

2013

Social Protection and Resilient Food Systems: The role of cash transfers

Report

Cash transfers – a form of social protection – have been increasingly used as a tool for reducing poverty and vulnerability in middle and low-income countries over the past decade. More recently, cash transfers have also been used as an alternative to food aid in humanitarian contexts. The objective...

2013

Guidance for DFID country offices on measuring and maximising value for money in cash transfer programmes

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This document is a revised edition of Guidance for DFID country offices on measuring and maximising value for money in cash transfer programmes which DFID published in October 2011. The guidance is in two linked parts:
1. Part 1 provides a toolkit which sets out key concepts and metrics for analysing...

2013

How Effective are Cash Transfer Programmes at Improving Nutritional Status?

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Cash transfer programmes are a widely applied social protection scheme that has achieved successes in fighting poverty worldwide. A large literature has sprung up around these programmes, yet the relationship between cash transfer programmes and the nutritional status of recipient children is unclear. Can...

July 2012

Social Transfers in the Fight against Hunger: For better development outcomes and governance

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A European Commission Reference Document aims to deepen the understanding of a concept, develop knowledge, provide orientations for aid implementation, and present good practices. This Reference Document is intended as a resource to support the practical integration of social transfers into programmes...

April 2012

Social Cash Transfers and Financial Inclusion: Evidence from four countries

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This focus note from CGAP looks at social cash transfers and how this is being used to improve financial inclusion. To do so they look at examples from Brazil, Colombia, Mexico and South Africa. The focus note compares the various payment approaches, how these interlink with the respective government...

2012

Pension Watch Briefing #8: Electronic payment for cash transfer programmes

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There is growing interest in the use of electronic payment (e-payment) systems in cash transfer programmes. When cash is transferred to beneficiaries through e-payment technologies such as mobile phone accounts or smartcards, there is potential to cut costs and reduce corruption compared with physical...

2012