{"id":400,"date":"2021-03-26T10:24:41","date_gmt":"2021-03-26T08:24:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.hanken.fi\/humlog\/?p=400"},"modified":"2023-12-08T18:41:01","modified_gmt":"2023-12-08T16:41:01","slug":"why-or-why-not-cash-learning-from-the-past-and-looking-to-the-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.hanken.fi\/humlog\/2021\/03\/26\/why-or-why-not-cash-learning-from-the-past-and-looking-to-the-future\/","title":{"rendered":"Why or why not cash\u2026.! Learning from the past and looking to the future"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

26.03.2021 <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Written by: Amin Maghsoudi – Postdoctoral Researcher at the HUMLOG Institute for Cash and\/or Carry Project supported by Academy of Finland<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Humanitarian\nassistance comes normally in forms of delivery of goods, services and\ncash\/vouchers. For decades, the latter has been transferred to the vulnerable\ncommunities in responding to meeting basic needs and building resilience to\nstresses and shocks. This normally integrated with the social protection system,\ne.g., social safety net program in the country, but not in large portion in\ncomparison with delivery of goods and services. However, since last 15 years,\nthere is a tremendous increase in the use of cash assistance around the world,\nthat could be probably pushed most likely by donors as their preference over\nin-kind. That start would be right after the successful cash for work (CFW)\nprogram in Banda Aceh during the post-disaster Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004.\nRight after, the establishment of Cash Learning Partnership (CaLP) in 2005,\nwhich is a consortium of aid agencies expert on cash, was another pinpoint to\nthe history of cash assistance. Since then, after 2010, cash assistance has\ngained acceptance among stakeholders including humanitarian organizations and\ndonors. Today, a lot of reports, guidelines, toolkits, standard operating\nprocedures (SOPs), training and assessment tools for the use of cash assistance\nhave been implemented and published by aid agencies globally. All these tools\nare available and accessible to the public (e.g., CaLP, UNHCR, IFRC, Oxfam, and\nECHO guidelines). Looking to the guidelines, they are more or less similar\ntogether, though going through them deeply one could realize complementary\nnotes across them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The second hike\nfor the use of the cash assistance could be largely since 2016 after the\nextraordinary emphasize for the use of cash coordination discussed in Grand\nBargain working group during the World Humanitarian Forum (WHF). According to\nthe State of the World\u2019s Cash (2020), cash and voucher assistance (CVA) program\nreached to over USD2.8 billion in 2016 (10% of international humanitarian\nassistance), and surprisingly its peaked to USD5.6 billion in 2019 contributing\nto 18% of total humanitarian assistance. One of those successful programs was\nthe emergency social safety net cash transfers for 1.7 million refugees in\nTurkey during the Syrian conflict started in 2011. Anyway, that 8% increase\njust within three years was phenomenal in the history of humanitarian\nassistance using CVA modalities. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today, several\naid agencies have joined as a member to one or more of the networks related to\nCVA, including Collaborative Cash Delivery Network (CCD), UN Common Cash\nStatement,  Cash Working Group (CWG), or\nCash Bargain Local Partnership, at the country and\/or regional level. Joining\nto such networks, gives them this opportunity to get access to related data,\nshare information and knowledge at the local level, and get to know the\nchallenges\/risks experienced by implementing partners. But the question is\nthere is no voice\/evidence of local actors on how they view cash over in-kind\nassistance. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Looking to the\nstatistics, CVA is still not dominating the aid, while the large portion of humanitarian\nassistance and development remains in form of service and goods delivery to\naffected population at least in the response phase, and thus Logistics will be\nstill in the first place just in the centre. After reading several materials\nand research papers\/reports on this topic, my personal reflection on the use of\nCVA are listed as below: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

  1. CVA implementation is highly\ncontext dependent. Cash is often suitable, but not always so for instance in\nconflict situations where the infrastructure is destroyed or not developed, or\nwhere the people don\u2019t have enough education on how to receive and for what\npurpose to use cash. <\/li>
  2. Risk assessment and analysis\nneeds to be in place prior to the use of CVA. There are several risks, such as\nsecurity, fraud and money laundering risks, we could just imagine if CVA is not\nused appropriately.  <\/li>
  3. Cash is not the dominant\noption, but in form of multi-purpose cash assistance, it could complement\nin-kind and service delivery. People still need for example a psychological\nsupport due to a disaster, and thus the service needs to be covered as priority.\n<\/li>
  4. Probably, there wont be a dramatic\nshift for logistics role from in-kind to CVA. Logisticians most likely need to\nimprove their skills still on tasks such as supply chain mapping, market and\nsupply chain assessment, tendering, contracting and procurement of financial\nservice providers. It could be also challenging for them to find local hawala\nbrokers, for instance, in Syria to connect and communicate with. Thus, they\nneed professional training customized for the local needs. Many aid agencies\nhave already provided CVA training for their logistics team. <\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    Last points:  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    – Market-based\napproach could be one important intervention, that in the future, aid agencies\nneed to take more seriously into account considering the market failure and\neconomy downturn during the COVID-19 pandemic. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    – CVA has shown\ntremendously can help to boost local market and economy, with or without\ncreating inflation on prices. It can motivate local and small business to stand\nup once again. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    – COVID-19 has\ntaught humanitarians to consider diversification of modalities and this highly\ndepends on the market conditions if a single modality could cause overcrowding\nin distributions sites, for instance. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    – Technology and\ndigitalization of cash transfers via blockchain (e.g., in Pakistan, and\nJordan), and mobile money (e.g., in Kenya) has both facilitated the CVA\ndelivery to affected populations in timely manner as well as reduced the social\ngathering and long queues at the counter for the receipt of cash during the\nCOVID-19 response. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    – COVID-19 has\ntaught humanitarians to work remotely without the need of humanitarian workers,\nthis could be more challenging in the conflict areas as local markets are not\nfunctioning. Thus locating suppliers could be daunting tasks, while 50% of\nhealth infrastructure are also collapsed (for the case of Syria). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    – CVA always consider\nminimum expenditure basket (MEB) for the targeted beneficiaries. But, due to\nthe current economic conditions mostly affected by COVID-19, humanitarian\nagencies need to reconsider their supply chain strategies based on forecasting\nand using Time to Survival (TTS) instead of Time to Recovery (TTR) as offered\nby Simchi-Levi. Thus, estimating the needs based on Survival Expenditure Basket\n(SEB) could make more sensing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    – Application of\nCVA requires to have access to large amount of data from the field. Thus, now\nmore than ever, data responsibility and data analytics matter for the sake of\nappropriate humanitarian assistance programming \u2013 Refer to the data published\nin Humanitarian Data Exchange (HDX). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    – One\ninteresting topic could also be looking at the environmental impact of CVA\ndelivery. One could argue the measurement of such impact is challenging, yet\nthe estimation of the CO2 emission created due to traveling to get access to\nthe ATM or local bank is on humanitarian agencies responsibility. I will leave\nthis as the future research. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    – The key performance indicators for the use of CVA need to be evaluated and standardized. As we all know, CVA is not all about the effectiveness and cost-efficiency of its program, but it would rather include other aspects, such as equity, accountability to donors, visibility and flexibility, environmental impact, beneficiary satisfaction, and scalability of the program\u2026..<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    This piece of writing is part of the Cash and\/or Carry project (titled Cash and\/or carry: The challenges and modalities of delivering aid in conflict zones) which is supported by Academy of Finland (with the grant number : 322188). The project focuses on the delivery of humanitarian aid in conflict zones and complex emergencies. The overall aim of the project is to develop a conceptual framework for selecting effective delivery modalities for humanitarian aid in conflict zones. For further inform please visit the <\/em>website<\/em><\/a>. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Recent publications related to this project can be found here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    26.03.2021 Written by: Amin Maghsoudi – Postdoctoral Researcher at the HUMLOG Institute for Cash and\/or Carry Project supported by Academy of Finland Humanitarian assistance comes normally in forms of delivery […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":401,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-400","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-projects"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.hanken.fi\/humlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.hanken.fi\/humlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.hanken.fi\/humlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.hanken.fi\/humlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.hanken.fi\/humlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=400"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.hanken.fi\/humlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":494,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.hanken.fi\/humlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400\/revisions\/494"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.hanken.fi\/humlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/401"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.hanken.fi\/humlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=400"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.hanken.fi\/humlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=400"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.hanken.fi\/humlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=400"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}