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Coordination

As multipurpose cash disrupts traditional divisions of responsibility in the sector-based humanitarian sector, disagreements remain around how cash and voucher assistance (CVA) should be coordinated.

Background

Effective coordination can prevent gaps and overlaps in humanitarian responses, ensure the impact of CVA is optimised for the benefit of crisis affected populations, whilst also making the most of limited humanitarian funding. But the CALP Network’s State of the World’s Cash report found that cash coordination is seen as weak and ad hoc, and that this is having serious operational impact. 

Ninety-five donors, international and national NGOs, private sector actors and one UN agency have called for clarity on two key issues surrounding cash coordination: 

  • Who should be accountable for ensuring effective cash coordination, and 
  • What the scope of Cash Working Groups should be, including in relation to multipurpose cash. 

We urgently need to build on what works and provide clarity at the global level on the questions above, whilst adapting to different contexts. Clear decisions based on the impact on affected populations rather than agency politics are long overdue. 

Current priorities

We aim to contribute to progress on this issue on three levels: supporting Cash Working Groups at the regional level; contributing to practical solutions for cash coordination at the global level; and convening evidence-based discussion on the key issues, highlighting critical decision points and opportunities for progress. 

Latest

OCHA internal guidance – cash in HRPs

Guidelines and Tools

The enhanced 2020 Humanitarian Programme Cycle (HPC) approach offers a unique opportunity, through its focus on producing a joint inter-sectoral analysis, to provide a holistic understanding of the relationship between needs in the Humanitarian Needs Overview (HNO). Additionally, the strengthened focus on...

2 September 2020

Use of Foreign Currency for Designing of Assistance Packages in Yemen_Fina

Guidelines and Tools

The Yemeni Rial (YER) during the course of 2020 has shown high levels of volatility in its value against foreign currencies, in particular, the United States Dollar (USD). As program budgets are calculated in USD or EUROs, but cash transfers are made in YER, the reduction in the value of the YER against...

1 September 2020

Supporting the Linkages Between Humanitarian Cash and Voucher Assistance and National Social Protection Systems

Report

This tipsheet aims to support country-level coordination efforts to strengthen the engagement between humanitarian coordination groups that implement cash and voucher assistance (CVA) and existing social
protection or disaster risk reduction coordination actors and groups. In particular, it seeks to...

September 2020

Annex. Technical Guidance for National Platforms- Cash and Voucher Assistance

Guidelines and Tools

The objective of this guide is to orient the reflection on the role of the Cash Working Groups (CWG) in the 2021
Response Strategy Planning process for Refugees and Migrants from Venezuela. It is a living document that will be
nurtured by the experiences and exercises of the 17 countries and the regional...

17 August 2020

Summary: Lessons and Recommendations on the Use of CVA for the Caribbean Atlantic Hurricane Season

Report

This is a summary document of the CALP Network’s Winds of Change: Lessons and Recommendations on the Use of CVA in the Caribbean and includes a matrix of learning and evidence from the region used to inform the report. This document is made possible by the generous support of the American people...

13 August 2020

Cash Working Group Leads Meeting Report – July 2020

Report

The meeting was set to enable CWG Leads and Co-Leads reflect on the COVID-19 response, address challenges they face in this regard and look into trends and opportunities the response brings.

7 August 2020

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

Report

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...

27 July 2020

Kenya Cash Working Group Achievements | JULY 2020

Report

The Kenya Cash Working Group’s (KCWG) operational information map (4 Ws) shows the various CVA actors’ coverage as of June 2020. Those actors are responding to different emergencies in Kenya including Rapid-Onset flooding, Desert locust invasion and COVID-19 pandemic funded by various donors.

24 July 2020

The Provision of Cash and Voucher Assistance in the Response to the Venezuela Refugee and Migrant Crisis: Findings and lessons learned, Executive summary

Report

This study, for which data was compiled between March and April 2020, seeks to document lessons and good practices in the delivery of CVA in Ecuador and Colombia by humanitarian organisations and governments, in response to migrants and refugees from Venezuela. The purpose of this analysis is...

23 July 2020

Cash Transfers and Social Protection: From Alignment to Integration

Policy paper

As the use of cash transfer programming grows in response to COVID-19, demands on the aid community’s own interventions and capacity to support state-led measures continue to grow in equal measure. Originally envisioned as a means of better coordinating parallel and remarkably similar humanitarian and...

10 July 2020

Ep. 3. What does the future of financial assistance mean for your work today?

Podcast

In this episode of the CashCast we speak to Meg Sattler from Ground Truth Solutions, Lars Peter Nissen from ACAPS, and Jenny Caswell from GSMA about the changes we should be seeing today, to effectively meet the humanitarian needs of the future.

Returns from Iran and Pakistan Funding Needs

Report

As of 23 June 2018, 348,506 undocumented Afghan returnees have crossed back into Afghanistan from Iran. The months of April and May have witnessed an average of 20,000 returns each week. The total represents a 50% increase of returns over the same period in 2017. The larger return is associated with a...

5 June 2020

Examples and Good Practices on the Use of Multi-Purpose Cash in the Food Security Sector

Guidelines and Tools

This global Food Security Cluster (gFSC) document was produced by the Cash and Markets Working Group (CMWG) to highlight the role and engagement of food security actors through different country experiences and good practices.
In recent years, multi-purpose cash (MPC) has been adopted more widely to...

1 June 2020

Protocol for the Prevention and Control of Infections in the Context of the COVID19 Pandemic

Guidelines and Tools

28 May 2020

Readiness Checklist for Cash Working Groups in light of COVID-19 Response – Version 2

Guidelines and Tools

This checklist is designed to assist CWGs adjust their plans and prepare to play an enhanced role in coordination of CVA in the context of increasing (and in some cases unprecedented) needs and limitations of COVID-19. Responses should, as ever, be context specific. We suggest that CWGs consider the...

19 May 2020

CWG SS Tipsheet: Protection from COVID-19 during cash distribution (PPE)

Guidelines and Tools

This document is created by Cash Working Group (CWG) South Sudan to provide guidance/key messages to partners, sectors, inter-sector working group, FSP, communities and beneficiaries on key safety measures in the context of COVID-19. The document compiles recommendations from different sources including,...

14 May 2020

We Turn Mobile Sim Cards Into Bank Accounts for the Emerging World

Presentation

Fonbnk LLC (“Fonbnk” or the “Company”) is new distributed finance company, providing borderless banking infrastructure directly to unbanked people around the world using the mobile internet. Anyone with a prepaid mobile SIM card and a verified online identity can now have a global stored value...

5 May 2020