Actions taken:
The Government of the United Kingdom plays a central role in The Grand Bargain, a unique agreement between some of the largest donors and humanitarian organisations who have committed to get more means into the hands of people in need and to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of humanitarian action. The UK, as convenor of the former cash workstream under the Grand Bargain and through our role on the Facilitation Group, has had a leading role in helping to shape the outcome of the cash coordination caucus. This in turn led to the adoption in 2022 of the cash coordination model by the Inter-Agency Standing Committee. This model sets out the structure, function, leadership and resourcing of cash coordination between donor states and organisations.
Since then, through its membership of the Donor Cash Forum, the UK has signed up to the “Common Donor Approach to Humanitarian Cash Programming” (CDA), which lays out a vision for the use of cash in humanitarian action and sets general principles to guide programming, entitled the “Joint Donor Statement on Humanitarian Cash Transfers” (JDS) (2019). This in turn identifies priority areas where donors can improve coordination by focusing on nine key principles, as well as the “Statement and Guiding Principles on Interoperability of Data Systems in Humanitarian Cash Programming” (2022). The UK took the lead internationally in producing guidelines for the delivery of humanitarian cash transfers in response to COVID-19. Through the Donor Cash Forum (DCF) the UK continues to promote the principles set out in these documents and translate them into practice and is leading the workstream on locally-led and people-centred cash.
The UK continues to commit to champion cash wherever feasible as set out in its Humanitarian Reform Policy (2017), International Development Strategy and Humanitarian Framework (2022) and White Paper on International Development (2023).
The UK has continued to expand our use of cash in humanitarian contexts including in response to COVID-19, more than doubling our use of cash in key humanitarian settings between 2015/16 and 2019/20. Between April 2022 to March 2023 13.8 million people were reached with food aid, cash and voucher transfers through bilateral humanitarian and social protection support.
The UK strives to mainstream gender equality and social inclusion (GESI) into all our cash and other programming. We seek to align cash and ‘Accountability to Affected People’ approaches to ensure that all populations, including women and girls, have access to feedback mechanisms to channel complaints, suggestions and preferences to aid providers. The UK’s What Works in Preventing Gender Based Violence programme delivered research on cash and gender relations, strengthening evidence on the prevention of and response to violence against women and girls, with a focus on conflict and humanitarian crises.
The UK has worked across many humanitarian contexts to support partners in laying foundations for stronger linkages between cash assistance and social protection and making systemic change for more inclusive and shock responsive social protection. For example, in 2020, the UK played a key role in supporting research to identify opportunities in Nigeria to strengthen shock responsive social protection, engaging collaboratively with the Social Protection Development Partners’ Group in supporting the Vice President’s High-Level Forum, and the humanitarian Cash Working Group.
The UK has been a thought leader on scaling up and mainstreaming cash approaches since the High-Level Panel on Cash and significantly contributed to the evidence base underpinning cash programming and linking cash assistance to social protection systems. For example, the UK is investing in research on social assistance in crises and supporting countries to build and strengthen core and shock-responsive social protection systems in crisis settings through the Better Assistance in Crises (BASIC) programme and the Social Protection Technical Assistance, Advice, and Resources (STAAR) Facility.
In addition to bilateral programming, the UK funds Cash and Voucher Assistance (CVA) through its core funding business cases with United Nations agencies and the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement. Specifically for the Movement:
– The UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) provides the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) with core funding every year, which contributes to its ability to support global cash programming in its emergency operations on a progressively greater scale, as well as supporting ICRC’s bilateral country programmes in a range of contexts where cash is used as a key assistance modality.
– FCDO supports the International Federation of Red Cross (IFRC) with core funding every year, which contributes to its ability to support global cash programming, including staffing costs for cash coordinators and cash learning officers. It provides funds to specific IFRC Emergency Appeals which include substantial cash and voucher components.
– FCDO supports the British Red Cross with core funding for several focus areas, including cash and voucher assistance. This enables it to target national societies to be operationally ready to deliver cash with capabilities and systems in place so that cash becomes a routine and predictable part of humanitarian response. FCDO core funding also contributes to the British Red Cross’s cash school, which aims to train and grow an international cadre of cash practitioners to support CVA in the Movement. The British Red Cross also hosts the Cash Hub Platform, a one-stop shop for knowledge sharing and learning which serves as a hub for CVA networks, communities of practice, and a showcase for the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement’s role in CVA delivery.
