In emergencies, distributing cash in a targeted manner can often meet people's immediate needs more quickly and appropriately than the direct distribution of commodities such as food aid. Cash gives people choices and thereby preserves their dignity. Commodity distribution may pose logistical problems, takes time, and in the case of food aid, may disrupt local markets if food is actually available within the affected country or region. But among humanitarian agencies there are fears that cash transfers will pose security risks, create inflation, and fail to be used to meet basic needs. In this guide, the first of its kind, Oxfam staff members present the rationale behind cash-transfer programs, considering the arguments for and against cash as an alternative to commodity distribution. They also give guidance on when cash is the most appropriate intervention and how to assess this. Different types of cash intervention are compared--cash grants, vouchers, and cash-for-work--and the guide uses checklists to explain the practical steps involved in implementing them. They draw on the experience of Oxfam and other agencies of operating such programs, including responses to the devastation caused by the Indian Ocean tsunami in December 2004. The guidelines are primarily intended for NGO personnel: humanitarian program managers, food-security specialists, public-health engineers, finance staff, and logisticians. Policymakers in donor organizations and international agencies will also find them relevant. The sixteen cards contain key elements from the book to explain how to assess whether cash is the most appropriate response to any particular emergency. The cards and the paperback are also available as a set.

Adaptive social protection (ASP) helps to build the resilience of poor and vulnerable households to the impacts of large, covariate shocks, such as natural disasters, economic crises, pandemics, conflict, and forced displacement. Through the provision of transfers and services directly to these households, ASP supports their capacity to prepare for, cope with, and adapt to the shocks they face—before, during, and after these shocks occur. Over the long term, by supporting these three capacities, ASP can provide a pathway to a more resilient state for households that may otherwise lack the resources to move out of chronically vulnerable situations. Adaptive Social Protection: Building Resilience to Shocks outlines an organizing framework for the design and implementation of ASP, providing insights into the ways in which social protection systems can be made more capable of building household resilience. By way of its four building blocks—programs, information, finance, and institutional arrangements and partnerships—the framework highlights both the elements of existing social protection systems that are the cornerstones for building household resilience, as well as the additional investments that are central to enhancing their ability to generate these outcomes. In this report, the ASP framework and its building blocks have been elaborated primarily in relation to natural disasters and associated climate change. Nevertheless, many of the priorities identified within each building block are also pertinent to the design and implementation of ASP across other types of shocks, providing a foundation for a structured approach to the advancement of this rapidly evolving and complex agenda.

This evaluation of Yemen’s Cash for Nutrition intervention, a cash transfer program combined with nutritional trainings implemented by the Yemen Social Fund for Development (YSF), examines the program’s impacts on child nutrition indicators and related intermediate variables during a period of conflict. The decline in several indicators of welfare for the sample population that occurred after the beginning of the civil conflict in Yemen is also traced. Overall, the program decreased the share of children diagnosed with moderate or severe malnutrition and improved anthropometric indicators of nutritional status in children in the poorest third of households. The Cash for Nutrition program was funded by the World Bank through the United Nations Development Programme as part of the Yemen Emergency Crisis Response Project.

This book provides in-depth descriptions and analysis of how cash transfer programs have evolved and been used in Sub-Saharan Africa since 2000. The analysis focuses on program features and implementation, but it also highlights political economy issues and current knowledge gaps.

This open access book asks whether cash-transfer programs for very low-income households promote social and economic citizenship and, if so, under what conditions. To this end, it brings together elements that are too often considered separately: the transformation of social and economic citizenship rights in a market-centered context, and the increasing popularity of cash transfer as an instrument both of social policy and humanitarian action. We link these by juxtaposing theoretical treatment of citizenship and inclusion with concrete policy case studies set in contemporary Turkey. Cases are taken both from domestic social policy and international relief efforts aimed at Syrian refugees. Theoretical discussion and case studies lead to the conclusion that cash transfer programs can promote economic and social inclusion – if deployed at an appropriate scale; if sufficient financial, technical, and social resources are available; and if program design and implementation promotes market inclusion of beneficiaries both as consumers and workers.