A wad of cash passes from hand to hand. In the background, the typical scenery of a South Sudanese village. A photo that may surprise those unfamiliar with the different aspects of humanitarian action, but the subject is becoming more and more common in the reality of our work.
South Sudan. Our operator is handing out money. An elderly disabled lady, a 14-year-old girl who was orphaned along with her four younger brothers and sisters, a woman abandoned by her husband, are receiving it. All vulnerable people, in need of immediate help.
We empower people to make choices that are necessary to improve their conditions. This is the meaning and objective of cash assistance interventions carried out by INTERSOS in different areas of the world. “The main principle behind cash assistance is respect” our Protection Advisor Christina Nisha explains. “Respect for people who are certainly able, if enabled, to take care of themselves, free to choose what they prioritize”.
Empowering people is the exact opposite of passive assistance. For this reason, cash assistance is increasingly preferred over other forms of intervention. It is one thing to receive a food ration (a solution still practiced when there are no alternatives), it is another thing to choose for yourself what to grow, raise or buy at the local market (this aspect is very important, because it sustains the local economy in humanitarian crisis areas, and, in the case of displaced people and refugees, it favors acceptance by the host community). The freedom to be able to choose what to buy for oneself and the family upholds the dignity of the people involved in the eyes of their family and the society.
The disabled woman mother of six, whose photo we were just looking at, was able to improve the condition of her home (a tukul, the traditional straw and clay hut of many African villages), adding plastic sheets to insulate it from the elements with the support she received from our cash assistance programme. She bought blankets, clothing and shoes for the whole family, canceled all her family’s debt, and, last but not least, she set a small amount aside for future needs. The 14-year-old girl and her four siblings left without parents, in addition to satisfying their most immediate needs, were able to access psychological support and return to primary education.
Direct money transfer is only one of the forms of cash assistance, certainly the simplest. But more sophisticated systems are developing, such as the distribution of vouchers (including electronic ones) in agreements with local banks, that can be spent to access a predetermined package of goods or services, including access to health services.
When we talk about cash assistance intervention, many ask us how we ensure proper use of the money: “Each intervention follows a case management protocol that begins with identifying the most vulnerable beneficiaries, in order to assess their needs, and concludes with monitoring of the results obtained” Christina Nisha emphasizes. “Cases of misuse of funds are quite rare. On the contrary, we observe that people use the money received to satisfy real and basic needs: Access to food, health and education are the most frequent requests, in that order.”
Cash assistance projects can be incorporated at different stages of humanitarian action. For example, in the case of the intervention implemented by INTERSOS following the explosion that devastated Beirut on August, 4th 2020, economic support was provided in two phases: phase one as emergency cash, immediate support to the most vulnerable in order to respond to their most urgent needs, primarily food and health; phase two in order to support the rehabilitation of damaged buildings, in accordance with an approved project, encourage the return to normalcy.
Everything described thus far means that the work of humanitarian operators is changing. “Cash assistance is not a specific sector of intervention,” Christina Nisha clarifies, “but an approach. Surely it is part of a humanitarian environment that increasingly requires professionals trained from a technical point of view in different sectors, bearers of managerial skills, capable of monitoring complex budgets and human resources and, at the same time, strongly anchored to those humanitarian principles that are the core of our work”.