In protracted crises characterised by conflict, displacement, and climate shocks, cash-plus programming is increasingly used to improve the wellbeing and livelihoods of chronically poor and food-insecure populations. By providing cash transfers alongside complementary services, skills and business training, and sometimes a large one-off cash grant or other productive assets, these programmes aim to boost household opportunities for engaging productively in local economies. In a new working paper emerging from the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO)-funded Better Assistance in Crises (BASIC) Research programme, we review the evidence on the effectiveness of cash-plus in protracted crisis settings.
Cash-plus programmes have much in common with aid approaches to bolster resilience. Both frame poverty and weakened livelihoods as products of individual or household shortcomings, instead of wider structural drivers of vulnerability. In protracted crises, this can refer to the exclusion of certain groups based on politics and laws, ongoing conflict, and chronic displacement. While cash-plus programmes have had some success in more peaceful settings, there is limited evidence of their suitability and effectiveness in protracted crisis contexts. In these instances, local economies still function, but with considerable distortions and uncertainty which means that the provision of public services is often thin, and conflict persists.
The working paper addresses this gap in evidence on cash-plus programming in protracted crisis settings. It is based on a comprehensive review of the design, effectiveness, and rationale of cash-plus programmes in 16 countries characterised by two or more dimensions of protracted crisis. Building on an earlier working paper, we develop a multi-dimensional indicator of protracted crisis that combines data on conflict, forced displacement, and climate change vulnerability. We consider programming contexts using this indicator along with a measure of social protection ‘system strength’ for each country, to review a range of design and implementation features of cash-plus programmes.
The realities of cash-plus in protracted crisis settings
The paper highlights five key findings about the nature and effectiveness of cash-plus programming in protracted crisis settings, which cover objectives, capacity, design, coverage, and evaluation:
- First, the objectives of cash-plus programmes mostly resemble those in stable settings, most notably to strengthen food security and improve productive capacity. Yet, few programmes show an explicit aim to influence structural determinants of resilience in these crisis-affected environments, such as peacebuilding, social cohesion, or the rehabilitation of infrastructure.
- Second, a wide range of stakeholders – governments, humanitarian agencies, other NGOs, UN agencies and private sector actors – are involved in implementation. This highlights both the capacity mix needed to operate in such complex settings, and also how various non-state actors substitute for the state in protracted crisis settings. While governments are noted as an implementor in many programmes, this often is restricted to strategic and policy direction, while government is less involved nearer to the point of delivery.
- Connecting to both points above, cash-plus programmes in protracted crises are often designed and implemented as discrete, stand-alone interventions, with very few connecting to existing social protection systems.
- Fourth, the coverage of cash-plus programmes is limited, primarily consisting of small-scale and pilot initiatives aimed at testing the effectiveness of a specific programming approach. This narrow focus restricts the exploration of more transformative approaches that could have a broader and more significant impact in crisis contexts.
- Finally, there is very little evidence of evaluations for cash-plus programmes in protracted crises. Evaluations are available for only half of the programmes we reviewed. Further, the evaluation methods used are predominantly quantitative, making it difficult to unravel the ‘impact pathways’ for observed impacts, and truly measure the success of such interventions.
The evaluations we reviewed illustrated that cash-plus programmes mainly result in small improvements in the livelihoods of those they target. The ‘big push’ that is often the promise of cash-plus programmes is difficult to achieve in settings with continuing conflict, poorly functioning or missing complementary services, and situations of extreme precarity associated with protracted displacement. So, what are the implications for those designing and implementing cash-plus programmes in protracted crises?
Transforming cash-plus programmes for protracted crisis settings
An obvious lesson is the need to find ways to establish and reinforce the connections between cash-plus programmes and the wider existing architecture strengthening the social and economic conditions of vulnerable populations. This may include, for instance, coordinating with the emerging national social protection systems, providing rights to the forcibly displaced, connecting with peacebuilding efforts where possible, and addressing specific risks and vulnerabilities of the most marginalised. This creates a tension between whether those involved in cash-plus programming should primarily seek better ways to work within protracted crises – by identifying tweaks to delivery mechanisms and processes, – or if they should also aim to work on the dynamics of crisis themselves – through designs that seek to influence the root causes of vulnerability.
Critical realism is required to understand the extent to which cash-plus interventions can address poverty, inequity, and power imbalances that shape extreme and chronic vulnerabilities in protracted crises. The level of intervention – targeting households and individuals – and the limited scale of most programmes suggest that it is unlikely that cash-plus programmes could have a significant bearing on the macro-level dynamics causing so much harm to people’s livelihoods. However, there is a need to better locate cash-plus programmes in the wider landscape of protracted crisis responses. Further research and collaboration among stakeholders across different sectors are essential to unlock the potential of cash-plus programming to improve livelihoods in protracted crises.
For more detail on the nature and effectiveness of cash-plus programming in protracted crisis settings, read the new BASIC Research Working Paper.
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