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Why Cash?
Cash-Based Interventions (CBIs) at UNHCR play a pivotal role in delivering effective and targeted assistance to displaced and returnee populations. By providing financial support directly to beneficiaries, CBIs empower individuals and families to address their unique needs, fostering self-reliance and dignity. This approach ensures the flexibility for recipients to prioritize their most pressing concerns, such as food, health, and housing among others but also stimulates local economies and promotes a sense of agency amid crises. The strategic utilization of CBIs reflects UNHCR's commitment to innovative, person-centered solutions, creating a positive impact on the lives of those we serve.
Through the purchase of goods and services from local markets, cash assistance assists in stimulating local economies and supporting local businesses, and create linkages between the people we serve and local markets to promote local production and trade. It further reduces the need for costly international procurement and transportation by aid agencies, and associated logistical challenges. Studies have indicated that cash transfers can thereby be a more cost-effective aid modality, eliminating overhead costs of procurement, shipping, storage, and distribution of physical goods.
Cash transfers can be quickly scaled up or down in response to evolving needs or emergencies, offering a more adaptable and responsive solution, compared to in-kind support or vouchers, which may require logistical adjustments or renegotiation of agreements. In the context of returns and reintegration in Afghanistan, UNHCR conducts careful monitoring, evaluation and coordination with other interventions to ensure the success of cash assistance.
Who is Eligible?
UNHCR assesses the people we serve through the multisectoral rapid household assessment form (RHAF) and beneficiary selection and prioritization based on the scorecard. Following the production of a beneficiary list, a cash plan is created and approved prior to the distribution of the first installment through a financial service provider (FSP). Moreover, UNHCR is providing cash assistance to Afghan returnees through Encashment Centers located in Jalalabad, Kabul, Kandahar and Herat, helping them cover their travel costs, immediate needs, and facilitating access to essential services to support reintegration processes.
Working with Partners
UNHCR is working with international and national partners including UN agencies, International and National NGOs, and civil society to ensure coordinated and complementary programming in Afghanistan, including addressing the complex challenges of displacement and achieving the collective objectives in the Priority Areas of Return and Reintegration (PARRs) and other areas of origin.
UNHCR and its partners work closely with local communities and stakeholders to ensure that CBIs are designed and implemented in a way that maximizes their positive impact on the local economy. UNHCR has established partnerships with local financial service providers to facilitate cash transfers. These partnerships leverage existing networks and infrastructure, enabling efficient delivery of cash assistance to beneficiaries in remote or wide areas.