Terms of Reference Abuja Cash Working Group

I. Introduction

Since 2009, the Boko Haram insurgency has affected around 15M people in the North East of Nigeria.
Out of the total affected, around 7M are in need of humanitarian assistance. To date, 1.7M people are reported displaced due to the insurgency, mostly in Borno, Yobe Adamawa.
As early as 2013, there was an effort to bring together key players to strategize the response in the North East with Caritas Nigeria as lead convener. A series of trainings was organized with support from the Cash Learning Partnership (CALP). However, the consideration of Cash Transfer Programming (CTP) in humanitarian action was considered pre-mature at that time. This was coupled with high turn-over of key champions and changing realities on field, therefore, the initiation of a cash working group (CWG) experienced a lull.
In November 2015, the CWG re-convened, through the leadership of Caritas Nigeria and support from Catholic Relief Services. The CWG is revitalizing its presence due to the growing need from CTP implementing agencies to collaborate in responding to the needs of the affected populations. The group is defining its role and purpose to support CTP implementers in the North East and optimizing results.
However, when Borno CWG evolved and became fully operational, the members of Abuja Cash working group noticed that there were some elements of duplication of roles between the two CWGs.
This led to the agreement by the members that Abuja based CWG TOR be revised to reflect more roles on strategic and advocacy issues while Borno CWG concentrate on operational & technical issue related to CTP. This decision was further reinforced by the recommendations of the CaLP Mission in Nigeria in November 2016.