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An initiative within the UNICEF-IFRC partnership on cash preparedness and social protection readiness for disaster response in hazard prone areas of Central Asia.
1. SUMMARY
The partnership between UNICEF and the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) in Central Asia includes a focus on strengthening shock-responsive social protection (SRSP) systems and cash preparedness. This requires the careful planning and coordination, both within the partnership and with governments and other humanitarian groups at local and national levels. This is to promote the use and coordination of shock-responsive social protection and other cash assistance programmes in emergencies, to promote sustainable, localised approaches, to avoid duplication in assistance, and to ensure help reaches those affected by shocks.
NORCAP/CashCap, as a neutral partner, helps bring different organizations together, ensuring complementarity between mandates and planned interventions. NORCAP/CashCap’s contribution overall, via its neutral inter-agency mandate, aims to support this partnership and others involved in social protection and cash assistance during emergencies, ensuring smoother, more effective interventions.
In 2024, a Cashcap standby partner was deployed to Central Asia; the first task was to conduct a scoping exercise to identify priority actions per country and regional level, related to the use and coordination of cash assistance in emergencies in Central Asia. Whilst there are differences at the country level outlined in the following report, key findings of this scoping that cut across the five countries are:
• The need for a common understanding of SRSP and cash assistance. Stakeholders –whether individual, country, and organization/agency - had different types of understanding about Social Protection, SRSP and cash assistance in emergencies. This lack of consistency makes it hard to promote and coordinate these approaches effectively and could lead to malpractice (i.e. attempts to align transfer values which have different objectives¹).
• Institutionalising Social Protection and Cash Assistance in emergency planning. Although efforts have been made to strengthen social protection systems and incorporate cash-based interventions during emergencies, gaps remain. There is still a need to institutionalize these approaches within core emergency planning documents (e.g., inter-agency humanitarian contingency plans, or Governmental contingency plans). This is further hindered by often limited coordination between emergency ministries and social protection agencies.
• Opportunities to advance SRSP and cash assistance in a non-IASC context: Despite being prone to numerous shocks, Central Asia it is not typically considered an Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC) setting. This presents an opportunity to focus on strengthening national and localized approaches to emergency response. However, international actors often revert to assumptions and practice typical of more fragile contexts, for example developing parallel humanitarian cash systems before evaluating the readiness of national social protection systems, or before exploring opportunities to work with localized approaches. This potential to align efforts with local systems is underutilized.
• Tailoring SRSP and the coordination of cash in emergencies to each context: The scoping exercise identified that different ways of coordinating the use of SRSP and cash in emergencies are emerging – from more traditional development forum and CWGs in Tajikistan, to a government-led taskforce to coordinate SRSP and emergency cash activities in Turkmenistan.
• The need for better documentation in the different countries for enhanced cross-subregional engagement and exchanges. Different countries have advanced different topics, which are unique to the Central Asia context. There is an opportunity for better documentation of these different topics, to cross-fertilise best practices, noting that there is no-one-size-fits-all approach to coordination in the different countries.
• Lack of Capacity for Cash Coordination in NonIASC Settings: There is a capacity gap when it comes to enabling effective cash coordination in non-IASC settings, where traditional humanitarian capacities may be less prevalent. Strengthening local capacity and coordination mechanisms for national response systems is essential to ensure sustainable approaches in this context.