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Why cash assistance?
UNHCR’s 2024 round of the Socio-Economic Insights (SEIS) survey5 indicates that while the financial vulnerability of refugees from Ukraine residing in neighbouring countries—specifically those in the 2024
Regional Refugee Response Plan (RRP) for the Ukraine Situation —has diminished over the past year, one in five still live below the poverty line. When factoring in the disproportionately high accommodation costs refugees face, largely due to the region’s high homeownership rates among locals, the poverty rate of refugees and asylum seekers in RRP countries rises to 40%, more than three times that of host communities.
Poverty has tangible consequences; affected refugees report feeling less secure when faced with challenges to accessing healthcare, securing housing, registering children in school, and reducing food intake due to financial constraints. In RRP countries, UNHCR works to ensure cash assistance meets the essential needs of such vulnerable refugees: while investing heavily in advocacy for the inclusion of forcibly displaced and stateless people into national systems, UNHCR responds to the most vulnerable cases faced with housing, health, education and other subsistence needs.
In non-RRP countries, UNHCR cash assistance supports larger scale responses such as in Armenia, or widespread protection vulnerabilities such as in Türkiye, while focusing on smaller target groups in the other operations, where cash assistance is covering a variety of needs linked with daily subsistence as well as education, health, inclusion, shelter, training, documentation and winterization.