By John Bryant, Leen Fouad
In the last 15 years, the use of cash transfers as a humanitarian tool has surged from less than 1% of the total value of humanitarian assistance to almost 20%. For a diverse sector resistant to change, this breakthrough is a qualified success.
However, the rapid rise of cash has slowed in the past five years, despite its many advantages, and its transformative potential has not yet been reached. In this case study we interrogate the public and private narratives that drove the cash breakthrough and those that worked against it, as well as the narratives that have stemmed its potential for driving system reform.
Understanding the role different narratives played in framing arguments and reinforcing evidence in the case of cash holds powerful lessons for other sector reform agendas.
Key messages
- The greater adoption of cash assistance is one of the few successful humanitarian reform initiatives in past few decades. The value of cash as a proportion of humanitarian assistance has increased from less than 1% to 19%. A combination of narratives of efficiency and choice and preferences for affected people were key to this success. Yet presenting cash as a ‘technical modality’, rather than a major reform , made the agenda less threatening to humanitarian actors, but likely at the cost of delivering a more transformative potential.
- This lack of transformation matters because the way in which cash programmes are justified, designed and managed are still consistent with more traditional humanitarian narratives of deserving, vulnerable participants. These are increasingly at odds with the sector’s own commitments to driving a more participatory and locally-led approach to relief.
- Humanitarian organisations are not passive recipients of external narratives and have power and agency to challenge them. Without that, gains like cash adoption without a transformation of those deeper ideas around aid will prove fragile.
- How narratives influenced the adoption of cash has lessons for agendas like localisation and decolonisation. Adopting a ‘narrative lens’ reveals successes in terms of scale, and limitations in terms of transformative potential. It shows how the humanitarian sector can adapt and co-opt threats to its current way of working. Ultimately, the cash experience indicates the need to embrace a plurality of narratives to drive reform within a sector dominated by powerful actors.
Change without transformation: how narratives influenced the humanitarian cash agenda Download PDF