5.1 Humanitarian–Social Protection Alignment

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building permanent administrative capacity may not be a priority. Indeed, often such programs are run outside government structures, with implementation reliant on international agencies, not-for-profits, and communities, although there is a movement to link humanitarian and development structures and methods more closely (see box 5.1). Humanitarian agencies

BOX 5.1

Humanitarian–Social Protection Alignment

Over recent years, a growing desire to move to more effective structures for addressing recurrent shocks has led to calls for greater coordination of humanitarian actors and government-led permanent social programs.a In Ethiopia, this led to the creation of the more stable and development-oriented Productive Safety Net Program and agreed systems to coordinate its expansion during droughts with humanitarian assistance. In Mali, the beneficiaries of humanitarian assistance linked to the political instability in the region of Gao and in the North of the country were eventually incorporated into to the national Jigisemejiri program so that they could benefit from the livelihoods component.b Hence, this coordination implies more stable and continuous support to the poor in “normal” times to build up their resilience and help mitigate the impacts of some of the recurrent shocks.

There is thus much discussion of how humanitarian and development assistance can work better together. Prominent threads of discussion include the use of geographic targeting and defining appropriate triggers for response to different shocks/crises and harmonization of eligibility criteria, in which the capacities of countries/agencies are built jointly or functions are shared between humanitarian partners and governments. Moreover, collaboration between governments and humanitarian agencies in implementing multiyear government programs can generate the resilience needed by the population, as in some cases, the government may have limited capacity to operate in certain areas of the country, particularly in the case of conflict. So far, joint systems are more the exception than the rule, but such collaborations can be seen in a few countries as presented by Gentilini, Laughton, and O’Brien (2018), who review 12 country case studies.

The humanitarian context raises several context-specific design issues. For example, have livelihoods been lost to a disaster and is immediate cash or in-kind support needed? Will access to documentation and work permits enable displaced people to access employment?

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BOX 5.1 (continued)

If income support is provided, how do the benefit levels compare with average household consumption of the poor? This can matter particularly in displacement contexts. When internally displaced people receive significant humanitarian support while other conflict-affected but nondisplaced households do not, social tensions can arise, as in Iraq.c Similarly, relatively generous support for Syrian refugees in Iraq, Jordan, and Lebanon has created tension when poor households in host communities receive much less support from government programs (World Vision 2015; Durable Solutions Platform 2019).

A comparison of targeting approaches can be the start of understanding how to align humanitarian and government assistance systems. In Iraq, a desk study compared the government’s social assistance proxy means testing with that of allied humanitarian organizations. This was particularly relevant for two reasons. First, government social assistance had not been operating in territories controlled by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), which were an important focus of humanitarian activity. Thus, the humanitarian database was potentially a valuable source of referrals to government programs during recovery. Second, the overlap in eligibility for the two systems could inform the budgetary needs of expanding government programs. The desk study found a strong degree of overlap, which is currently being confirmed through collection of new data in the field.

a. In low-income/high-poverty countries that are highly dependent on rainfed agriculture, droughts are recurrent facts of life and the population has little resilience, so cycles of temporary emergency programming are recurrent. b. Premand and Stoeffler (2020) show that a multiyear government cash transfer program in rural Niger increased household consumption by about 10 percent on average among households affected by recurrent drought shocks. The transfers increased savings and helped households protect their earnings in agriculture and off-farm businesses when shocks occur. c. https://www.brookings.edu/blog/markaz/2015/04/28/the-overlooked -humanitarian-crisis-in-iraq-the-need-to-address-disparities/.

developed the Household Economy Analysis (HEA)9 approach, a livelihoodsbased framework, and used it to anticipate and respond to food crises. The HEA baseline defines livelihood zones, that is, geographical areas within which people broadly share the same patterns of access to food, income, and markets (Holzmann et al. 2008). The approach is sometimes used to identify geographic zones that are at risk of food insecurity. Within geographical areas, it identifies different wealth categories with clearly defined household characteristics, assets, income, and food needs. This is sometimes used for household-specific assessments as well, although the practical way of doing this can vary. In some places, a pure CBT process is used to identify

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households in each wealth category and target beneficiaries for assistance. In other places, focus groups are used to identify the characteristics of households in each wealth group and inform weights that can be used in a formula-based approach (Schnitzer 2019). Utilization of HEA is prominent among humanitarian agencies in the Sahel, but it is not widespread globally.

Public lotteries are sometimes used to allocate rationed slots in a program. Bance and Schnitzer (2021) challenge the social protection community to consider when lotteries may be useful. The view of the authors of this book is that a public lottery is a complementary tool for supporting the final selection of beneficiaries when there are more eligible people than can be covered; it is not a targeting method in and of itself since it does not measure or rank any aspect of welfare. Public lotteries have been used especially for public works programs (cash or food for work) in places as diverse as Argentina, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sierra Leone, and Tanzania, which, as the list suggests, are mostly low-income and/or fragile settings.10 This type of program is perhaps used more for public works than straight cash transfers because with cash transfers, it is easier to avoid rationing by spreading low benefits among many people. For public works, there is something of a lower bound set by wage levels and the nonwage costs of the programs, so the need to ration is harder to avoid. The process of running a lottery is quite simple. Once an initial list of applicants is defined using any of the aforementioned targeting methods, a random selection process is used. Program administrators can run the selection using electronic random draws or by picking numbers out of an urn at a community meeting. The principle of the fairness of the process is considered a plus, especially in fragile and conflict settings, as applicants have an equal chance to be selected. Errors of exclusion are clearly present as all those in the lottery are deemed needy/eligible according to the self- and geographic-targeting criteria, but the errors are transparent to political processes.

With so many different influences and contexts, it is not surprising that the choices of targeting methods, their implementation, and outcomes are varied. Although this section has described patterns that exist, there is enormous variation in implementation. It seems that every region has a few cases that do not fit the pattern, and virtually every combination of methods has been used somewhere, sometimes in unlikely places.

A common thread may be increasing expectations. When systems of eligibility assessment started to be developed, the role of social protection in development was much less accepted and capacities and expectations were rather low. The gradual building of capacity in countries that once had none has inspired those that more recently began the journey, and the data revolution inspires all. With this, the emphasis has shifted. If in prior