1. Providing Cash Assistance to Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh

2. CBI Fundamentals

4. What are cash-based interventions (CBI)?
All programs where cash (or vouchers for goods or services) is directly provided to beneficiaries.
In humanitarian assistance used to refer to the provision of cash or vouchers given to individuals, household or community recipients; not to governments or other state actors.
CBI covers all modalities of cash-based assistance, including vouchers. This excludes remittances and microfinance in humanitarian interventions (although microfinance and money transfer institutions may be used for the actual delivery of cash).
CBI can be used interchangeably with CBA, Cash Based Transfers (CBT) and Cash Transfer Programming (CTP)
Source: CaLP Cash
Transfers Glossary

5. Cash Transfer Modalities

6. Unconditional Cash
No demands on beneficiaries and assumes that beneficiaries will use cash to obtain food or non-food items Non-contributory transfers and with no expectation of repayment Cash transfers are assistance to beneficiaries in the form of cash payments or bank transfers.

7. Conditional Cash Based on two types of conditionality
Qualifying conditions:
Vocational training
Attending a health clinic
Community works
Building the foundations of a temporary shelter
Use conditions: (restricted/unrestricted)
Money to be spent on specified items
Shelter materials, livelihood assets, school fees etc.

8. Cash for work
Cash for work is the payment of cash wages in exchange for work that is done on public works schemes or community assets
Objectives:
Increase people’s purchasing power
Create or rehabilitate community assets
Provide temporary employment/livelihood
CASH FOR WORK
Cash-for-work is the payment of cash wages in exchange of work that is done either on individual projects or on public works schemes.
The main objective is to increase people’s purchasing power to both enable access to immediate food and non-food needs and/or to livelihoods recovering. The secondary objective is to create community or individual assets and build local capacity by enhancing skill-sets. These assets ideally should improve the livelihoods, or public health environment of the community as a whole.
The programme is designed to provide work opportunities for largely unskilled labour and be as labour intensive as possible to ensure high rates of participation. The activities, where possible, are defined, prioritised and implemented by affected communities and are designed to benefit the wider community.

9. Voucher Transfer Modalities
Paper or electronic entitlements which can be exchanged with specified retailers
Commodity vouchers
Exchangeable for a fixed quantity of goods and/or services
Cash Vouchers
Exchangeable for the equivalent cash value with a choice of specified items
Conditionality and restrictions may also apply to vouchers

10. Delivery mechanisms

11. planning to minimise risks in your approach as well

12. CBI Feasibility

13. planning to minimise risks in your approach as well

14. CBI Pre-conditions Functioning markets &Availability of products
Cash based economy
Physical access to markets
Political acceptance
Community agreement
Reliable recipient identification system
FSP/Trader willingness and capacity
Reliable payment system

15. planning to minimise risks in your approach as well

16. CBI pilot in Bangladesh:
Beneficiaries: The pilot phase will target 13,000 families (approximately 60,000 individuals).
Cost per family: $30 per month per family in the form of ‘cash over the counter’
Distribution: Cash will be distributed by the FSP at the cash distribution site in KTP.

17. Risks and mitigation measures

18. Mitigation measures/comments
Risk
Impact
Likelihood
Risk classification
Mitigation measures/comments
Inclusion/exclusion error
Medium
High
Verification exercise before implementation; Ensure a correct, up-to-date registration list with photos or other unique identifier
Taxation of beneficiaries by staff, authorities, IP
Presence at distribution; strict monitoring
Beneficiaries spend on anti-social items
Sensitization campaign, possibility to shift to vouchers
Beneficiaries spend on other priority items
Women doesn’t have free access to market
Sensitization campaign, design an alternate
Increased violence between couple over use of entitlement
Low
Sensitization campaign on co-decision and management; Set-up or strengthen existing confidential complaints mechanisms
Insecurity during cash distributions
Involvement of police during distributions; ensure adequate crowd control measures are in place.
FSP shares beneficiary data with country of origin
Do a privacy impact assessment of the FSP; ensure data protection clauses in the contract
Funds diverted by staff, IP or FSP
Ensure anti-fraud clauses in the contract; strict monitoring
Prices are fixed arbitrarily by retailers
Strict monitoring; display table with prices at shop; exclusion of non-compliant traders
Confusion of roles and responsibilities of different staff involved in UNHCR
Define clear role for each staff involved as a part of the SOPs
Delays in the distribution
Clear contract clauses with IP/FSP; SOPs with timeframe for each activity/task and delegation/attribution of responsibilities; GANTT chart outlining process flows and timing
Quality of the goods provided do not respect standards
Clear contract clauses with product specifications/quality standards; monitoring during the distribution
Complaint mechanism not responsive or not in place
Define roles and responsibilities both for collecting complaints and for providing feedback
Reconciliations are faulty, with omissions
Ensure clauses in the contract for clear responsibilities; strict monitoring
New arrivals do not receive assistance (gap between their arrival and the following distribution)
New arrivals may receive the first monthly distribution in-kind; possible agreement with the FSP to assist this category

19. UNHCR’s Refugee Assistance Information System As result of the linking exercise FCC with MoHA

20. UNHCR’s Refugee Assistance Information System Keeps refugee information up to date Prevents duplication of efforts Helps to provide targeted assistance to persons of concern Reduces fraud and abuse of assistance services Provides efficient reporting tools Maintains security of data (RAIS is restricted to authorized UNHCR staff and registered users only)

21. Thank you!
Questions/Debate