 Hi there, my name is Laura Madsen and I am a protection officer with UNHCR working on cash-based intervention and today we're going to talk about cash-based intervention and protection. So the objectives of today will be to define CBI and to be able to identify its various forms, to be able to use protection risk and benefit analysis tool to inform the response analysis or in other words to decide the appropriateness of a CBI as a modality of assistance. And to be able to distinguish between protection mainstreaming, protection integration and standalone protection programming as they relate to CBI's. So why do we need to think about protection in CBI's? First I think it's probably important to define what we mean when we're talking about protection. The Interagency Standing Committee defines protection as encompassing all activities aimed at obtaining full respect for the rights of individuals in accordance to the human rights, refugee law and humanitarian law. Protection can involve either removing individuals or groups from a risk threat or situation of violence that may adversely affect their fundamental rights for freedoms or intervening at the source of the violence to stop or reduce it. Protection is important in CBI's that in all sectors where humanitarian actors have a responsibility to place this protection at the center of humanitarian action. Protection priorities need to be captured in the humanitarian response plan. Humanitarian country teams are encouraged to develop a comprehensive response or protection strategy that can provide the framework necessary to address the most urgent and serious protection risks as well as to prevent and stop the recurrence of violations of international human rights and international humanitarian law. So what are cash based interventions? CBI's refer to all programs where cash or vouchers for goods or services is directly provided to beneficiaries. In the context of humanitarian assistance the term is used to refer to the provision of cash or vouchers given to individuals, households or community recipients, not to governments or other state actors. CBI's cover all modalities of cash based assistance including vouchers. This however excludes remittances in microfinance and humanitarian interventions although microfinance and money transfer institutions may be used for the actual delivery of cash. The CBI's are not a program but one modality for a humanitarian response alongside in-kind distribution, service provision, technical assistance that helps to achieve programmatic results such as enabling populations to meet basic needs. They're typically used when target populations are facing an issue of accessibility to goods and services due to insufficient resources and other barriers that limit their access. The advantage with CBI's is that they use local markets and service providers to meet the needs of effective populations. So provided that markets are well provisioned and can scale up its supply when faced with increased demand, CBI's might be the preferred intervention modality because they inject money into the local economy. If populations however are facing an issue of availability of quality of goods and services, the provision of cash or vouchers might cause inflation due to insufficient supply in which case you might want to reconsider in-kind or a combination of CBI in-kind. So key terminologies in CBI. Conditional and unconditional cash. This refers to whether a condition must be met before beneficiary may obtain the cash or the voucher. This could include things like cash for work, attendance at training, bringing children for doctor's checkups depending on what the objective for the program are. Restricted and unrestricted cash refers to how money can be spent. Restricted grants are typically provided through vouchers which limit the expenditures to certain places. For example, at grocery stores or selected traders or commodity. So an example of that would be a voucher worth X number of kilograms of rice. Restricted CBI's are usually adopted when a program requires that cash be spent on specific commodities or services. However, this commodity or service is not necessarily the highest priority of the target population. Unrestricted cash grants will usually be spent on the household's most urgent needs. And finally we have cash delivery mechanisms which refers to delivery mechanisms of how beneficiaries will receive the cash or the voucher. So this could include physical cash and envelope, bank cards, electronic vouchers, ATM cards, mobile banking can even be an option. Key considerations when selecting the term for mechanism include local availability of services, distances to services, access including safety and service costs and speed and ease of setting up the mechanism to be used. So now we'll talk about conceptualizing protection. These are the assistance. The interagency policy on protection describes protection in a continuum and we start with protection mainstreaming on the left to protection integration and then standalone protection programs. In the guide for cash for protection and cash based interventions this continuum is applied specifically to CBI's but these are the general definitions. So protection mainstreaming is an imperative for all humanitarian actors. It's a way for designing and implementing all programs that protection risks and potential violations are taken into consideration. To mainstream protection actors need to understand who is at risk from what or from whom as well as why and the consequences of their actions. Protection integration involves incorporating protection objectives into the programming of sector specific responses to achieve protection outcomes. Integrated protection programming requires all humanitarian actors to commit whatever feasible and appropriate to protection objectives and the design of their activities. Standalone protection programs are managed typically by protection actors and humanitarian actors with a protection expertise. They play a role in ensuring the implementation of specialized protection activities in specific areas with specific objectives to achieve protection outcomes. So what are the most important considerations for designing programs or protection principles are mainstreamed. Protection risks are detected and mitigation measures are put in place. So protection must be mainstreamed throughout the CBI program cycle. In programs where protection is mainstreamed protection principles are incorporated into sectoral interventions with an objective to meet one or multiple basic needs such as food security, nutrition, shelter or livelihood support where cash or vouchers are used as a response modality. Examples of mitigation measures for protection risks can be put in place to include for instance risks related to safety and dignity, fraud, theft, acceptance of cash as suitable modality, social relations and others. So this slide represents the CBI and protection risk and benefit analysis tool and it's a very simple matrix with protection areas noted on the left hand column as safety and dignity, access, data protection and beneficiary privacy, individuals with specific needs, social relations, fraud and market impacts and access. These areas are typically defined when we're thinking about protection risks but they're not fixed and they could be adapted depending on your context. And the matrix takes you through different steps in terms of identifying which risks are apparent within those protection areas. The different community-based protection prevention or mitigation measures that could be put in place, prevention or mitigation measures that can be put in place by humanitarian agencies, benefits and then the decision as to whether you're going to use the CBI in-kind assistance or no response at all. We will go through an example of what this looks like when you're actually conducting the analysis. So in the first instance here we have safety and dignity and the protection risk that is identified is theft and looting or extortion. And then there's a column that discusses what the evidence says and is the risk specific to CBI. And in this case no in-kind assistance may be more visible and it's typically less portable than cash making it an easier target for theft. A 2013 UNHCR WFP review of the evidence on CBI's and protection found that risks or theft and manipulation are not exclusive to CBI's and can be alleviated with a good program design. In the column of humanitarian agency mitigation measures you can find measures such as implementing complaints and feedback mechanisms for beneficiaries to ensure that they have a channel to report any kinds of issues that come up. Two-way feedback mechanisms between communities and humanitarian agencies involving individuals in households and communities in assessment and design can also help to mitigate risks before the implementation of a program. Clear information and two-way feedback mechanisms with beneficiaries, whistleblowing mechanisms, and swift agency response to report fraud or corruption. The potential benefits of using CBI in this case include the dignity of choice, assistance according to personal or household preferences, to be able to purchase exactly what is needed, an increase in participation, and the accountability to beneficiaries. And CBI's also in this case offer a low visibility and a discrete nature to deliver assistance which could be in the form of mobile phones or bank accounts so that individuals aren't identified as receiving assistance perhaps on their different vulnerabilities or selection criteria. And the evidence about the potential protection benefits and outcomes include improvements in household economy and they do not necessarily have lasting secondary effects on women's health empowerment or social connectedness. So that's an example of one analysis for one area of protection. We're going to move on to protection integration in CBI and we're just going to give an example here of a study that was conducted in 2016. It's a mixed method study on the causal mechanisms through which cash and in-kind food transfers decrease intimate partner violence. It was a WFP program. Six months cash vouchers and in-kind food support in northern Ecuador were provided to beneficiaries and it was conditional on participation to monthly nutritional workshops. So this example illustrates protection integration because it's a program that has food security and nutrition objectives but it also incorporates a protection objective which should be to decrease intimate partner violence. The study looked at different pathways the causal pathways in which the decrease in intimate partner violence took place based on a theory of change but I think for these purposes just understanding that there are two separate objectives within the same program gives you a good understanding of what protection integration looks like. Stand alone protection activities in CBI. So this is the third type of programming that we're going to talk about and it's based on a study that was carried out in 2016 called integrating cash transfers into gender-based violence programs. The specialized protection activities or programs have specific protection objectives as a reminder. They aim to help to prevent and respond to protection concerns such as violence exploitation deprivation or discrimination and to support beneficiaries to enjoy their rights. So this example is with the UNHCR commission study in Jordan that examined a program where cash assistance was designed as a tool to build resilience to SGVV within the SGVV response and prevention program. Protection and empowerment activities were complementary to the goal of mitigating GBV risks and cash assistance was identified as a needed intervention because of the high correlation between exposure to SGVV and the lack of financial resources. So 170 to 250 USD per month for at least six months is provided to refugee women in addition to psychosocial support and gender discussion groups for male and female household members. The key findings of the report demonstrated that cash in addition to gender discussion groups can result in decreases in domestic violence and cash can have a short-term life-saving use. Lasting effects were only found as a result of the psychosocial services and discussion groups and cash-facilitated participation in markets and feelings of safety due to social interactions. So as a recap how can CBI contribute to the reduction of how can CBI contribute to a reduction of protection risks? We have a couple of examples here to just give further illustration. Cash transfers used to provide food assistance must provide safe distribution points to ensure that no further harm is experienced by those accessing assistance. This is an example of protection mainstreaming. Another example of integrated protection programming includes conditional cash grants for education which could contribute to increasing primary education in addition to reducing early marriage. Another example of integrated programming includes economic pressures that are contributing factors to GBV such as safe access stable housing or lack of access to basic income. Cash transfers might reduce the risk to GBV by providing for basic needs and shelter options. And finally stand alone protection programs could look like cash transfer that might address aspects of GBV where core GBV response services such as legal services, health services are not accessible free of charge. Cash could therefore be a key aspect of a survivor's recovery in this way cash might be used as a tool within case management. In the case of GBV it's particularly important to have close and intentional collaboration in between GBV and cash actors when implementing these kinds of programs to the coordination of CDIs. With the endorsement of the Intercluster Coordination Group's Terms of Reference 2017 the responsibility for cash coordination has been placed at the ICCG to ensure strategic and streamlined cash coordination throughout the response. As per the Terms of Reference the cash working group has formally gained a space within the humanitarian architecture as a sub as a technical sub working group of the ICCG. A service provider advising the Intercluster Coordination Group on cash issues and accountability. Clusters have an active role to play in cash coordination. The clusters have to develop their own guidance on how to provide assistance within their sectors be it cash and kind or mixed. In accordance with 2015 Interagency Standing Committee Coordination Handbook to plan and implement cluster strategies by developing sectoral plans objectives and indicators that directly support realizing the overall responses strategic objectives is one of the six core cluster functions. And this brings us to the end of the webcast. Here there are some links that help you gain further information if you're looking to mainstream cash or mainstream protection to cash-based intervention or tools that can help you manage and monitor integrated protection cash programming. So there is the UNICR WRC Guide for Protection and Cash-Based Intervention protection the protection risk benefit analysis tool. Recently released is a WRC toolkit for optimizing cash-based interventions for protection from gender-based violence. And then the GPC has a number of tip sheet on cash for protection for each area of responsibility which includes child protection, GBV, housing land and property and mine action. And finally IRC has a safer cash toolkit should be coming out this year. By using the right tools for initial assessments and ongoing monitoring we can contribute to mitigating risk and achieving protection outcomes. We can mitigate any associated risk like gender-based violence with the right programming components and the right approach. I hope this webcast has been helpful and has provided some information to help you integrate protection into cash-based interventions. Thank you very much.