is a firm commitment among various actors for this linkage as enshrined in the Grand Bargain documents,<sup>3</sup> the UN's Common Cash Platform, the Collaborative Cash Delivery Network, and the Sustainable Development Goals, how the two support systems can be aligned is still a long debate in the humanitarian field. The literature in this field has focused chiefly on the motivation, obstacles, and frameworks for integrating the two systems (Gentilini et al., 2018; Mitchell, 2018; O'Brien et al., 2018; Oxford Policy Management, 2015; Seyfert et al., 2019; UNHCR, 2019). There is, however, limited evidence on how this alignment is applied in a real-world setting.

This paper tries to fill the evidence gap in the literature by investigating a possible transition of the humanitarian caseload to the government SSN program in Iraq using field-test data. It builds on the accompanying desk review study (Phadera, et al., 2022) and documents the eligibility of the humanitarian Multi-Purpose Cash Assistance (MPCA) beneficiaries for the government’s cash transfer program (CTP) delivered by the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs (MoLSA). The recurrent and often violent security crises in Iraq have displaced and left many vulnerable. As a result of the most recent conflict, the war against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) that began in early 2014, more than 6 million people (about 15 percent of the Iraqi population) have been displaced. The MPCA programs have been instrumental in reaching the households that are most affected by the ISIL conflict and filling the void of limited coverage of the government’s SSN in those areas. Recognizing the need of more permanent solution, conversations on finding a responsible pathway to align the caseload from the MPCA programs to the SSN (MolSA’s cash transfer program) began in early 2018.<sup>4</sup> This provided an opportunity to explore how the potential transition may look and generate evidence. While both the humanitarian and government programs used proxy means test (PMT) for targeting, the PMT models used differ - relied on different proxies and the well-being variables were not the same. To bridge the gap, a targeting tool called pseudo-proxy means test (PPMT) was proposed through a desk review (Phadera, et al., 2022).<sup>5</sup> The tool is a garden variety PMT but with the proxies limited to the overlapping variables between the targeting models of the two systems and it assesses eligibility only probabilistically. The desk study found potential for a significant number of referrals from the humanitarian database to the MoLSA program. Building on

> 3 The Grand Bargain is a unique agreement between some of the largest donors and humanitarian organizations who have committed to get more means into the hands of people in need and to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of the humanitarian action. See link

> 4 Social safety net (SSN), government’s support program, MoLSA’s cash transfer program etc. are used loosely and interchangeably to refer to the government’s cash transfer program delivered by the Ministry of Social and Labour Affairs (MoLSA) throughout the paper.

> 5 The desk review or the desk review study, both refer to Phadera et al. (2022) in the paper.

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