Cash and Voucher Assistance
Cash and Voucher Assistance (CVA) is an umbrella term for humanitarian aid programs that provide cash, or vouchers exchangeable for goods and services, directly to recipients. CVA represents an increasingly significant modality or tool in providing aid, responding to a number of factors including movement from a charity-based to a rights-based approach to aid; the increased need for cost efficiency responding to downwards trends in aid funding; and a realisation of the cost effectiveness of CVA in comparison with prior approaches. According to The Cash Learning Partnership (CaLP), in 2019 CVA provided the mechanism  by which US $5.6 billion of aid was distributed, amounting to 17.9% of total international humanitarian assistance expenditure. Overview. Cash and Voucher Assistance is an umbrella term for a range of aid activities characterised by the transfer of cash, cash-equivalent or goods and services equivalent resources directly to aid recipients. CVA has also been called, variously, Cash Based Intervention (CBI), Cash Based Assistance (CBA) and Cash Transfer Programming (CTP). Plan International identify a number of forms of CVA including: Benefits and advantages of CVA are identified as including: Mechanisms for CVA include the distribution of cash in-hand ; the use of a range of e-cash technologies including mobile-phone based money (mobile money), e-wallets, pre-paid debit cards, or access to money via ATM machines; and the distribution of paper or e-vouchers exchangeable for goods and services. Development. The provision of aid by the transfer of cash or cash-substitutes is not novel, and can be traced back to at least 100BCE. Conditional Cash Transfers (CCT) have existed within western countries since at least the 17th century, such as the English Poor Laws. Hanlon et al document a paradigm shift from the early 2000s, away  from paternalistic attitudes to aid giving characterised by concerns about regulation and 'good governance', towards direct funding in cash of aid recipients. As with a growth of state-funded CCT in the Global South, the evidence is suggestive of the efficacy of cash transfers to the poor, and the case for such transfers is compelling. In 2012, Florika Fink-Hooijer introduced cash-based aid as well as gender and age sensitive aid as part of the European Commission's Directorate-General for European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations. The 2016 World Humanitarian Summit inaugurated a 'Grand Bargain' between aid  funders and humanitarian organisations, committing to "get more means into the hands of people in need"; CaLP, a nonprofit membership organization concerned with capacity building in humanitarian cash and voucher assistance, has issued two 'state of CVA' reports, most recently in 2020. They document that the value of CVA has grown from US$2B in 2015, representing 7.9% of development aid, to US$5.6B in 2019 representing 17.9% of aid. CVA is identified by funders such as the United States Department of State and Caritas Internationalis as an effective, efficient, and appropriate method of aid; Plan International has committed to  asking “why not cash?” in the design of its humanitarian responses. The UN World Food Programme, the world's largest humanitarian agency, disbursed US$3.3B in 2020 via CVA - 37% of its total assistance. The Council of the European Union in 2015 endorsed the use of cash transfers, finding "significant scope for increasing the use of multi-purpose cash-based assistance in humanitarian responses, depending on the context". The European Union, through its Directorate-General for European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations committed to deliver 35% of humanitarian assistance in the form of cash transfers under the Grand Bargain , and has achieved an increase from 24% of the total budget in 2016 to 34% in 2019 and 2020. Technology providers, such as through the GSMA Mobile for Humanitarian Innovation programme, have responded to the opportunity of CVA by developing partnerships with providers, and by working with the wider aid community to promulgate CVA knowledge and solutions.