©UNICEF/Somalia/2012/al Dhayi

UNICEF

Crisis, Cash, and Sustained Support

Moving from emergency response toward social protection in Somalia

UNICEF Joint Initiative on Social Protection and Humanitarian ActionSeptember 2014

This case study is part of UNICEF’s Joint Initiative on Social Protection, Humanitarian Action, and Risk Management, a collaboration between UNICEF’s Division of Policy and Strategy and its Office of Emergency Programmes. The initiative is intended to contribute to an on-going global dialogue about the actual and potential linkages between social protection and humanitarian action. By documenting current practice, analysing lessons from common experience, and promoting dialogue among UNICEF practitioners, the initiative aims to support ongoing programming and strengthen future work.

This paper was written by Emily Garin in the Child Poverty and Social Protection Unit, Division of Policy and Strategy. The author gratefully acknowledges the support and input of Olivia Collins and Lisa Kurbiel in the UNICEF Somalia Support Centre as well as all of the individuals both within and outside of UNICEF who contributed their experience and expertise to the interview and revision process.

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Table of ContentsExecutive Summary...................................................................................................................3

Introduction................................................................................................................................4

Country Context.........................................................................................................................6

Stage I: Cash in the Crisis..........................................................................................................7

UNICEF programming...........................................................................................................7

Programme design considerations..........................................................................................9

Implementation enablers and obstacles..................................................................................9

Stage II: Shifting toward Sustained Support............................................................................12

UNICEF programming.........................................................................................................12

Programme design considerations........................................................................................14

Questions, Lessons, and Opportunities....................................................................................16

Questions..............................................................................................................................16

Lessons and Opportunities...................................................................................................17

Conclusion................................................................................................................................20

Appendices...............................................................................................................................21

I. References.........................................................................................................................21

II. Acronyms........................................................................................................................21

III. Interviewees...................................................................................................................22

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Executive SummaryIn 2011, the Horn of Africa drought placed more than a million children in Somalia in need of immediate life-saving support. The hardest hit parts of the country were inaccessible for traditional food provision because of the presence of armed opposition groups, including Al Shabaab.

In the face of an escalating crisis and limited programming options, UNICEF joined a coalition of international organisations to launch a large scale cash and voucher programme as part of its famine response. This programme, one of the largest of its kind in such a complex environment, provided US$91 million in direct support to 1.5 million beneficiaries.

Despite tremendous contextual challenges, the programme was broadly successful. According to an independent evaluation, cash and voucher support had quantifiable impacts on reducing hunger and improving food security while ensuring access to both food and non-food items. The work of UNICEF and its partners on this programme was an essential component of life-saving response to the famine.

Key enabling factors for the programme’s success included the early work and coordination undertaken by partners, the flexibility of donors, and strong internal advocacy from key individuals and sectors. The initial decision to launch the programme and the subsequent implementation also came with significant challenges, including under-estimating human resource needs, institutional hesitance about the use of cash in such a volatile environment, and complex partnership dynamics.

Since the end of the famine, UNICEF has been building from the cash and voucher experience toward a more sustainable response to Somalia’s recurrent shocks and stresses – investment in crisis-adaptable social protection programming. This programming will provide vulnerable households with both monetary support and access to services ahead of crises, supporting them to address chronic poverty and expanding their capacity to manage future crises. It will also include rapidly scalable forms of support that can be used to meet the needs of crisis affected families more quickly and reliably than traditional humanitarian responses.

As this work continues, it will be informed by similar programming in the region and inform the work of other countries that are building longer term social protection mechanisms from initial humanitarian investments. Work in Somalia has already produced several lessons and opportunities for future programming. These include the need to:

- Invest more heavily in cross-sectoral data analysis and dissemination;- Use cash-based programming to advance multiple child outcomes at once;- Help donors make the case for cash and social protection in difficult places;- Reduce, share, and better plan for risk. Specifically:

o Reduce the risk to and improve incentives for individual staff members who take leadership on new issues;

o Share risk more equitably between UNICEF and its implementing partners;o Plan for different risk environments.

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IntroductionOver the past decade, two simultaneous shifts in humanitarian and development programming have opened a new realm of opportunities for supporting families and communities facing both longstanding vulnerabilities and more sudden crises. In the development realm, an increasing number of countries have strengthened their political and financial commitments to social protection work, providing reliable support to a rising proportion of households and children. In 2013, UNICEF offices worked with governments in 104 countries to strengthen social protection programming and systems.

At the same time, humanitarian actors including UNICEF have devoted increasing attention to the recurrent and often predictable nature of many humanitarian shocks. This attention has led to a series of programming changes, including stronger emphasis on prevention, preparedness, and building the long term resilience of households and communities. Today, UNICEF is actively engaged in prevention, preparedness, or resilience throughout its humanitarian action work. Cash based support has become an increasingly important part of both UNICEF and external humanitarian programming, sometimes alongside and sometimes in lieu of in-kind support.

These shifts in the commitments of governments, donors, UN agencies, and implementing partners have great potential to provide mutually reinforcing gains if both humanitarian and social protection practitioners actively commit to learning from each other. Social protection systems can become more flexible with the experience of humanitarian actors, allowing the systems to respond faster and more nimbly to changing circumstances. Investments in emergency cash and in-kind transfers can become more effective if coupled with the wealth of information and resources contained in social protection systems. They can also become the basis for building longer term social protection systems where none exist.

Against this backdrop, UNICEF’s Division of Policy and Strategy and the Office of Emergency Programmes (EMOPS) have launched a Joint Initiative on Social Protection, Humanitarian Action, and Risk Management. The initiative is intended to contribute to an on-going global dialogue about the actual and potential linkages between the two areas of work. By documenting current practice, analysing lessons from common experience, and promoting dialogue among UNICEF practitioners, the initiative aims to support ongoing programming and strengthen future work.

This case study is part of that documentation and learning process. It focusses on the work of UNICEF Somalia and its partners in the cash and voucher portion of the 2011 famine response and their subsequent efforts to move toward longer term, more reliable social protection mechanisms. In line with the goal of sharing lessons, this paper emphasises the processes and lessons identified during the work, rather than the details of the programming and its implementation.1

1 For more detailed information on the operational components of the cash transfer and voucher programme, see the extremely thorough evaluation produced for UNICEF by Humanitarian Outcomes and cited at the end of this case study. It is available for download at http://www.unicef.org/somalia/SOM_resources_cashevalfinep.pdf

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This case study combines analysis of available documentation as well as one-on-one interviews. The document review and synthesis included both published and internal UNICEF and partner documents related to the planning, implementation, and evaluation of the cash and voucher programme. Seventeen in-depth interviews were conducted with UNICEF staff, donors, and partners who have been directly involved in the work. Whenever possible, sources were cross-referenced to reaffirm each of the key conclusions reached in the paper.

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Country ContextBetween 1980 and 2010, Somalia faced droughts an average of three times a decade.2 With regular natural hazards compounded by persistent violence and lawlessness, Somalia’s humanitarian needs were already some of the most complex in the world by the time that drought turned to famine in 2011. When famine was officially declared in July 2011, more than 640,000 children were acutely malnourished and 1.25 million children throughout south-central Somalia needed life-saving support.3

As the scale of the crisis became clear during the first half of 2011, an expanding group of donors, UN agencies, and partners came to acknowledge that traditional food distribution and supplementary feeding would not be feasible. After extensive negotiations, a consortium of partners decided to move forward with a large-scale cash transfer programme to meet the massive needs of families in south-central Somalia. Over the course of approximately eighteen months, the partners delivered 91 million US dollars of cash and vouchers to support 1.5 million beneficiaries.4

This case study first considers the cash response, the reasons behind it, and the lessons learned from that experience. It then turns to the efforts to build from those lessons toward more regular social protection in some parts of the country. It concludes with overarching lessons which may be of use in other countries facing similar challenges.

In reading this paper, it is important to keep in mind three pieces of background information about the Somali context which shaped decision-making processes and the feasibility of different programming options:

- Somalia is functionally divided into three zones (Somaliland, Puntland, and South Central), with different governing authorities and varying levels of political stability, security, and development. The differences between these three areas has led many agencies and NGOs to engage in each zone in different ways, often with diverse policy approaches that are specific to the conditions of a given region.

- Armed opposition groups, including Al Shabaab, have their strongest presence in South Central Zone (which includes Mogadishu), creating severe security and political governance challenges for all development and humanitarian actors working there. This is also the region that was hardest hit by the 2011 famine.

- Prior to the onset of the famine, various food aid actors – including the World Food Programme (WFP) – had been banned from key parts of Somalia by Al Shabaab. This severely constrained potential food-based responses to the famine and impacted capacity on the ground.

2 (UNISDR, 2014)3 (UNICEF Somalia, 2011)4 (Humanitarian Outcomes)

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Stage I: Cash in the Crisis

UNICEF programmingMonths before the official declaration of famine in July 2011, members of the Somalia UN Humanitarian Country Team (HCT) had been struggling to manage the size of the crisis that was already upon them and to agree on the most effective options for responding. The limitations of traditional forms of humanitarian support were evident. Security challenges and prohibitively high costs made interventions such as supplementary feeding virtually impossible to bring to scale. Major food aid partners had been forced from the country and were unable to provide in-kind food support. While the challenges were clear, there was no consensus within the HCT on an alternative.

Simultaneously, a group of international non-governmental organisations (INGOs) was coalescing around the use of a cash-based response to the emergency and formed the Somalia Cash Consortium. These INGOs, joined by major donors, worked to engage UNICEF in the cash-based response. UNICEF agreed to play a coordinating pass-through role, in which donors could direct the bulk of their support for the cash response through the organisation, and in which UNICEF would take responsibility for coordination and joint monitoring. This arrangement was designed to capitalise on UNICEF’s ability to leverage resources, bring diverse implementing partners together, and meet donor requirements for risk management, while allowing INGOs with technical expertise in implementation to carry out the direct programming.

As a result of this initial starting point, the cash response coordinated by UNICEF was not uniform in design or implementation. While some of the implementing partners – particularly through the Somalia Cash Consortium – were already coordinating their programming before UNICEF became engaged (matching transfer levels and targeting methods, using cash rather than vouchers), UNICEF also worked with additional partners that had different programming modalities (using vouchers instead of cash, varying lengths and amounts of transfers). The chart below includes basic information on the different types of transfers and overall programme scope.

Cash Voucher Total/AverageTotal transfer value $58 million $33 million $91 million

Total cost of programme

$70 million $40 million $110 million

Number of beneficiaries

750,000 750,000 1.5 million

Average duration 5 months 8 months 6 monthsAverage individual transfer value

$103 $60 $80

Range of transfer to an individual

$115-13005 $150-910 $475

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householdSource: (Humanitarian Outcomes)

During the first stage of the cash programme, the aim was to provide households with either cash or vouchers for a total of six months. Some households were identified through community based targeting methods, while others were registered through their prior enrolment at outpatient therapeutic centres. Internally displaced families in Mogadishu were identified through blanket targeting registration processes in camps.

The goal of the unconditional transfers was to provide immediate life-saving support by helping families meet their food and basic needs. Depending on the implementing partner, the cash transfers aimed to provide either the minimum food basket costs or the minimum expenditure basket. Voucher values were based on a portion of the minimum food basket.

The results of the work were unambiguous: despite tremendous challenges and some areas for improvement, cash and voucher programming played an essential and life-saving role in the famine response. The impacts of the transfer programme included improved household dietary diversity, declines in household hunger levels, and reduced debt burdens. Those effects varied somewhat depending on the transfer method, with cash generally performing better than vouchers for improving dietary diversity and household hunger scores.6 The top-line results of the independent evaluation are summarised in the box below.

Summary of Findings from the External Evaluation of the Cash and Voucher Response*

- Cash and vouchers made a quantifiable difference in reducing hunger and improving food security, enabling a more rapid recovery than would have been possible without assistance.

- Cash transfers at scale did not result in food price inflation to the detriment of the most vulnerable. Rather, they ensured access to critical food and non-food items and services.

- Evidence suggests that [diversion risks] were less serious than comparable in-kind interventions, but still could have been countered through better risk analysis and preparedness and were not sufficiently identified by monitoring systems.

- Household targeting was a waste of time and energy – irrelevant to both the humanitarian emergency of the moment and a socio-political context that effectively isolates and exploits the more vulnerable communities in Somalia. Targeting errors were further exacerbated by rapidly changing food security conditions. Retargeting was essential.

- A more concerted effort should have been made to reach the epicentre of the famine. Lack of access contributed to Mogadishu becoming a ‘hub’ of humanitarian assistance for an undetermined number of IDPs seeking assistance.

*These key findings are excerpted directly from the Executive Summary of the final evaluation (HumanitarianOutcomes) pp. 3-4.

5 The value of individual transfers varied by family size, location, implementing partner, and the number of transfers given.6 According to the evaluation, “in general, cash transfers were associated with higher HDDS [household dietary diversity scores]. Regression analysis also demonstrates that the higher the transfer, the higher the HDDS.” The evaluation also notes that the household hunger index (HHI) score initially declined more quickly for cash recipients, though, over time, there was “little difference between HHI scores for cash and voucher recipients.” (Humanitarian Outcomes), pp. 89, 92.

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Since the initial six month response, two further rounds of transfers (each intended to last three months) have taken place. With each round, there has been more movement toward harmonisation between programming elements including transfer amounts, while INGOs have maintained the ability to innovate through new delivery mechanisms such as the use of mobile phones for transferring money to families.

Programme design considerationsMany key programme design choices were driven by the urgency of the situation, the status of NGO coordination prior to UNICEF’s entry into cash programming, and partners’ ability to access affected populations.

As noted above, key food agencies were unable to operate in the most affected parts of the country even before the famine was declared. This placed severe constraints on the options available for meeting the immediate humanitarian needs. The security situation both limited access to the most famine-affected areas as well as increased the costs of providing programming such as supplementary feeding. Combined, these forces pushed UNICEF, the HCT, and partners toward a somewhat experimental but ultimately successful cash-based response.

Because key INGOs had already begun coordination before the UN committed to a cash response, many of the programming design choices had already been made by the time that UNICEF became heavily involved. Given the immediacy of needs and variety of programmes already underway with support from different donors, UNICEF focused more heavily on coordinating monitoring rather than standardising programme design components.

Access and capacity issues also played a significant role in the selection of partners and the areas where programming was implemented. In some areas, INGOs were able to directly implement programming, while in others they partnered with Somali NGOs. Those partnerships also shaped the geographic concentration of transfers. As the evaluation notes, limitations on access meant that in some parts of the country there were poor matches between need and the ability of partners to reach affected populations.7 While there were still unmet needs in Mogadishu, for example, the city was better covered by the many available partners working there. More affected populations in less accessible regions, meanwhile, received less support proportionate to their needs.

Implementation enablers and obstaclesBy all accounts, the complexity and urgency of the situation in Somalia and the scope of the response posed immense challenges for all humanitarian actors. In that context, the scale up of the cash and voucher programming was remarkable. Several factors facilitated the rollout and scale up of the programme, including:

- Leadership by the INGO-led Somalia Cash Consortium. While the HCT struggled to reach consensus on an alternative to a food response, key INGOs pushed ahead to line up agency and donor support and initiate programming.

7 (Humanitarian Outcomes), p. 7

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- High levels of flexible financial support from key donors, accompanied by strong donor advocacy at the country level. Understanding the dire humanitarian situation on the ground, donors played an essential enabling role by both maintaining pressure on the HCT for action and streamlining risk management requirements. Key donors made it clear that their commitment was to meet humanitarian needs as effectively as possible and that a certain level of risk was inevitable and acceptable at the height of the emergency.

- Strong advocacy from some sections and individuals within UNICEF. Backed up by analytical work to dispel a variety of concerns about a cash response, the nutrition section in particular pushed for organisational engagement. In this case, personal advocacy was essential to overcoming risk-aversion and institutional bottlenecks. That early advocacy resulted in UNICEF acting more quickly than other agencies.

Despite these facilitating factors, the cash transfer work also faced substantial context-based challenges as well as UNICEF-specific obstacles, including:

- Under-estimation of required human resources. While UNICEF staff and partners alike noted the dedication of staff who worked on the cash response, both also noted that the job simply could not be done effectively with the allocated human resources. Without additional staff support, UNICEF missed opportunities for improved coordination, oversight, and risk management – all of which were noted as gaps during interviews with partners and donors.

- Slow movement toward cash within UNICEF and from other agencies. Partners and donors generally praised UNICEF for being more responsive than other UN agencies, though highlighted that the entire system was much too slow to act. While there were some UNICEF advocates for cash, organisational hesitance about the use of cash in this context delayed UNICEF engagement and implementation. As a result, the response was not timely in meeting the needs of families and faster-moving partners and donors made key policy decisions before UNICEF joined the discussion. This made UNICEF’s later efforts to coordinate between implementing partners more challenging.

- Under-prioritising partnerships. Driven in part by the overstretching of human resources, UNICEF was not able to place sufficient emphasis on building constructive relationships with the major INGOs that were already involved in cash programming. UNICEF’s late arrival to the cash response coupled with its subsequent leadership role strained relations with some partners who had a longer track record of similar programming.

The diversity of partner approaches to cash and voucher programming was seen by different stakeholders as both an advantage and a drawback in UNICEF’s approach. At an organisational level, the flexibility to determine transfer amounts and modalities allowed implementing partners to more easily incorporate UNICEF support with funds from other sources and with other programming, including cash for work. At a household level, the mix of approaches resulted in different levels and length of support to equally disadvantaged households and produced uneven coverage of certain geographic areas.

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Stage II: Shifting toward Sustained SupportFollowing the famine, the entire humanitarian community’s response in Somalia came under a great deal of scrutiny from all sides. A UN Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) analysis concluded that – despite timely detection by a famine early warning system – the combination of the declared famine and severe food insecurity in other areas resulted in 258,000 excess Somali deaths between October 2010 and April 2012.8 Echoing frequently repeated sentiments, the Director-General of FAO called the world’s response “delayed and inadequate”, noting that without predictable support, the region would face the same issues “with depressing regularity.”9

These two concerns – the timeliness of response and Somalia’s recurrent cycles of shock – were driving forces behind UNICEF’s decision to commit to longer term social protection work in Somalia’s three zones. This new approach, which will build on the lessons of the famine response and vary according to the context of each zone, recognises the need to provide regular, systematic support to chronically impoverished populations. The work is anchored in the social safety nets pillar of the Joint FAO, UNICEF, and WFP Resilience Strategy for Somalia.10

UNICEF programmingUNICEF’s strategy for social protection in Somalia attempts to balance two sometimes competing priorities: building toward longer term, government-owned social protection systems while maintaining the flexibility to meet shorter-term emergency needs. To this end, UNICEF is leading a multi-stakeholder process to develop a National Social Protection Framework in Somalia.11 That process is ongoing, but UNICEF foresees providing institutional support on four interlinked programme components:

- Building resilience through predictable unconditional cash transfers;- Emergency preparedness and response through unconditional cash transfers;- Social support and care services; and- Regionally sensitive legislation and policy development.12

Cash transfers have been a launching point for the discussion of social protection in Somalia and will remain an essential component of the emerging social protection framework. UNICEF plans to build on the practical experience and political momentum created by cash-based programming to expand the scope of social protection work throughout Somalia. Because cash is the primary link between humanitarian and longer term social protection 8 (UN Food and Agricultural Organization, 2013), p. 89 (Diouf, 2011)10 For a summary of the joint strategy, see (FAO, UNICEF, WFP, 2012).11 (UNICEF Somalia, 2014), p. 8. At the time of this case study’s writing, the National Social Protection Framework was still under development, so plans included here are indicative and details may change as the framework evolves.12 The social support and policy development components of the social protection strategy will play vital roles in the longer term social protection system development, but are less likely to be immediately relevant to humanitarian situations, so will not be discussed in more detail here.

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work in the country, it is the primary focus of this paper, though it is only one among several necessary components for meeting Somalia’s social protection needs and goals.

In using cash support as part of the social protection framework, two primary types of support are envisioned: longer-term predictable transfers and shorter-term seasonal or emergency transfers. The goal of the predictable transfers component is to help families – through regular, long-term support – meet their basic needs and potentially build up reserves to buffer the effects of household, community, or larger scale shocks. In Puntland and Somaliland, this type of programming will take place through local government structures and in partnership with local authorities. In South Central, a social transfer pilot will be implemented by and build on the expertise of NGOs, with a goal of turning it over to government when security and capacity allow. The beneficiary lists from these social transfer programmes are intended to feed into a planned single beneficiary registry, which can be used for rapid scale up or top up of transfers to chronically poor households when crises strike.

This adaptable approach to a long-term programme will be complemented by two types of shorter-duration transfers: i) preventative transfers, given to vulnerable households in areas affected by seasonal food insecurity, as identified by regularly updated food security and nutrition data, and ii) response transfers, provided in the wake of rapid onset disasters.13 Both types of transfers will contribute to the social safety nets pillar of the UN Joint Resilience Strategy for Somalia.

Through the combination of transfer approaches, UNICEF and its partners want to both prevent the worst effects of impending crises and build systems that can respond more quickly and appropriately when emergencies strike. If successful, this approach will allow chronically 13 In addition to being of shorter duration, emergency transfers will also likely be of higher value and use blanket community targeting, in line with the recommendations of the evaluation of the famine cash and voucher programme.

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Smoothing Scale-UpSomalia is building its longer term social protection systems on the preparedness and implementation lessons identified during the emergency cash and voucher response. Components which will be built into the social protection work include:

- Pre-identifying triggers for scale-up of regular programmes during rapid and slow-onset crises, with accountabilities for partners linked to the triggers

- Pre-agreeing contracts with mobile phone and mobile money operators to ensure rapid roll out in the event of a shock

- Maintaining partnerships and technical capacity for both UNICEF and NGOs through ongoing training, capacity building, and coordination

- Streamlining UNICEF processes through standing programme cooperation agreements (PCAs), partner-agreed risk mitigation plans, and improved financial processes, including advances to partners

- Preparing monitoring components, including third party monitoring practices and pre-arranging agreements

Depending on the type of shock, some level of pre-targeting may be possible through the future implementation of a single beneficiary register, though rapid retargeting will still be needed for quick onset events or emergencies that affect areas or populations not covered by social protection programming.

poor families to receive sustained support – regular transfers that can be topped up for seasonal shortfalls or in emergency situations and then brought back to regular levels once an immediate need passes. At the same time, crisis-affected households and communities can receive temporary support to cope with intermittent shocks and stresses. The table below outlines the differences and complementarities between the proposed transfer programmes.

Predictable social transfers Seasonal or emergency transfers

Intended coverage

Vulnerable households, likely beginning in most disadvantaged geographic areas. The households included would be a subset of their wider communities.

There are at least three different groups that could benefit from future seasonal or emergency transfers, depending on the nature and location of the shock and status of social transfer programming. Transfer options include:- Top up of existing social transfer recipients in affected areas- Addition of previously identified vulnerable households that were not receiving social transfers- Blanket or near-blanket targeting of newly vulnerable communities, either because of seasonal exposure or a sudden shock

Duration Minimum of 2-4 years of support 3-6 months of support, with regular retargeting of both households and communities related to seasonal exposures

Level of support

Smaller amount than emergency transfers, designed to augment other household income

100% of the minimum expenditure basket designed to cope with sudden losses

Programme design considerations

Somalia’s social protection framework is in its earliest stages, and its details are likely to change substantially over time. While it is not yet clear what its final form will be, three factors will be essential in moulding it: specific national conditions, the experience of Somalia’s neighbours in implementing similar programming, and the need to more effectively address both Somalia’s underlying vulnerabilities as well as its pattern of recurrent shocks and stresses.

Like all programming in Somalia, the political, security, and environmental forces in each zone play a substantial role in shaping the social protection agenda and opportunities in Somalia. In Somaliland and Puntland, where authorities have greater capacity and control over revenues, a higher level of government ownership will be feasible. In these areas, UNICEF and partners can make more progress on longer term systems building and financing discussions with government counterparts. In South-Central, donors, agencies, and

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partners are likely to drive much of the work in the coming years. Security challenges will determine the feasibility of both emergency and predictable programming, with the most uncertainty surrounding work in South-Central. Finally, the recurrent environmental challenges of Somalia – particularly droughts and flooding – have strengthened the resolve of partners to take a resilience-oriented approach to programming.

The design of programming in Somalia has been shaped and will continue to be influenced by the experience of two neighbours with similar challenges and programming – Ethiopia’s Productive Safety Nets Programme (PSNP) and Kenya’s Hunger Safety Net Programme (HSNP). These programmes are more developed as long-term and predictable responses, though still adapting to lessons identified during recent crisis responses. Both HSNP and PSNP take a crisis-adaptable approach similar to that envisioned for the Somali system, but differences in capacity and design produced varied results when both were deployed during recent emergencies.14 As Somalia’s planning evolves, the successes and challenges of these similar programmes are likely to strongly influence the policy and funding decisions of government officials, donors, and agencies.

Because of the persistent nature of Somalia’s crises, the framework places a strong emphasis on building and maintaining social protection implementation capacity. A consistent challenge in crisis-prone areas such as Somalia is the withdrawal of organisational investments during non-emergency periods. These draw-downs frequently deplete capacity and lead to response delays when crises occur again. By maintaining and expanding capacity over time, this strategy can contribute to the twin goals of building household level resilience through consistent support and strengthening resilient systems that are prepared and capable of responding to crises that cannot be averted.

14 For a comparison of HSNP and PSNP as well as their performance in emergency-flexible response, see (Humanitarian Futures Programme, 2013). While there are significant similarities in programme design between the three countries, context and capacity differences should also be kept in mind when applying lessons across the sub-region.

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Questions, Lessons, and OpportunitiesSomalia’s work on building from its cash-based crisis response toward sustained support represents tremendous progress in one of the world’s most challenging programming contexts. UNICEF’s experience and planning there offer lessons, opportunities, and several unanswered questions that will drive work in the coming months and years. The issues laid out below are those most relevant to UNICEF staff working in a variety of contexts.

QuestionsBecause the process of building longer term systems is just beginning, some important questions about the way that plan will evolve and be implemented remain unresolved. These include:

How much will donors invest in a multi-year plan in a volatile context? Recognising the need for longer term, more reliable programming and financing, the UN team in Somalia has prepared a multi-year request in its most recent consolidated appeal process (CAP). While this has been a valuable exercise for encouraging longer range planning, most donors continue to fund work one year at a time, perpetuating the challenges that agencies face in committing to work over an expanded time horizon. The UK’s Department for International Development (DfID) has been a notable exception to this trend, though its funding has come outside the CAP.

Despite this willingness to fund multi-year efforts, DfID expressed concern about the quality of long-term planning from many organisations and emphasised the need to do new types of programmatic thinking, rather than simply extending timeframes for current programming. To make this shift in both planning and fundraising, UNICEF should deepen investments in capacity and processes for extended-term planning and budgeting. Ultimately, the success of a multi-year approach will rely both on the quality of the planning put forward by agencies as well as the willingness of donors to shift their patterns of support.

How will the social protection work of multiple agencies and partners fit together? The social protection strategic framework for Somalia will encompass work that goes far beyond the scope of UNICEF programming and will include programming implemented by other UN agencies, NGO partners, and in the future, government entities. While the vision outlined in the framework will take this into account, the practical ways in which linkages are established at a community level will have considerable impact on the success of the approach.

Given the variety of actors involved and the weak convening power of government authorities, effective partner cooperation will be even more essential than in other contexts. The Nairobi-based coordination through the Cash Consortium has already made tremendous progress at the national level. As non-emergency programming expands in some parts of the country, a similar ground-level coordination mechanism may prove useful for programme-level harmonisation.

How will future emergencies test new social protection mechanisms?

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Whether environmentally or politically triggered, there is little doubt that some part of Somalia will continue to face humanitarian challenges in the coming years. The social protection framework is being developed with that in mind, but it will make progress at different rates in each zone. If capacity and systems are developed in a zone that is not affected by a given emergency, the extent to which those assets can be cross-applied in other parts of the country is unclear.

South-Central zone is likely to remain the portion of Somalia with the highest levels and likelihood of humanitarian need, as well as the least capacity to address the need. While social protection systems my not yet be a viable option for that portion of the country, continued and deepened investments in emergency preparedness – including the signing of long term agreements with partners and agreeing on emergency programming modalities in advance of shocks – can improve the timeliness and impact of UNICEF’s humanitarian responses when they are necessary. In the absence of government capacity, building the capacity of UNICEF and its partners will take on even more urgency.

Lessons and OpportunitiesIn the course of coordinating and evaluating the cash and voucher programme, many concrete programming lessons were identified regarding the use of cash programming in the specific context of Somalia. These are spelled out in the comprehensive evaluation referenced above, and relate to areas including targeting methodology, programming coherence, and monitoring processes. The issues identified in the evaluation will be essential to revising and improving cash and voucher programming in Somalia, and staff implementing similar programming in other contexts are encouraged to review its findings.

Because the evaluation looked at the work of several partners at once, however, it did not include UNICEF specific lessons or opportunities. The issues outlined in this section are some of the lessons and opportunities specific to UNICEF, as identified by UNICEF staff and partners. The issues highlighted are those most likely to be relevant across a variety of contexts.

Invest in cross-sectoral data analysis and dissemination. During interviews, UNICEF was routinely viewed as having a clear but under-utilised strategic advantage on data. Whether UNICEF directly collects data or simply has access to it as a member of multiple working groups, many other partners simply do not have access to the same breadth of information.

Investing in the capacity to analyse and combine data from multiple sectors could have widespread benefits, including improving targeting of deprivation or needs-based interventions, making a stronger investment case with governments and donors, deepening the impact of programming by better coordinating complementary work, and shifting programming choices of other partners and agencies. Even small investments in the systems and human resources needed for data management – including mapping of interventions or

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partnerships – could have strong knock-on effects in programming efficacy within and outside of UNICEF.

Use cash-based programming to advance multiple outcomes at once.While all offices work to improve coordination between sectors, social protection and emergency cash programming offer concrete ways in which to simultaneously demonstrate cross-sectoral impacts. As outlined above, data sharing for improved targeting can be a first step toward that. These linkages can also be strengthened at a very practical level if, for example, cell phones distributed for cash transfer payments are used as part of communications campaigns regarding key family practices or payments can be timed to coincide with windows for school fee payments.

Taking full advantage of the multi-sector potential of cash can also support longer term, more resilience-oriented programming. In Somalia, the three pillars of the interagency resilience plan were linked by cash and social protection programming, and that model is likely to have similar potential in other – particularly agricultural – contexts.

Help donors make the case for cash and social protection in difficult places.For many reasons, UNICEF has been successful at convincing humanitarian donors to take risks on new types and areas of programming, including innovative uses of cash transfer and social protection work. Advocacy for this type of work, however, cannot stop once the cheque clears the bank.

As UNICEF carries out this work, it must maintain active and honest communication with country-level donor representatives throughout the implementation process. This allows in-country donor staff to make the case for innovation and risk-taking further up their own internal chains of command. To convince donors to continue supporting pioneering work at either a country or a global level, it is essential that UNICEF continually provide data-driven, distilled information to help allies advocate on the organisation’s behalf.

Reduce, share, and better plan for risk.The most frequently mentioned topic in all of the interviews for this case study was the issue of risk. The questions and concerns were diverse, reflecting the various pathways in which risk could be introduced and the ways in which it affected decision-making and implementation. Some of the issues below have a clear pathway for action while others pose more difficult and institutionalised challenges. Lessons and opportunities identified regarding risk include:

- Reduce the risk to and improve incentives for individual staff members who take leadership on new issues. One of the most repeated critiques of the UN response in Somalia was the inability of the HCT to reach and act on a decision in a timely manner. Although UNICEF eventually took action faster than other agencies, its internal processes still put it behind the response time that was needed to effectively address the crisis. In multiple interviews, part of this delay was attributed to the perceived personal and organisational risks of using a relatively new programming option in a complex situation. Since that time, cash programming has taken on an

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increasingly prevalent role in UNICEF emergency responses, but the underlying issue of risk aversion remains a potential challenge.

- Share risk more equitably between UNICEF and its implementing partners. To be a good partner to organisations who carry out difficult work in challenging circumstances, UNICEF must share some of the risk with those agencies, while minimising the risks for both parties through strong monitoring mechanisms. Without achieving a better balance in risk sharing, partnerships between UNICEF and its major implementing partners will be strained.

- Plan for different risk environments. Risk tolerance levels vary depending on the circumstances in which UNICEF is operating. In the middle of the famine, donors understood the heightened urgency and challenges of implementation and they adjusted their risk tolerance accordingly. Since the end of the crisis, that tolerance has decreased and all agencies and partners have taken steps to improve risk controls. While they are working in the current environment, some of these new mechanisms may need to be modified for effective use in an emergency situation. The more those adaptations can occur before a crisis, the more effective the controls are likely to be during the response.

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ConclusionThe decision to engage in cash-based programming in Somalia was a difficult but ultimately necessary – and successful – one for UNICEF. Propelled by the urgency of the famine, the groundwork of partners, and the support of donors, the cash and voucher response both had direct impacts during the crisis and laid the groundwork for building toward more reliable systems of support.

In the course of this work, UNICEF gained valuable organisational experience about the institutional processes and practices that could impede or improve programming in similar contexts. Strong early coordination among INGOs, flexible and active donors, and internal advocacy pushed the process forward and contributed to its success. At the same time, delayed organisational commitment to action, under-estimation of human resource needs, and under-valuing partnership created challenges.

The momentum created by the cash and voucher response has catalysed support for addressing the chronic nature of crises and vulnerability in Somalia through institutionalised social protection programming. This work, while still in development, has drawn lessons from the famine response as well as the experience of similar programming in Ethiopia and Kenya. Once implemented, it has the potential to improve the resilience of Somali households, allowing them to address underlying vulnerabilities as well as better anticipate, manage, and overcome acute shocks and stresses.

Somalia’s social protection framework will continue to adapt to the country’s changing conditions and the lessons of ongoing implementation, but the work already undertaken there offers guidance for future UNICEF programming in Somalia and elsewhere. As noted by partners, donors, and UNICEF staff, UNICEF’s work could be strengthened by expanding investments in data analysis and dissemination, better addressing issues around risk and risk-aversion, enhancing advocacy with donors before, during, and after crises, and proactively utilising its multi-sectoral mandate and experience. Somalia’s experience provides concrete evidence that emergency cash and social protection work can be mutually reinforcing in even the most complex circumstances and helps make the case for more programming that brings the two together.

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Appendices

I. ReferencesDiouf, J. (2011). Statement by FAO Director-General. Ministerial Mini-Summit:

Humanitarian Response to the Horn of Africa. New York.

FAO, UNICEF, WFP. (2012). A Strategy for Enhancing Resilience in Somalia: Brief. Nairobi.

Humanitarian Futures Programme. (2013). Scaling Up Existing Social Safety Nets to Provide Humanitarian Response: A case study of Ethiopia's Productive Safety Net Programme and Kenya's Hunger Safety Net Programme. London: Cash Learning Partnership.

Humanitarian Outcomes. (n.d.). Final Evaluation of the Unconditional Cash and Voucher Response to the 2011-2012 Crisis in Southern and Central Somalia. New York: UNICEF.

Humanitarian Outcomes. (n.d.). Final Evaluation of the Unconditional Cash and Voucher Response to the 2011-2012 Crisis in Southern and Central Somalia: Executive Summary. New York: UNICEF.

UN Food and Agricultural Organization. (2013). Mortality among populations of southern and central Somalia affected by severe food insecurity and famine during 2010-2012. Rome: FAO.

UNICEF Somalia. (2011, July 29). UNICEF Somalia Press Releases 2011. Retrieved from http://www.unicef.org/somalia/media_11658.html

UNICEF Somalia. (2014). UNICEF Somalia Social Protection Vision Proposed Strategy for 2014-2018 - Working Paper. Nairobi.

UNISDR. (2014, April 29). Somalia Disaster Statistics. Retrieved from Prevention Web : http://www.preventionweb.net/english/countries/statistics/?cid=159

II. AcronymsCAP: consolidated appeals processDfID: Department for International DevelopmentFAO: United Nations Food and Agricultural OrganizationEMOPS: Office of Emergency OperationsHCT: Humanitarian Country TeamHSNP: Hunger Safety Net ProgrammeINGO: International Non-governmental OrganisationPCAs: Programme Cooperation Agreements

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PSNP: Productive Safety Net ProgrammeWFP: World Food Programme

III. IntervieweesIn preparation of this case study, the author interviewed and gratefully acknowledges the assistance of the following:

Partners

Ahmed Ibrahim Abdi, Associate Country Director, Oxfam GB, Somalia Paul Crook: Somalia Country Director, ILOSebastian Fouquet: Humanitarian Advisor, Department for International DevelopmentKulmiye Hussein, Humanitarian Programme Manager, Oxfam Nova, Somalia Angela Kabiru, ILO SomaliaJulie Lawson McDowell: Research and Evaluation Coordinator, FAO SomaliaEunice Mwende: Area Coordinator, Central Somalia, Danish Refugee Council Holly Radice: Food Security Cluster Coordinator (on secondment from Save the Children) Jean Christophe Saint Esteben: Somalia Country Director, Danish Refugee CouncilEnzo Vecchio: Country Director, Oxfam, Somalia

UNICEF Somalia and East and Sothern Africa Regional Office Staff

Foroogh Foyouzat: Deputy RepresentativeAnirban Chatterjee: Chief of HealthOlivia Collins: Social Protection SpecialistPeter Hailey: Chief of NutritionDara Johnston: Chief of WASHLinda Jones: Chief of EducationDeen Kaphle: Chief of OperationsLisa Kurbiel: Chief of Social Policy, Planning, Monitoring and EvaluationEugenie Reidy: East and Southern Africa Regional Planning SpecialistSheema Sen Gupta: Chief of Child ProtectionNatalia Winder-Rossi: East and Southern Africa Senior Social Policy Specialist

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