Cash assistance is supposed to be one of the most flexible ways to help people in a humanitarian crisis. The war in Ukraine is putting that to the test.
Today we’re also visualizing three years of World Bank funding, and running the numbers on the long-term costs of the global COVID-19 response.
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In most crisis response situations, getting cash into the hands of people is considered the best option because it is fast, flexible, and effective. Humanitarian organizations responding to the crisis in Ukraine have put cash at the center of their strategy, with a current effort to deliver over $288 million to at least 1.3 million of those most vulnerable in the face of ongoing conflict and mass displacement.
Sam Mednick reports for Devex that even a “no regrets” cash assistance strategy, which forgoes some of the usual registration requirements to get money out the door quickly, is running into some big challenges. The crisis involves refugees sheltering in multiple countries with differing legal regimes, rapidly changing conditions in conflict-affected areas, and widespread destruction of economic infrastructure.
Sam writes: “Many families … live in or have fled from cities where shops were razed, leaving nothing to buy, or the towns are now occupied or besieged by Russian troops, making it challenging to bring in goods. Aid groups said a cash response will only work if it’s adaptable to the fast-changing nature of the conflict, quick to scale, based on market monitoring, and combined with in-kind assistance, especially in hard-hit parts of the country.”
Ukraine: What aid groups need to consider when distributing cash aid
Side note: Individual donors interested in supporting humanitarian relief efforts in Ukraine should still give cash. Unsolicited material donations can do more harm than good.
+ Catch up on all our coverage of the humanitarian response to the war in Ukraine.
What money can’t buy
And then from the other side of global giving, my colleague Stephanie Beasley breaks down a new report on the role of nonmonetary donations in philanthropy — think: time, goods, and advocacy.
“If we continue to look at ‘giving’ as being defined as monetary transactions between donors, institutional foundations and registered charities, we’re looking at only a small piece of the full picture,” GivingTuesday, the group behind the report, writes in a blog post.
Report: Nonmonetary giving plays crucial role in global philanthropy
Follow the money
What have the last three years looked like for World Bank funding? My colleagues Janadale Leene Coralde and Miguel Antonio Tamonan can literally show you. Among the trend lines they pull out in their interactive analysis are:
In 2021, almost half of the funding for new projects went to just three regions: South Asia with $13.39 billion, West Africa with $11.61 billion, and Latin America and the Caribbean with $8.85 billion.
Health was the highest-priority sector with $12.99 billion in 2021.
In 2020, 223 COVID-19 projects worth $17.2 billion were added to the pipeline.
Interactive: Explore the World Bank's funding pipeline from 2019 to 2021 (Pro)
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Prime targets
A new report from Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, based on 427 interviews conducted over 16 months, documents a “campaign of ethnic cleansing in [Ethiopia’s] Western Tigray” by “Amhara regional officials and regional special forces and militias, with federal forces' complicity.”
The report describes numerous violations of international law, including extrajudicial executions, sexual violence, and torture. It also describes the deliberate denial of access to humanitarian aid.
“Our research shows how Tigrayans who were trying to access what assistance was being distributed, were being discriminated against. Aid was instrumentalised and this contributed to this campaign of ethnic cleansing,” Laetitia Bader, Horn of Africa director at Human Rights Watch, tells my colleague Sara Jerving.
Read: Ethnic cleansing in western Tigray included discriminatory aid denial
Recap: Sara has a deep dive into the systematic destruction of Tigray’s health system since the onset of Ethiopia's war.
Now and later
The International Monetary Fund said Tuesday that the global response to COVID-19 requires $15 billion in funding this year and then $10 billion per year for a “long-term fight.”
“Overall, health security is economic security,” said Gita Gopinath, IMF’s first deputy managing director.
IMF’s estimate, detailed in a new paper, comes after U.S. lawmakers stripped $5 billion in global COVID-19 funding from an emergency budget bill that had been under negotiation for weeks before hitting yet another political roadblock on Tuesday night.
COVID-19: Long-term pandemic fight will require $10B annually, IMF says
+ Sign up to Devex CheckUp, our free must-read Thursday newsletter for exclusive global health news and insider insights. Its latest edition tackles WHO’s COVID-19 excess deaths estimate and the country that wants its released postponed by 10 years.
In other news
About 27 million people in West Africa are experiencing hunger, marking the region’s worst food crisis in a decade. International aid groups warned that the figure could rise to 38 million by June. [Al Jazeera]
U.S. President Joe Biden’s second global COVID-19 summit has been postponed. [Politico]
A United Nations peacekeeper from Nepal was killed in an attack by suspected militia members in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo on Tuesday. [Reuters]
The United Kingdom has canceled a global LGBTQ conference after more than 100 British LGBTQ organizations announced Monday they were boycotting the event because trans people were excluded from a government ban on conversion therapy. [BBC]
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About the author
Michael Igoe@AlterIgoe
Michael Igoe is a Senior Reporter with Devex, based in Washington, D.C. He covers U.S. foreign aid, global health, climate change, and development finance. Prior to joining Devex, Michael researched water management and climate change adaptation in post-Soviet Central Asia, where he also wrote for EurasiaNet. Michael earned his bachelor's degree from Bowdoin College, where he majored in Russian, and his master’s degree from the University of Montana, where he studied international conservation and development.
