Doing Cash Differently: How Cash Transfers Can Transform Humanitarian Aid

The Center for Global Development's High Level Panel on Humanitarian Cash Transfers has thoroughly researched the issue of humanitarian cash transfers in creating this report. It offers evidence for why giving aid directly in the form of cash is often a highly effective way to reduce suffering and to make limited humanitarian aid budgets go further.

The Panel urges the humanitarian community to give more aid as cash, and to make cash central to future emergency response planning. Furthermore, the report suggests that moving to a coordinated system of cash transfers is also an opportunity for broader reform of the humanitarian system, so that aid providers of the future can work in a more complementary way to maximise their impact. The report puts forward 12 recommendations for donors, governments, and humanitarian agencies for better employing cash transfers.