Når katastrofen rammer i en hjemsøgt del af verden som Vestafrika stiller nødhjælpsfolk med penge og madkuponer til de ramte fattige – men hvad så når hjælpen hører op? Hvordan indarbejder man den slags “faldskærmsbistand” i et lands socialpolitik, så det batter på længere sigt?
DAKAR, 26 June 2013 (IRIN): Aid agency cash and voucher (kuponer) transfers in emergencies have increased significantly in recent years. The World Food Programme (WFP), for example, has tripled its distributions over the past three years.
The priority now must be to ensure that
* these emergency schemes complement, rather than replace (kun er et supplement snarere end erstatter), governments’ long-term social protection efforts;
* get governments to take on more of the financial burden; and
* make sure cash schemes are woven into other protection schemes, such as free school meals and health care, say aid workers.
West African governments and donors currently run dozens of social protection schemes, be they
* cash vouchers (WFP is transferring cash in Ghana, Niger and Senegal, among other countries);
* longer-term social protection (World Bank and governments in Ghana, Niger, Mauritania and Burkina Faso); or
* government-driven food subsidies (prisstøtte) in response to high prices for staple food (grundnæringsmidler) (Senegal, Niger, Chad and Burkina Faso, among others, have experimented with these for years).
If designed well, short-term schemes should complement long-term ones, said Margie Rehm, WFP’s West Africa cash and voucher programme officer. In West Africa, this may end up looking like this:
“WFP runs cash-for-work for the poorest families in the dry season, and extends this help to poor families, making it unconditional (ydes uden betingelser) during the lean (magre) season, to avoid them from sliding down the socioeconomic scale. This is our strategy for the next two years,” she told IRIN.
More social protection, please
Paul Harvey, a partner in Humanitarian Outcomes, has long argued that long-term protection schemes should be better coordinated with short-term emergency transfers, and that is starting to happen, according to cash programmers in West Africa.
While an increase in cash transfers is to be welcomed, Al Hassan Cissé, Oxfam’s West Africa food security advocacy coordinator, stressed the need for governments to take on more of the responsibility and financial burden for social protection.
While Ghana funds half of its social protection scheme (and the World Bank the rest), the World Bank funds the bulk of such schemes in Mali and Niger.
“It is hard to say how much this push for cash has been led by donors or by governments,” remarked Christophe Breyne, coordinator of the Cash and Learning Partnership a network aimed at boosting learning on cash transfers funded by European Union humanitarian funder ECHO.
There are signs that governments are engaging, he said, pointing to a recent initiative by the Mauritanian government to analyse how its untargeted subsidies of cooking gas and cooking oil could be redirected to protection schemes for the poorest.
Mitigation (forebyggelse) cheaper than response
Læs videre på
http://www.irinnews.org/report/98287/analysis-emergency-cash-versus-social-protection-in-west-africa
