The use of cash and voucher assistance (CVA) in humanitarian settings has grown significantly over the past decade. The adoption of CVA has been driven by donors and implementers alike, who largely agree that it can be a more cost-efficient way to deliver assistance than other delivery modalities, and that cash provides choice and dignity to affected populations. The growth in global volumes of humanitarian CVA is one of the few success stories of the Grand Bargain, increasing to around US$8 billion in transfers in each of 2022 and 2023.

Still, research suggests that there is yet more room for CVA to make up a greater share of international humanitarian assistance. ^[1] There also appears to be limited progress when it comes to connecting the localisation agenda with the delivery of CVA. A report by the Humanitarian Policy Group argues that the way in which the system absorbs “disruptive reforms” such as cash, “raises questions as to whether it will ever willingly concede power to the extent required for ambitions like localisation”. ^[2] Our analysis suggests that little progress has been made on financing to local and national actors when it comes to CVA, with the caveat that visibility over financial flows to local and national actors is limited. The original Grand Bargain text did not refer to the relationship between CVA and localisation, but the CVA Policy Dialogue initiative, co-convened by USAID and the CALP Network, is now putting locally led CVA on the agenda.

The volume of humanitarian CVA decreased in 2023 for the first time since Development Initiatives (DI) and the CALP Network started tracking global totals, with data going back to 2015. ^[3] The decrease in CVA assistance is reflective of the broader funding trend in the sector; international funding for humanitarian responses is under pressure (see Figure 1.3 in Chapter 1 ), and CVA is no exception.

• The amount of CVA transferred to people affected by crises declined from US$8.4 billion in 2022 to US$7.8 billion in 2023. Total funding, which includes both the transfer value and estimated programme costs associated with delivering cash or vouchers, similarly decreased from US$10.6 billion to US$9.7 billion. This decrease mirrors the overall trend in humanitarian financing.
• Despite this decrease, funding to CVA is still significantly higher than historical levels. Total CVA funding in 2023 was US$2.5 billion higher than in 2021, and the annual growth rate across the period (2018 to 2023) was 16% per year.
• This is in part due to where humanitarian CVA programming is possible. Past research has shown that context determines where and how much CVA can be implemented. ^[4] For example, the large-scale use of cash in the Ukraine response continues to contribute to the uplift in overall CVA volumes – despite signs that volumes in Ukraine may have dipped in 2023.

Humanitarian CVA continued to grow in importance as part of the humanitarian sector in 2023, despite the slight decrease in financial volumes.

• CVA constituted an estimated 23% of total international humanitarian assistance in 2023, compared to 22% in 2022. This is a significant increase from our estimate for 2017 (16% of total international humanitarian assistance). It should be noted that the total CVA volume cannot be directly compared to the total humanitarian assistance volume in Chapter 1. This is due to the different methodologies and data sources used to calculate CVA compared to overall volumes of international humanitarian assistance. The former is primarily based on data directly collected from implementing actors, while the latter is calculated based on data – mostly from public reporting platforms – on funding provided by donors.

As the nature of humanitarian response shifts towards being more protracted and impacts of climate change increase, links across the humanitarian–development–peace nexus become even more pressing. While data on cash is becoming more visible over time (see the next sub-section), there is a lack of comparable data on social protection transfers to crisis-affected populations in protracted humanitarian contexts. The International Labour Organization’s World Social Protection Report 2024–26 argues that social protection contributes to climate change mitigation and adaptation, ^[5] which is especially relevant to most humanitarian crisis countries that face high risks of disruptions from climate change. ^[6]

• Humanitarian cash and social protection systems are often fragmented and involve different actors, funding streams and coordination structures. However, they often share objectives and operate in the same geographies.
• Despite this, the lack of data on the volume of social protection payments transferred to people affected by crises is a blind spot when discussing humanitarian cash, as both CVA and social protection payments to the same populations should be considered together. As the latest State of the World’s Cash report notes, there is a lack of a shared understanding over how to categorise cash-based social assistance as ‘humanitarian’. ^[7]
• This lack of comparable data also means there is limited visibility on the role of national governments in responding to crisis and disasters.

DI is currently working with the Institute of Development Studies to identify the volume of international financing directed to social protection in protracted crisis settings.

UN agencies continue to be the primary channel of delivery for CVA, followed by NGOs and the International Red Cross and Red Crescent (RCRC) Movement.

• UN agencies delivered US$4.7 billion in CVA in 2023, a 12% decrease compared to 2022; meanwhile, NGOs delivered US$2.2 billion in CVA, a 17% increase.
• While this may appear to be a substantial shift in who delivers CVA, the UN still constitutes a similar percentage to its historical average. Between 2018 and 2022, the UN delivered 60% of CVA each year on average, while in 2023 the UN delivered 61%. However, NGOs delivered 28% of CVA in 2023 (an increase on their 2018–2022 average of 22%). At the same time, the percentage delivered by the RCRC declined to 12% (lower than its 2018–2022 average of 17%). This is within the context of budget constraints across the RCRC Movement in 2023 and a reduction in global costs by ICRC of just under US$0.5 billion in 2023 and 2024. ^[8]
• This reflects the broader sector. Analysis in Chapter 2 shows that 58% of funding from Grand Bargain donors was channelled through multilaterals, while our analysis here shows that UN agencies delivered 61% of the total cash and voucher transfer value in 2023.

Data on the amount of CVA delivered by local and national actors remains sparse but indicates a low percentage of funding going to local and national actors.

• Limited data shows that 2.1% of CVA can be identified as being delivered by local and national actors in 2023.
• The majority of CVA identified as being delivered by local and national actors comes from data regarding sub-grants (i.e. through intermediaries), and this is an incomplete picture. However, the amount of direct funding we can identify, using the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA)’s Financial Tracking Service (FTS), as going to local and national actors is negligible.

The true amount of CVA delivered by to local and national actors is likely to be higher than the data suggests. However, as noted in Chapter 2, without greater transparency by international intermediaries it is unclear how much and in which contexts local and national actors are delivering CVA.

The trend towards cash constituting an increased percentage of all CVA has persisted in 2023.

• In 2023, 81% of CVA was delivered in the form of cash assistance and 19% was delivered in the form of vouchers.
• This continues the uptick seen in 2022, when 80% was delivered in the form of cash assistance, an increase on the 2019–2021 average of 71%.
• As noted in the Global Humanitarian Assistance Report 2023 , the scale of the Ukraine response in 2022 contributed to the broader shift towards cash as the preferred modality across the sector. Data from UN OCHA’s FTS suggests this dynamic carried through into 2023 as large amounts of funding to CVA persist in Ukraine in 2023.

CVA is not delivered uniformly across all humanitarian contexts. Some contexts may be more suited to the use of CVA as a delivery modality particularly where markets function well, recipients can be easily identified and registered, and well-established payment systems are in place. In other contexts, a lack of these conditions can make CVA more challenging, together with national government policies, protection risks and donor risk appetites.

Using UN OCHA’s FTS, CVA financing could be identified for around US$4 billion in financial flows in 2023. This represents 41% of global volumes of humanitarian CVA. In this dataset, four contexts represented 53% of CVA in 2023: Ukraine, Türkiye, Syria and Bangladesh. The same four contexts only constitute 24% of all humanitarian assistance. This suggests that, when compared to the broader humanitarian sector, the use of cash is even more concentrated in a smaller number of humanitarian responses than international humanitarian assistance overall. It also supports the argument that the growth of humanitarian CVA depends on how big a role this delivery modality plays in the crisis responses that attract a large share of funding.

The use of CVA in humanitarian assistance has greatly expanded over the past decade. However, 2023 data suggests that this growth could be stalling. Whether it is a temporary dip in a long-term upward trajectory, or the start of a plateau in CVA financing, this raises a number of questions.

Firstly, with CVA rising to 23% of all assistance in 2023, will it continue to become even more important? Our updated data shows that in 2017, an estimated 16% of total humanitarian assistance was delivered through CVA. This rise, not just in absolute volumes, but as part of the wider sector, is impressive. But this begs the question, what next when the sector is undergoing a financial crunch? And is it realistic for cash to continue to become an even bigger part of the sector?

Secondly, could there still be room for CVA to grow and meet the needs of different affected populations? CVA’s concentration in a small number of contexts suggests that while it has grown substantially in recent years, this growth is geographically uneven. There may be good reasons for this, such as a better enabling environment for the use of CVA in some contexts over others. However, this may also mean that cash is being underused in some contexts – more research and reporting on CVA may be needed to examine if this is the case. The CALP Network has argued that cash could be an answer to the humanitarian financing crunch as it “offers an opportunity of making substantial cost savings and the possibility of reaching more people with more assistance”. ^[9]

Thirdly, does the existing use of CVA support or hinder localisation efforts? Despite the upward trend in overall CVA funding, the percentage going to local and national actors mirrors the humanitarian system as a whole, at least so the available data shows. UN agencies continue to dominate the CVA landscape and our analysis can identify 2.1% going to local and national actors. Greater focus needs to be on making sure local and national actors are not bypassed, and that their role in delivering CVA is more visible. At the same time, as Christian Aid has argued, locally led CVA responses also need to be recognised as a distinct approach and funding stream. ^[10]

Grand Bargain signatories must:

• Increase the transparency of humanitarian CVA financing data to public platforms, such as the FTS, to enable greater visibility of disaggregated data. This is crucial to enable breakdown by geography, cluster and organisation type and thus improve planning and coordination of cash and voucher responses.
• Explore whether all opportunities have been optimised for the use of CVA across contexts, not just the small number of geographies where it is currently concentrated.
• Agree on and implement concrete actions to make the delivery of CVA more locally led. These actions should include: ensuring full visibility of local and national actors facilitating the delivery of CVA as sub-grantees; increasing direct funding to local and national actors for CVA programmes; strengthening links between humanitarian CVA and national social protection systems where possible; and increasing the use of group cash transfers.

Read the next chapter to learn more about pre-arranged financing for anticipatory action.