Tipsheets for Applying the Common Principles for Linking Humanitarian Assistance and Social Protection

This document provides concrete tips for humanitarian and social protection stakeholders to apply the nine common principles for linking humanitarian assistance and social protection at the country level. It aims to provide tangible and inclusive approaches and practical examples. The intended audience includes humanitarian and development organizations, government agencies, donor agencies, civil society organizations, financial service providers, and research institutes.

Key Insights

Principle 1: Systematically Assess Entry Points

From the start of a crisis, it is essential to build synergies between relevant systems. This approach ensures resources are used efficiently while meeting immediate and long-term needs.

Assess the enabling environment to engage with SP systems, policies, and programmes, including political economy and protection risks. Determine if an assessment of the SP system exists and, if not, conduct a joint assessment with a multisectoral team. Resource and conduct joint assessments with experts who understand both HA and SP, leveraging existing coordination bodies and humanitarian clusters. Coordinate with relevant sectors and mechanisms to inform national response plans. Build on existing tools and resources, such as MSNA and JIAF. Prioritize entry points based on assessment results and identify opportunities for linkages between humanitarian responses and existing SP programmes.

Principle 2: Ensure the Meaningful and Safe Inclusion of Excluded and Vulnerable Populations

We call on development and humanitarian actors to work together to protect vulnerable groups whose inclusion in SP systems may put them at risk, or whose vulnerabilities may result in their exclusion from these systems. Meaningful and safe inclusion requires that needs and vulnerability assessments are disaggregated by gender, age, disability, ethnicity, religion, or other contextually specific marginalized groups.

Address legal and societal barriers by advocating for the inclusion of marginalized groups in national SP systems. Develop and implement a risk mitigation strategy, identifying concrete steps with communities themselves. Conduct joint vulnerability and needs assessments across SP-HA, ensuring disaggregation by relevant factors. Understand and address data protection risks, especially in conflict-affected contexts. Build and/or strengthen accessible feedback and complaints mechanisms. Ensure that communication about SP programmes is accessible and inclusive. Leverage existing tools to reduce discrepancies and exclusion errors. Align parallel and national SP systems when appropriate, progressively integrating excluded groups into national systems. Ensure dedicated funding and resources for inclusive programming. Build partnerships with, and help strengthen, specialized organizations to leverage their expertise.

Principle 3: Ensure Engagement and Collaboration with Local Actors

The term ‘local actors’ includes both local and national actors. Engagement refers to interactions or partnerships that are mutually beneficial based on meaningful participation and real collaboration.

Partner with relevant local and national actors and assess their capacities and risks. Define and formalize roles and responsibilities of different stakeholders within response frameworks and HA-SP coordination mechanisms. Assess and strengthen capacities of local and national actors to be more prepared in future crises. Integrate and collaborate with local and national actors and relevant authorities for early warning systems and contingency plans. Coordinated humanitarian and SP programme design should be informed and co-led by government and local actors. Conduct risk management to avoid unfairly transferring risks to local and national actors. Encourage national governments to involve local actors in the enrolment of marginalized populations into SP systems. Consider a ‘consortium-approach’ of several local actors/NGOs receiving support from larger INGOs. Collaborate with local actors to identify culturally sensitive grievance channels.

Principle 4: Elaborate More Flexible Financing Mechanisms

Donors should close gaps in humanitarian and development funding streams, including creating (new) pooled instruments. In countries facing recurrent and protracted crises, donors should work closely with IFIs and national governments to develop joint, multi-year financing strategies. Support and advocacy to governments to strengthen their SP financing and ensure it complements and enables transition from humanitarian financing.

Improve internal coordination through joint funding strategies. Incorporate crisis modifier clauses into long-term development programmes and encourage governments to do so as well to enable shock-responsive drawdowns. Engage closely with climate finance teams to leverage climate finance mechanisms. Address the challenges of pooled funds by establishing clear guidelines. Align financing instruments with national budgets and PFM processes. Collaborate with humanitarian and development actors to synchronize investments and funding mechanisms. In politically unstable contexts, redirect financing through third-party implementation arrangements.

Principle 5: Build and Strengthen Coordination Mechanisms

Humanitarian and development actors should strengthen when already existent, or establish if needed, effective coordination mechanisms. These may include SP coordination groups as well as Cash Working Groups at the country level which engage in joined-up analysis, planning, targeting, delivery, and monitoring, as appropriate to the context and maintenance of humanitarian space.

Initiate dialogue between relevant stakeholders, identify shared goals, and gain a deeper understanding of each other’s goals, mandates, resources, and ways of working. Allocate adequate resources, adapt terms of references of individuals or forums, and bring in dedicated capacity. Initiate comprehensive stakeholder mapping and joint exploration of barriers to coordination on SP. Engage with all the key stakeholders and coordination platforms of HA-SP. Build on existing structures and forums. Keep a balance in representation between all stakeholders, whether government, development or humanitarian. Develop a structure that allows for national and regional/local level participation.

Principle 6: Work Towards Joint M&E Frameworks

Development and humanitarian actors to jointly define expected outcomes and indicators for efforts to link HA and SP. Frameworks could include joint assessments underpinning planning for linking HA and SP, measurement approaches, a common M&E plan, and dedicated research agendas for learning and better programming.

Identify a set of shared outcomes and corresponding indicators. Define common standards and methodologies for the collection of information. Ensure the meaningful inclusion and representation of affected populations in M&E processes. Strengthen the capacity of all stakeholders, especially national and local actors, to support M&E. Develop and implement recommendations from M&E processes. Employ context-appropriate new technologies for better reach and more effective collection. Connect M&E processes with communication, knowledge-management, research, and outreach efforts.

Principle 7: Make Coordinated and Complementary Contributions to SP System Strengthening

Development and humanitarian partners should work together to strengthen nationally led adaptive and shock-responsive systems, in line with respective mandates and comparative advantages. Jointly support strategies to transition towards nationally led systems, without compromising traditional coping systems or humanitarian principles.

Where governments have an existing roadmap for SP system development, efforts should go towards identifying building blocks where (i) the national/international community can collectively add value as a whole; and (ii) specific institutions can work individually while keeping relevant stakeholders informed.

Principle 8: Seek Entry Points to Preserve Elements of SP

Humanitarian and development partners should engage with conflict, protection, peace and governance specialists to understand the nature of the conflict and how it affects possible linkages between SP and HA. Humanitarian and development actors to sustain assistance, or at least not undermine respective outcomes, existing sector investments and inform foundations for future, longer-term inclusive system building.

Humanitarian Actors: Work together with SP actors and structures to support joint conflict sensitivity and critical gap analysis. Develop a plan to link HA to SP from the onset, recognizing the need for an eventual exit or transition strategy, and engage early with national stakeholders, including for capacity strengthening where appropriate. Where feasible, use SP systems or building blocks of systems to deliver HA. Advocate for the inclusion of those reliant on such assistance into national systems, ensuring alignment with humanitarian principles and a people-centred approach. Document humanitarian programme design and operational experiences that could enhance national systems.

Principle 9: Expand Access to SP for Forcibly Displaced Populations and Migrants

Development and humanitarian actors to undertake joint analysis of the legal framework and political economy dynamics and use this information to identify realistic objectives and plans for linking these populations with social protection. In line with humanitarian principles, linkages should only be considered when appropriate, considering social cohesion, the principle of ‘do no harm, and protection risks.

The priority actions and entry points for governments and international partners to achieve the inclusion of FDPs in SP are informed by many factors, including the capacity for collaboration and coordination between humanitarian and development actors, and the financing arrangements and resource availability.

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Implications and Conclusions

The document provides practical guidance and principles for linking humanitarian assistance and social protection, emphasizing the importance of coordination, inclusion, and adapting to specific contexts and needs. The implications include improved efficiency, effectiveness, and sustainability of assistance programs, as well as enhanced resilience and self-reliance for vulnerable populations. The document highlights the need for strong evidence-based decision-making, transparent and accountable processes, and the meaningful participation of affected populations in program design and implementation. Long-term implications include the potential for building stronger, more inclusive social protection systems that are better equipped to respond to future shocks and crises.