A case study on shock-responsive social protection: horizontal expansion during the 2022 unseasonal floods in Nepal

Nepal has been hit by unseasonal floods for two consecutive years. This has heavily impacted the agrarian country, as the floods coincided with rice harvesting season. With financial support from the European Union Humanitarian Aid Operations, the Nepal Red Cross Society and the Danish Red Cross have been exploring ways of leveraging social protection programmes for disaster relief, both before and after floods. In response to the 2022 unseasonal floods, the Red Cross transferred multipurpose cash assistance to cover impacted households within its targeted geographical area, using the government’s social protection programme. As this programme did not cover the entire flood-affected population, the programme’s beneficiary list was temporarily expanded to include the remaining households.

An independent evaluation of this horizontal expansion shows that affected populations can receive cash transfers within a week of a small- to medium-scale disaster. And, if local markets are uninterrupted under such circumstances, an early cash response can help to meet the most basic and urgent needs of affected families in immediate aftermath of a disaster. This process can also be easily applied to transfer cash in anticipation of disasters. The proof of concept recommends shock-responsive social protection as a feasible way to provide an emergency response that is not only efficient, but also dignified.