3.2.1 Participation

It is imperative to communicate with communities throughout the project cycle. This includes:

• During project design to ensure that separate focus group discussions with women about their preference for the household recipient of a cash or voucher transfer are taking place and that they are asked if targeting women might cause tensions in the family or any safety concerns.
• During targeting to raise awareness on the targeting criteria to minimize attacks on others and to emphasize indirect benefits.
• Prior to distribution of cash or voucher assistance to highlight that the distribution will take place and that it is completely free.
• During the risk analysis, including by ensuring active participation of women, girls and other people at risk of GBV in all CBI-related assessments in order to ensure safer CBI design and delivery for all.

3.2.2 Considering specific vulnerabilities in your assessment

In addition to gender and disability, consider other vulnerabilities during the assessment phase: These include protection issues, children as beneficiaries of CBI, indigenous people and other minorities. IOM is committed to mainstreaming protection in all its humanitarian activities (see: IOM’s Humanitarian Policy).

IN232 on Guidance as to How to Mainstream Protection Across IOM Crisis Response

Gender

Gender Mainstreaming is defined in the IOM Gender Equality Policy as “the process of assessing the gendered implications for all people of any planned action, including policies, programming or legislation”. It is a strategy for making the concerns and experiences of all individuals an integral dimension of the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of policies and programmes in all political, economic and social spheres so that individuals benefit equally, and inequality is not perpetuated. The goal is to achieve gender equality. Gender mainstreaming involves ensuring that a gender perspective and attention to the goal of gender equality are central to all activities. Through its Gender Equality Policy, IOM reaffirms its commitment to ensuring that gender is mainstreamed throughout all its projects, policies and other activities. When conducting assessments, consider the following points to ensure that your CBI programme accounts for gender:

• Understand the role of women and men in relation to access to water, food and cash and other resources, as well as control over decision making on their utilization. Including the role played by either gender to cushion the impact of shocks.
• Men and women’s access to financial services (both formal and informal) and the disruptions/blocks they face.
• Analyse the differences in coping capacities of men and women, including male and female headed households.
• Consider gender balance in project teams and teams of implementing partners and address any potential barriers to working on the project.
• Ensure there are male and female interpreters and health professionals. Ensure that staff and partners involved in project implementation are trained on the prevention of sexual exploitation and abuse, and sexual harassment.
• Ensure that all data on beneficiaries are disaggregated by sex and age, wherever possible, and analysed and reported on accordingly.
• Ensure that awareness-raising and communication activities have gender-sensitive content and are representative of, and accessible to, the entire target audience. Moreover, ensure that the appropriate language is used and is gender-neutral, and portrayals of men and women are varied, avoiding gender stereotypes.
• Analyse whether and why women at different stages of their lifecycle are (or are not) especially vulnerable to poverty and shocks, and what exacerbates risks (health, security, GBV) for women during an emergency.
• Analyse the potential impacts of the CBI, disaggregating women and men, age and ability.

IOM Gender Equality Policy 2015-2019

Persons with disabilities

In situations of displacement and migration, persons with disabilities face additional challenges to support themselves and families often struggle to meet their household financial needs, leaving the group forgotten and left behind. The following are examples of how to include persons with disabilities in CBI programming:

• Identify persons with disabilities and ensure that all assessment tools are able to adequately include them.
• Consult persons with disabilities to ensure that decisions take account of their preferences, priorities, capacities and needs, and do not negatively impact their lives. Ensure they are able to participate in consultations by providing reasonable accommodations such as transport and accessibility of venues.
• Ensure that persons with disabilities are fairly represented in both formal and informal mechanisms and processes.
• Ensure that persons with disabilities, their families and organizations of persons with disabilities, are actively involved in identifying barriers and planning, designing, implementing, monitoring and evaluating cash-based interventions. Consider protection risks, mitigation mechanisms and benefits at every stage. Consider accessibility to disbursement locations (e.g. priority/separate lines, use of proxies for collection), markets and vendors, and transportation.
• Consider other disability-related costs, including additional costs that households including persons with disabilities may incur when they access cash (transportation costs, assistive devices).
• Consider recruitment of dedicated staff to support inclusion of persons with disabilities in different CBI - it can range from a non-specialized staff to support running activities to having an occupational therapist as part of the staff to support adaptation of working tools.

Disability Inclusion in CBI

GBV response

CBI can be used in GBV responses to improve access to life-saving assistance, such as essential health services, or as an opportunity for safety resources for those still facing life-threatening situations and/or fleeing for their safety. In these instances, cash assistance must be integrated into the survivor’s action plan and modalities for CBI should be part of GBV case management activities. CBI teams should engage directly with GBV actors working with the survivors to agree on appropriate cash intervention to meet the needs identified. Cash assistance for GBV response can be a one-off emergency assistance, a recurrent assistance for a few months to allow recovery or can be cash used for specific services such as medical or legal assistance.

The monitoring of cash assistance for a GBV response must be done by a GBV specialist knowledgeable about the case and cannot be undertaken by Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability and Learning (MEAL) or cash officers.

CBI and GBV  UNFPA Guidance: How to Design and Set Up Cash Assistance in GBV Case Management

Child Protection and Children

In accordance with the IOM Guidance Note on How to Mainstream Protection across IOM Crisis Response, IOM should minimize any risks that children may be inadvertently exposed to during the design and implementation of any project. While IOM has a role to play in projects with Child Protection as a main outcome, it also has a critical obligation to ensure that Child Protection considerations are mainstreamed across all of IOM’s programmes.

In principle, CBI programmes are not designed for children, but they can be used if it is in the best interests of the child, if it contributes to their protection and if safeguards are applied; such minimum preconditions are:

• The required coordination with the IOM Child Protection (CP) team or other CP actors, and application of the contextualized analysis, selected criteria and safeguards, and alignment with CP case management.
• The need for prior risk assessments conducted jointly or by Child Protection teams or actors.
• Child safeguarding procedures.

As a second approach, CBI specifically contributing to child protection outcomes should only be conducted under the leadership and monitoring of CP team or actors. CBI programming should consider how to integrate specific CP outcomes in its intervention and work in partnership or coordination with IOM CP staff or an external CP actor.

It is generally recommended that children should not be direct beneficiaries of CBI. Instead, parents, caregivers or heads of households, rather than children themselves, should be beneficiaries of CBI. In specific circumstances, children may be the direct recipients of cash grants or vouchers, if it is considered beneficial to the protection of the child and under specified conditions, such as the accompaniment and monitoring of a CP actor. It is important to note that while children may not be initially considered as intended beneficiaries, children can also be unaccompanied or separated, be the head of a household (i.e. child headed household) or assume the head of household responsibilities due to physical and/or other limitations of the actual head of household; therefore, children may, intentionally or not, become direct beneficiaries of CBI.

CBI and Child Protection