2.8 Multipurpose Cash and Cash and Voucher Assistance Overview

In 2025, the response will continue to prioritize the use of cash and voucher assistance (CVA) in alignment with Grand Bargain commitments and affected people’s preferences. This includes systematic consideration of multisectoral approaches (MPC) to allow people to meet their basic needs, wherever feasible and appropriate.

Ukraine remains a conducive environment for CVA, including through its digital landscape. Markets are largely accessible and functional, particularly in government-controlled areas. Essential items such as food and hygiene products remain widely available to around 97 per cent of customers in assessed areas. However, some areas near the front line in Donetska, Khersonska, Mykolaivska and Kharkivska oblasts report shortages or a reliance on online shopping and delivery. In the areas occupied by the Russian Federation, CVA continues using remote implementation practices due to limited access and banking system functionality.

A broad range of financial service providers remain, with a robust banking system serving as the main cash delivery mechanism. Improved accessibility was reported in assessed areas, including front-line locations: bank branches (63 per cent), ATMs (85 per cent) and postal service (64 per cent). Accepted payment modalities remain unchanged year-on-year: cash (100 per cent), credit cards (94-96 per cent), debit cards (75-82 per cent) and mobile apps (60-67 per cent).¹

As of November 2024, inflation stands at 11.2 per cent,² against a backdrop of poor harvests due to adverse weather conditions, increase in production costs (energy and labour) and the depreciation of the hryvnia. There are particular concerns about the higher cost of products in rural areas – up by 8 per cent. Inflation may continue, driven by higher taxes and winter energy costs, before it falls in spring 2025.³ Affordability remains the main financial barrier to accessing goods for 62 per cent of customers.⁴

Placing people at the centre

Despite the enabling environment, the use of CVA fell to 22 per cent of the total response in Ukraine in 2024, dropping below the global average.⁵ This is part of a continuing downward trend: from 42 per cent in 2022 to 32 per cent in 2023. This is despite the systematic preference for CVA among affected people consulted⁶ across all vulnerable population groups and regions, including front-line areas. A strategic cash review called for by the Humanitarian Coordinator (2023) stressed the need to reverse this trend by ensuring evidence-based decision- making. The humanitarian and donor community remain committed to an accountable and effective response driven by the preferences of affected people.⁷ In 2025, the Humanitarian Country Team is also committed to reducing the fragmentation of basic needs assistance, ensuring greater efficiency and accountability in addressing essential needs and allowing increased complementarity between MPC and sectoral CVA outside of basic needs, in line with the 2024 Donor Cash Messages on Cash Assistance in Ukraine.⁸

CVA Overview

In 2025, $1.07 billion (or 39 per cent of HNRP requirements) is expected to be delivered through CVA across 23 activities. In addition to MPC, large components will support housing and utility objectives, including during the winter period. Substantial use of CVA is also planned in livelihood programming and under other food security, protection and health activities.

The Cash Working Group, co-chaired by OCHA, ACTED and the Ukrainian Red Cross Society is coordinating MPC and supporting the development of quality sectoral CVA programming, while ensuring intersectoral coherence. Since 2014, the CWG has been supporting clusters in mainstreaming CVA-sensitive frameworks and tools – including cash transfer designs (amounts, frequencies, delivery methods), and effective targeting and monitoring practices – into sectoral responses outside the Minimum Expenditure Basket (MEB) to ensure flexible and responsive CVA tailored to the diverse needs and preferences of affected people. This includes supporting intersectoral feasibility studies and market assessments to inform the evidence-based selection of response modalities. The CWG is also committed to partnering with clusters to develop complementary packages and approaches that couple MPC with sector-specific assistance, such as livelihoods and winterization. This integrated approach ensures that both basic and specific needs are met while minimizing the risk of households (mis-)using their sectoral inputs or underselling assets.

Multipurpose Cash Assistance

In 2025, MPC will remain the main entry point for covering basic needs, where feasible. MPC offers people flexibility and dignity in covering their basic needs while protecting livelihoods and supporting local economies. It facilitates social cohesion, encourages inclusion and reduces protection risks associated with the use of negative coping strategies.

In 2024, post-distribution findings indicated an increase in the multisectoral impact of assistance, with 59.4 per cent of people who received MPC reporting being able to cover all or most of their basic needs (against 57.2 per cent in 2023 and 48.8 per cent in 2022). MPC’s ability to meet sectoral outcomes also increased in 2024 following the revision of the MPC transfer value to UAH 3,600 per person per month. Following distribution, people assisted were able to cover 74.6 per cent of food needs, 72.6 per cent of hygiene items, 63 per cent of household non-food items, 67.5 per cent of clothing, 76 per cent of housing and utility costs and 68.2 per cent of health-care needs.

MPC partners plan to assist 1.4 million people with $410 million in 2025. They will prioritize two multisectoral approaches that will contribute to both of the HNRP’s strategic objectives:

Rapid MPC: This response is designed to quickly address the critical and life-saving basic needs of highly vulnerable households living within 20 km of the front line or impacted by the onset of a crisis-related triggered event (for up to 30 days). The rapid MPC response aims to manage unexpected increases in household expenditures and potential income losses due to sudden shocks, including military-related events (shelling, missile strikes and other types of attacks impacting civilians; and the impacts of human-made war-triggered disasters, including floods and widespread fires) and mandatory evacuation orders. In 2024, building on lessons learned from shock/triggered events such as sudden shelling and evacuations, the CWG improved its Emergency MPC Guidelines,⁹ implementing emergency rotation mechanisms at city and oblast levels to ensure adapted, efficient and accountable coordination mechanisms, and procedures are in place during such events.
MPC: This response supports war-affected vulnerable households in addressing basic needs, taking into account, among other things, socioeconomic vulnerabilities. As opposed to rapid MPC, the MPC response is not limited to the front line or a particular triggered event. It remains the principal response for supporting vulnerable households affected by the ongoing war to meet their basic needs. It can also be part of complementary packages and strategies that combine MPC with sector-specific support, such as livelihoods, winter assistance and protection. This response will be considered when households are unable to meet recurrent basic needs – while emphasizing the link to an exit strategy in collaboration with PeReHid.¹⁰

Linking with social protection

Despite the ongoing conflict and economic uncertainty, Ukraine has a functioning and robust national social protection system that annually disburses $12 billion of assistance, with widespread vital coverage of vulnerable people through programmes like the Guaranteed Minimum Income (GMI), Housing and Utilities Subsidy (HUS) and cash assistance for Internally Displaced Persons, among others. Seventy-three per cent of people benefit directly or indirectly from at least one social benefit, especially older people, people with disabilities, large families, war victims and veterans.¹¹

While fiscal constraints and inefficiencies hinder the effectiveness of the social protection system, the Ukrainian Government has remained committed to sustaining and improving its framework. Efforts are focused on enhancing the system’s resilience by making it more adaptive to ongoing shocks, such as the war, and better equipped to respond to the changing needs of vulnerable people. As of 2024, the system is undergoing reforms, with support from development donors, aimed at improving coverage, efficiency and responsiveness to the crisis.

In this context, the CVA response will strive to align with government systems, following the ‘reinforce and do not replace’ principle.¹² This includes enhancing a social protection lens in humanitarian cash programming, focusing on prioritization, transfer value determination and delivery time frames that leverage existing government registries and systems. To pave the way for the transition into the social protection system as an exit strategy from humanitarian CVA, when feasible and relevant, aid recipients should be enrolled into pertinent government programmes following screening for eligibility and enrolment and based on protection and do-no-harm considerations. Recipient should also be provided with information, legal support, case management and referrals (with informed and voluntary consent).

Since 2022, actors in Ukraine have engaged with government entities to develop humanitarian CVA designs that support the horizontal or vertical expansion of relevant government programmes to provide cash transfers to vulnerable groups, transitioning from stand-alone humanitarian support towards government-led shock-responsive mechanisms wherever appropriate and feasible. This approach (used in Somalia, Armenia, Kenya, Pakistan, etc.),¹³ is based on the idea that the use of existing systems reduces transaction costs and lead times (Ethiopia, Philippines),¹⁴ and complements identified gaps in shock-responsive social assistance programmes by leveraging national systems to identify recipients and enable rapid cash transfer delivery in areas directly affected by war-related shocks. Such activities will continue in 2025, in line with recommendations from the PeReHID Initiative and the Donor Cash Messages, to cover groups directly affected by war-related shocks (forced displacement, critical humanitarian needs, damaged or destroyed housing, war-acquired disability and winter). They will be aligned with the 2025 HNRP Strategic Objectives and severities of need, and comply with applicable cluster (for sectoral programming) or CWG (for multisectoral) standards for targeting, transfer-value thresholds and adherence to humanitarian principles.