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Guidelines on using cash and voucher assistance for sexual and reproductive health and rights programming [EN/AR]

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World
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CARE
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INTRODUCTION

CARE International is one of the world’s largest humanitarian organizations, fighting global poverty and working in over 90 countries. CARE’s emergency response efforts are particularly effective because we view all of our programs through a unique gender perspective, putting women and girls at the center.

CARE’s focus on women and girls gives us a unique lens on leveraging cash and voucher assistance (CVA) for more and longer lasting impact. CARE is committed to ensuring that projects with CVA are designed with and for women and girls, addressing recipients’ needs, challenges, and opportunities. CARE has invested in significant research on how to make cash work for women and girls through a gender-sensitive approach that frames the processes and outcomes of the modalities. The organization aims to be “cash ready” to achieve breakthroughs for women and girls and to respond to gender-based violence (GBV) with cash transfers and mitigate GBV risks in projects with CVA.

Furthermore, CARE seeks to increase its use of CVA for one of its core areas of programming, Sexual Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR). This is in line with the recommendations of the Inter-Agency Working Group on Reproductive Health, which deems CVA a suitable option to ensure ongoing access to affordable and high-quality comprehensive sexual and reproductive health (SRH) care.

Given the cyclical nature of emergencies and the growing number of countries in fragile contexts, CARE works to: 1) enhance preparedness efforts on SRHR through capacity building of government, local partners, and other humanitarian actors, influencing policy on preparedness for SRH in emergencies and strengthening coordination mechanisms across actors; 2) enable agile, rights-based, people-centered, gender-sensitive emergency response efforts guided by the Minimum Initial Service Package (MISP) for SRHR in crisis-settings; 3) strengthen government health systems that have been weakened by protracted or chronic crises to deliver comprehensive SRHR services in fragile contexts in line with the Inter-Agency Field Manual (IAFM) for SRH in Crisis-Settings with a focus on unlocking access to the most stigmatized SRH services; and 4) cross-cutting approaches to support localization and gender and inclusive programming that is responsive to the needs and capacities of vulnerable and marginalized groups – such as adolescents – across all phases of a crisis. With the goal of increasing access to and utilization of health services, in particular SRH, and guided by the IAFM including the MISP, CARE believes that provision of CVA for SRHR is critical to contributing to the safety, dignity, and resilience of women and girls in humanitarian settings. Therefore, strengthening the evidence base and sharing of guidance and learning on this topic is a high priority for CARE.

Access the complementary documents here.