Data science to inform cash-based assistance
Challenge
Cash assistance is an increasingly important part of UNHCR Peru’s support for people displaced from Venezuela. With growing needs and shrinking resources, it is critical for UNHCR to be able to provide timely, targeted, effective cash-based interventions for the most vulnerable.
Solution
UNHCR Peru will used mixed methodology to improve the targeting of its cash-based interventions. Data analysis will identify the vulnerability profiles of families both eligible and ineligible for this assistance. Through workshops, interviews, and focus groups with partners, UNHCR, and displaced communities, the profiles that should be prioritized will be discussed. Inclusion and exclusion errors will be studied in depth.
Impact
More effective cash-based interventions to respond to different operational contexts, needs, and individual vulnerabilities, supporting greater wellbeing for communities most in need.
Project impact
Other information
UNHCR Peru lacked an objective, evidence-based methodology to target cash-based interventions (CBIs) for the more than 1.5 million Venezuelan refugees and migrants in the country. Funded by the Data Innovation Fund, this project developed and field-validated a Scorecard tool that translates household vulnerability into a transparent, statistically robust eligibility score for multipurpose, health and livelihoods CBI. The Scorecard was co-validated with refugees, host-community leaders and partners (HIAS, Encuentros, Cáritas) across five very different regions, from urban Lima to the border at Tumbes, the mining context of Madre de Dios, and the southern hubs of Arequipa and Trujillo, ensuring the tool captures region-specific protection risks such as GBV, eviction, single-parent households and informal labour. The validated Scorecard now underpins UNHCR Peru's CBI targeting nationwide, helping over 560 families receive timely and dignified assistance during the project alone, and is replicable across other CBI operations in the Americas.