Cash, rather than parcels
The largest humanitarian programmes of 2022 did not distribute goods. They transferred money directly to households, because the shops were open and people knew better than any agency what they needed.
The instinct in a crisis is to send things. Blankets, food parcels, boxes. In Ukraine in 2022, the largest humanitarian programmes did something else: they sent money.
United Nations agencies and partner organisations enrolled displaced and affected households and transferred cash directly, often to a bank card, through a system that could verify identity against state registers. Millions of people received it.
Why cash was the right instrument here
Three reasons. Shops were open and supplied in most of the country, so the goods existed and did not need importing. A displaced family knows whether it needs medicine, a deposit on a room or children shoes better than any assessment can. And money spent locally keeps a shop trading, a supplier delivering and a driver employed.
It also relied on something Ukraine had already built: near-universal card payment, digital identity and public registers. The humanitarian response could be that efficient because a decade of digital public infrastructure was already there.
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