Case study R: A humanitarian social protection response to COVID-19 in Kenya

This case study explores how links between social protection and humanitarian response systems can be mutually beneficial to deliver better assistance to households. To curb the spread of Covid-19, Kenya, like many governments, has restricted physical movement. Consequently, incomes halved and food insecurity doubled in some parts of Nairobi. For Oxfam’s humanitarian response, the government’s social assistance programme provided the entry point to deliver faster humanitarian response. Oxfam’s approach using covid-safe digital delivery, reducing barriers to access transfers, specific targeting of women and men affected by SGBV and a more inclusive approach, provides learning for the government to improve its social assistance in the future. Humanitarian programming needs to more consciously and systematically consider social protection schemes in designing interventions, while social protection schemes can look to the learning, testing and innovation from the humanitarian NGO community to better support people in crisis and non-crisis times. © Esther Schüring and Markus Loewe 2021.