Paper details

Paper authors	Volkan Yilmaz
In panel on	Rethinking Cash Assistance within Humanitarian Response
Paper presenter(s) will be presenting	In-Person / Online

Abstract

In the aftermath of the Syria conflict that started in 2011, Turkey became one of the largest refugee-hosting countries. Humanitarian assistance for the refugee population has become a domain of policy and humanitarian practice where a wide range of actors, including the Turkish government, domestic and international humanitarian organizations and big funders such as the European Union have been involved. The EU-funded Emergency Social Safety Net (ESSN) project in 2017, which is a nationwide regular unconditional cash transfer scheme for refugees, has become the central action of the humanitarian response framework. This paper examines the major assumptions that underlie the design and implementation of ESSN and discusses its potential impact on the social and economic integration of refugees by situating it within the emerging welfare mix for Syrian refugees in Turkey. The analysis of ESSN made in this paper suggests that cash programmes alone are unable to address basic needs in countries where labor and rental markets are largely unregulated; they need to be complemented by broad policies of labor and rental market regulations.

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