Paper details

Paper authors	Nadine Hassouneh
In panel on	Humanitarian innovation, technology and cash assistance in Lebanon
Paper presenter(s) will be presenting	In-Person / Online

Abstract

Cash assistance to refugees via prepaid cards is a market-driven solution embraced by the humanitarian sector as a key example of “Humanitarian Innovation”. This paper focuses on cash assistance for Syrian refugees in Lebanon, one of the biggest cash operations in the sector globally, and analyzes what this large-scale program and prototypical humanitarian innovation brought to the humanitarian sector’s institutional set-up and business operations, and the impact it had on refugees. We open by situating Humanitarian Innovation in historical and political context. We focus on the sovereignty and implementation model of prepaid cards and argue that donors’ push for innovation in the humanitarian sector led to an overall monopolistic, distinctly opaque, and generally inefficient un-business.

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