Creating an institutional ecosystem for cash transfer programmes in post-disaster settings: A case from Indonesia

Humanitarian and disaster management actors have increasingly adopted cash transfer as an approach to reduce the suffering and vulnerability of the survivors. Cash transfers have also been used as a key instrument in the current coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. This article uses an exploratory research strategy to understand how non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and governments implement humanitarian cash transfer in a post-disaster setting. This article asks: what are the institutional constraints and opportunities faced by humanitarian emergency responders in ensuring an effective humanitarian cash transfer, and how do humanitarian actors address such institutional constraints? In this article, we have introduced a new conceptual framework, namely the humanitarian and disaster management ecosystem for cash transfer. This framework allows non-governmental actors to restore complex relations amongst state, disaster survivors (citizen), local market economy and civil society. Mixed methods and multistage research strategies were used to collect and analyse primary and secondary data. The authors conclude that by implementing cash transfers in the context of post-tsunamigenic earthquakes and liquefaction hazards, NGOs must co-create an ecosystem of response that aims to restore disaster-affected people’s access to cash and basic needs. However, in order to ensure such access to basic needs, the responders must first restore relations between the states and their citizens before linking the at-risk communities with the private sectors to jump-start local livelihoods and market economy.