Interconnecting, compounding and protracted crises affect a growing number of countries. Globally, 1.5 billion people – one in five of the world’s population – live in fragile and conflict affected situations (FCAS), yet financing to key sectors is not keeping pace with need. Regular social protection financing and programme coverage in FCAS are far below the global average, and levels of financing to humanitarian assistance, while growing in overall terms in the past decade, have remained static when compared to levels of need. Risk and climate finance face a series of barriers to their application in FCAS, where the potential for ‘non-traditional’ financial sources – such as remittances – to connect the most vulnerable to social protection have traditionally been underexplored. The Covid-19 pandemic has again exposed these fault lines and highlighted the need both for more investment in regular social protection systems and programmes, and for more ‘shock-responsive’ forms of support that can scale flexibly when faced with a diversity of risk factors. This paper provides a summary of the main trends and issues regarding both regular and risk financing in FCAS. It considers the main lessons observed in financing social assistance in FCAS and provides reflections on further avenues of research for the Better Assistance in Crises (BASIC) Research programme. It identifies useful examples now emerging from countries developing risk-informed programmes for the most vulnerable, but argues that a lack of comparable data is hampering research and learning, requiring more detailed in-country engagement. The paper notes that answers to a range of political economy questions are needed. This is both to make risk-aware financing, policymaking and programming more effective in FCAS; and to strike a balance between financial instrument requirements on the one hand, and programmatic and institutional capacity on the other. Likewise, new forms of risk ownership and client-facing accountability are needed to reframe the financing landscape and its applicability to FCAS.

Evidence on what enables social assistance systems to deliver routinely, effectively and efficiently is limited in crisis situations. Shock-responsive social protection (SRSP) and adaptive social protection (ASP) have become popular in global and national development discourses. Yet, their operationalisation in protracted crises is narrow and less well understood. Regarding SRSP, focus has shifted towards how existing social protection programmes might be scaled and flexed in crisis situations. However, the focus seems fixed entirely on what makes social protection and humanitarian assistance responsive – to the detriment of understanding what makes those systems resilient and able to maintain business continuity in protracted crises. Little attention is paid to how to sustain delivery of existing programmes, on which millions of poor and vulnerable households depend.

While shock-responsive social protection (SRSP) has become popular in global and national development discourses, its operationalisation in fragile and conflict-affected situations (FCAS) remains more limited, yet it is arguably here where it could meaningfully contribute to wider nexus approaches. By exploring experiences in a range of countries, the paper explores what is known about the use of SRSP in FCAS, and identifies further areas of potential research for the BASIC Research programme. It also assesses the state of knowledge regarding a number of key questions being raised among stakeholders, namely: What is known about navigating the ethical and political dilemmas around attempting SRSP in FCAS? What is known about the specific requirements for displaced populations and other excluded or vulnerable groups? What is known about when it might be ill-advised to attempt SRSP in FCAS?

This collection brings together brief overviews of the social assistance landscape in eight fragile and conflict-affected settings in sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East: Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Somalia and Yemen. These overviews were prepared as part of Better Assistance in Crises (BASIC) Research, a multi-year programme (2020–24) supported by the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) of the UK government. BASIC Research aims to inform policy and programming on effective social assistance in situations of crisis, including for those who are experiencing climate-related shocks and stressors, protracted conflict and forced displacement.

Protracted crises are increasing and becoming compounded, but financing solutions for humanitarian and social assistance in fragile and conflict-affected settings (FCAS) are not keeping up. UN consolidated (humanitarian/emergency) appeals have, over the past decade, been around 60 per cent-funded, despite growing exponentially in size. Social protection coverage globally remains limited, with only an estimated 45 per cent of the world’s population having access to any form of social protection. This figure dips below 10 per cent in many low-income countries (Development Initiatives 2020; ILO 2017). The lack of coverage comes at a time when global extreme poverty increased in 2020 for the first time in decades (World Bank 2020). Indeed, by 2030, 85 per cent of the extreme poor – some 342 million people – will live in FCAS (Samman et al. 2018). Financing assistance in these contexts is complex, often arriving late, and/or is earmarked for certain actors and activities, when what is required is flexible, multipartner programming. This is despite commitments made by the signatories to the Grand Bargain and at the World Humanitarian Summit to improve the timeliness, flexibility, transparency, and efficiency of aid. Solutions to these challenges remain poorly understood or caught in humanitarian or social protection silos.