On In-cash Aid In Response To Hunger Caused By Poverty

With the integration of international market and development of aid practice, in-kind food aid has not been the only way of food assistance and countries without food surplus can also be donors. With cash transfer payment as the main content, aid in cash has also been used in the famine relief.People took it as granted that famine was the result of insufficient food supply. But according to Amartya Sen's famine research, many famines in the history was not due to the decrease of food supply, but to the deprivation of "food entitlement" caused by poverty, class and other reasons. Sen's research provided new perspectives in solving famine problem. Some scholars began to explore cash assistance in easing famine by giving money directly to the recipients, enhancing their ability to buy food. At the same time, from the 1990s some countries in Latin America launched conditional cash transfer programs, which not only received good effect in helping the poor, but also enhanced recipients' nutrition level. It inspired people to extend aid in cash to international famine relief. Oxfam and the World Food Programme have both employed aid in cash in many emergency reliefs.This paper comprehensively reviews the role and conditions of cash assistance in response to food crisis, and put forward suggestions for emergency aid to famine. To this end, the author refers to the WFP and Oxfam reports, draws on practices and studies of cash transfers. First of all, this paper, based on the theory of budget constraints in economics, constructs a mathematical model of cash assistance, and proves the feasibility of cash assistance from the economic theory and mathematical deduction. Then, this paper re-examines the debate among scholars and policy makers on cash and food aid, trying to respond to the main doubts of aid in cash. Then, this paper shows progress in international society for cash assistance rules, especially the European Commission's common principles for multi-purpose cash-based assistance. This paper draws on the pilot project of cash-based aid in Sri Lanka to exemplify the use of cash assistance in international disaster relief. At the end of this paper, based on the comprehensive summary of the development of aid in cash, the paper puts forward the suggestions on the application of cash assistance in the future.Through the research, this paper argues that there is a lot of room for cash assistance in emergency humanitarian relief in response to food crisis caused by poverty. Aid in cash provides a new way of thinking and a new approach to international famine relief, so that there are chances for countries with no food surplus to participate in resolving regional food crisis and famine relief.This study is to sort out the role and prospect of cash assistance in famine aid, to arouse thoughts about emergency food aid, to prompt better understanding of cash assistance, and to provide reference for further enhancement of aid effectiveness.