Overcoming Barriers to Coordinating across Social Protection and Humanitarian Assistance – Building on Promising Practices

The importance of strong coordination between actors preparing, designing and implementing shock responses is well accepted. This has been highlighted specifically concerning shock responsive social protection (SRSP) as well as linking humanitarian action and social protection (HA-SP). However, despite unanimous professed acceptance of the principle of coordination, practical experiences of linking shock responses with social protection systems have shown that this can be challenging to put into practice. The COVID-19 pandemic presents an opportunity for change - the global crisis having galvanised interest in and experimentation with shock responsive social protection (SRSP) and linking humanitarian action and social protection (HA-SP). This paper presents a synthesis of global learning from efforts to coordinate shock responses linked with social protection during the COVID-19 pandemic as well as in response to other shocks, to inform dialogue and future action.