SPF Colombia: COVID-19 Response for Migrants from Venezuela and Host communities

closed

Grant’s objective is to provide economic support to help mitigate the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on vulnerable Venezuelan migrants and host communities in selected Colombian municipalities. In particular, the grant will: provide economic support to vulnerable Venezuelan migrants and host communities in four municipalities of Colombia, directly affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. The economic support will be provided through multi-purpose cash transfers, which will reach approximately 17,780 vulnerable households. To avoid potential social conflicts between migrant beneficiary communities and host communities, up to 10 percentage of beneficiary vulnerable families will belong to host communities that currently do not receive any other type of social assistance.Within the selected cities, beneficiaries will be selected following multiple criteria including variables such as time of arrival, gender, age, ethnicity, access to services and socio-economic conditions, as listed in Annex 1. Priority will be given to those households i) which are currently not receiving assistance from the government or development partners, ii) with higher income vulnerability in terms of housing and income, and iii) higher vulnerability in terms of demographic composition. Extensive analysis of secondary data was used to identify priority geographic areas for targeting. Preliminary lists of potential beneficiaries will be collected by local governments and WFP’s implementing partners. The cash assistance aims to cover the household’s most basic needs, including – but not limited to -food and shelter. It is expected that such one-time financial assistance will mitigate some of the most urgent consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic and associated economic crisis on beneficiary household livelihoods, also contributing to generate the correct environment for adopting and respecting social distancing measures by means of partially solving shelter and access to basic health care goods. Both effects could have potentially positive effects on family health, not only by protecting them from COVID-19 contagion, but also by improving their food security. By providing assistance in response to the pandemic - in partnership with UN agencies, national and local governments - this project aims to reduce the humanitarian-developmental gap, which results in the inequitable treatment of vulnerable migrants as compared to the local communities, generally caused by the migrant's irregular status, inadequate and imperfect information, the nomadic behavior of migrant communities, and the lack of adequate access public services and programs for migrants.From 2015 Colombia has welcomed 1.7 million refugee-like Venezuelans, becoming the main host of this population in the world. Migrants and refugees from Venezuela are among the most vulnerable groups to the COVID-19 health and economic impacts. To respond to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Government of Colombia deployed a comprehensive social response to protect the poor and vulnerable Colombians, these include an increase or create another cash transfer through social assistance programs. Despite this, emergency measures are targeted to Colombian citizens or foreigners who hold a national ID (cedula de extranjeria) and are included in the SISBEN registry, which is not the case of the vast majority of Venezuelan migrants in the country. The activities will be concentrated in four key municipalities with heightened pressure due to migration: Bogota, Soacha, Cali and Bucaramanga.The Recipient Execute (RETF) will be implemented by the World Food Program (WFP), organization that is currently working in close collaboration with the Government of Colombia, subnational governments, United Nations agencies, and civil society organizations, offering a comprehensive portfolio of adaptive humanitarian responses for many different types of crises and emergencies. The RETF is complemented by a Bank-Executed Trust Fund (BETF) to carry out complementary activities including of technical assistance (TA) to the Government of Colombia to strengthen their institutional response and coordination capacity to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as support the implementation of innovative solutions for improved social cohesion, reduced xenophobia and discrimination. The project will provide a lump sum multi-purpose cash transfer of COP 480,000 (USD 129 approx.) to up to 17,780 vulnerable households (71,120 people, approximately) who have experienced adverse impacts due to COVID-19 lockdown and who are not receiving emergency support from the Colombian government, other subnational authorities or other development partners. A minimum of 90 percent of recipient households will be Venezuelan migrants, with the remaining 10 percent being Colombian vulnerable households. Vulnerability criteria for targeting beneficiary households include: pregnant/lactating women, children under 5 years, adolescents and young people (including those who have been separated from their families or parents), adults over 60 years, persons with disabilities or chronic /degenerative diseases, victims of the armed conflict and persons who recognize themselves as belonging to an ethnic group or to a LBTIQ+ population. The benefit amount is aligned with the initial transfers provided by the Ingreso Solidario Program to vulnerable Colombian households, which was designed to cover some of the more pressing basic needs, including food and shelter. According to international experience, the creation of new programs that are clearly labeled as temporary is critical to provide broad and immediate assistance without creating the expectation of prolonged support. The one-off multi-purpose cash transfers are expected to be delivered in 6 months period in four municipalities and part of their metropolitan areas. The proposed project closely resonates with the objectives postulated in the Country Partnership Framework for FY16 to FY21 between the Government of Colombia and the World Bank Group. It must be highlighted that resonance with CPF is despite the project responding to two specific junctures that have unfolded after the CPF was developed in 2016— the surge in Venezuelan migration in 2018 and the spread of Covid-19 in Colombia since March 2020. Specifically, the project is closely linked to Objective 3 (Improved Access to and Quality of Service Delivery in Target Areas) under Pillar II (Enhancing Social Inclusion and Mobility through Improved Service Delivery), as it seeks to prevent that particularly disadvantaged groups are disproportionately affected in the context of the pandemic and are further submerged in poverty.