3 Why and when using vulnerability scoring?
3.1 from the identification of vulnerables to the scoring of household vulnerability
In a humanitarian environment, vulnerability may be defined differently, depending on the mandates of the humanitarian agencies, the intended impact and the definition of the population to be assisted. For instance, WFP measures food security through the Food Security Index (FSI), a composite indicator defined in the widely used Consolidated Approach for Reporting Indicators of Food Security.
For the UNHCR, refugees’ vulnerability is identified in the frame of the protection risk analysis by looking at the concept of international protection, which put into context risk, threat, vulnerabilities, and capacities. This accounts for a case-specific condition related to household capacity, dependency level within the household and occurrence of specific needs, such as the occurrence of pressing medical needs, disabilities or individuals with particular constraints.
__The Protection risk equation
Though, as pointed by ECHO, in 2016 in the document Humanitarian Protection: Improving protection outcomes to reduce risks for people in humanitarian crises, the protection risk is not a measurement model as it is:
“…not a mathematical equation [but] merely a tool that serves to illustrate that the protection risk faced by a given population is directly proportional to threats and to vulnerabilities, and inversely proportional to capacities”
The panorama of options for targeting approach has been already well documented (cf Review of Needs Assessment Tools, Response Analysis Frameworks, and Targeting Guidance for Urban Humanitarian Response). Simple targeting approaches (like categoric, administrative or geographic targeting) appears as easy options. Indeed there’s a real debate arguing for a better global efficiency of categoric targeting in the context of national protection system. Though those approaches comes with two important limitations:
They do not offer the capacity to prioritize objectively individuals in case of limited budget.
While they can be definitely ones during an initial emergency phase, likely only sovereign authority can sustain their funding in the long term. Agencies and organisation working in the context of time bounded programmes or projects that would use such approaches take the risk of creating cobra effects
In this context, a significant challenge is to account for the combination and articulation of the various dimensions of vulnerability through scores. Vulnerability scores offers not only a way to prioritize household based on budget constraints but also to define population segment with a similar profile and for which distinct theories of change can be built. Each population segment shall be then targeted and prioritized with a combination of coordinated assistance and intervention types, coming from multiple agencies and varying from emergency support, unconditional assistance, training, livelihoods graduation or even micro-credit.
3.2 Different models of vulnerability: from food insecurity & poverty to a “protection vulnerability framework”
Higher expenditure = higher resilience?
But where does this money come from?
Children begging? Illegal work?
UNHCR is not a poverty alleviation agency. Poverty alone cannot be our measurement.
A framework to measure household ability to address different level of vulnerability.
This framework aims at informing household targeting needs by articulating a series of potential assistance varying from In-kind distribution, Cash allowance, Livelihood support and Community building activities.
Relevant to humanitarian settings: Multi-sectoral, applicable and adapted for joint, collaborative or multi stakeholder’s settings
Providing analytical value: Leads to conclusions commonly required in needs analysis, targeting & prioritization
Reproducible: Documentation, expertise, tools and templates available to implement the framework in a systematic and rigorous way
Authoritative: Approach reviewed by external peers
Indeed not all type of interventions are linked to the need to target as some are linked to a systematic intervention (for instance SGBV) or look at a broader scale (like advocacy around legal environment).
Protection egg
This already suggest that using a protection lens, vulnerability is multidimensional.