Abstract: Humanitarian cash assistance has grown to comprise over 20% of the formal humanitarian sector since the 2016 Grand Bargain on Humanitarian Finance. Replacing the complex logistics and friction of in-kind aid, cash assistance relies on financial technologies, the datafication of humanitarian operations and the digitalisation of aid distribution.  It also relies on vulnerability assessments and targeting strategies, or calculative practices aimed at winnowing eligibility to meet funding limitations. This paper focusses on the use of algorithmic proxy means testing (PMT), an econometric approach imported from poverty reduction. To understand how algorithmic PMT was introduced, how it changed humanitarian aid to displaced Syrians in Lebanon and the political implications of automated decision-making, our team interviewed humanitarian practitioners with direct experience of the program. They raised a series of ethical concerns, demonstrating how algorithmic PMT strategically obscured both recipient and humanitarian understanding of the program. This obscurity arose from its novel calculations of relative vulnerability across the Syrian population, creating, we argue, unique ethical registers perceived to be in conflict with humanitarian ethics. We argue that a specific form of algorithmic humanitarianism emerged and posed signficant questions about the politics of aid and the human in humanitarianism. 

Suggested Reading

CaLP Network. 2023. State of the World's Cash. https://www.calpnetwork.org/collection/the-state-of-the-worlds-cash-2023-report/

• Martin, Lauren L, Ruszczyk, Hanna A. 2023. Futures of Humanitarian Aid: Cash
• Assistance to People on the Move. Durham, UK: Department of Geography. Available at
• glitchspaces.org, DOI : 10.5281/zenodo.7899487. 

Martin, Lauren and Tazzioli, M. 2023. “Value extraction through refugee carcerality: Data, labour and financialised accommodation.” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space. 41(2): 191-209. DOI: 10.1177/02637758231157397. (Open Access)

Sandvik, Kristin Bergtora, Maria Gabrielsen Jumbert, John Karlsrud, and Mareile Kaufmann. ‘Humanitarian Technology: A Critical Research Agenda’. International Review of the Red Cross 96, no. 893 (March 2014): 219–42. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1816383114000344.

Squire, Vicki, and Modesta Alozie. ‘Coloniality and Frictions: Data-Driven Humanitarianism in North-Eastern Nigeria and South Sudan’. Big Data & Society 10, no. 1 (1 January 2023): 20539517231163171. https://doi.org/10.1177/20539517231163171.