Impact of program cancellation due to conflict in South Sudan : a chapter of the South Sudan poverty assessment 2017

The impact of unintended program cancellations on the economic, psychological and behavioral wellbeing of beneficiaries are not well understood. In highly fragile and insecure countries, such as South Sudan, there is unfortunately often a risk that unforeseen circumstances can cause program disruption or cancellation. This can have unintended negative consequences on the socio‐economic situation of beneficiaries and their psychological and behavioral wellbeing. Unfortunately, there is not much scientific evidence on these consequences of an unplanned program cancellation which could help policy‐makers to understand the risk related to that and potentially guide them in avoiding it. The lack of evidence can partly because studying these effects in a planned setting faces obvious ethical concerns. The unplanned and unintended cancellation of the Youth Startup Business Grant Program in 2016 in South Sudan provides the unique possibility to study what happens if a cash transfer is canceled. The program was designed to offer an unconditional cash grant worth US$ 1,000 to youth in South Sudan as a new opportunity for beneficiaries who are credit constrained compared to traditional and microfinance loans, which are usually accompanied by high interest rates and/or collateral criteria. The cash transfer can have accompanied by a business and life skills training in which beneficiaries had to participate before receiving access to the grants. Escalating violence forced the program to terminate the disbursement of the grants prematurely in early 2016. Only approximately a third of eligible participants had accessed their grant until then. These unfortunate circumstances create a unique case study to assess the impact of a program cancellation on socio‐economic, behavioral and psychological outcomes of beneficiaries. The cancellation of the program caused negative effects on some psychological indicators, but despite the cancellation, beneficiaries could improve some indicators of business performance. The effects on a range of socio‐economic, behavioral and psychological indicators was assessed. Due to the large number of outcomes, the individual indicators were grouped in indices, including on self-employment, wage employment, good business practices, happiness, trust etc. The program did not negatively affect most of the indicators. Beneficiaries were even able to improve two of the business performance indicators due to the participation in the business skills training. However, the cancellation of the program reduced the reported trust level of beneficiaries compared to the control group and increased the fear of women to experience gender‐based violence.