Article

The True Power of Cross-Sector Partnerships: Building What No Organization Can Build Alone

2026-09-21 · By Emily Dery, Senior Director of Global Impact Partnerships, USA for UNHCR

Emily Dery of USA for UNHCR explores how cross-sector partnerships can help refugees and displaced people rebuild their lives with dignity and greater self-reliance. Drawing on UNHCR’s cash assistance programmes, she shows how business innovation, humanitarian expertise, philanthropy and digital finance can combine to strengthen resilience, expand opportunity and create more effective humanitarian solutions.

Today, more than 117 million people worldwide have been forced from their homes, many displaced multiple times. That number is staggering, but what stays with me are the individual stories behind it: people navigating profound uncertainty while working to rebuild their lives, support their families and regain a sense of stability.

The gap between humanitarian needs and available resources is growing. We cannot respond to this moment by doing more of the same. We need to be more creative about how we combine resources, expertise and influence and be ambitious about the impact we seek to deliver.

Throughout my career, I have seen that the strongest partnerships begin with a shared ambition and a willingness to build something together that no organization could create alone. The most effective solutions often emerge when organizations bring different strengths and perspectives to a shared goal. By combining UNHCR’s humanitarian expertise, private-sector innovation and the lived experiences of refugees themselves, we can achieve far greater impact than any one organization could on its own.

Turning Collaboration into Impact

Few examples capture the potential of cross-sector partnership more clearly for me than recent innovations in UNHCR’s cash assistance program. It shows what becomes possible when different actors leverage their respective strengths to design a new and creative solution together.

At its core, cash assistance is about dignity, agency and trust. People who have been forced to flee understand their own needs best. Cash assistance gives them the flexibility to make decisions for themselves, whether that means securing food and shelter, accessing healthcare or investing in education and a path toward greater stability. Since 2016, UNHCR has delivered nearly $6 billion in cash assistance to approximately 35 million people across 100 countries, with nearly 70 percent distributed through digital channels.

Financial-sector innovation, including blockchain and digital payment infrastructure, can help UNHCR deliver assistance more securely, efficiently and transparently. But technology is only one part of the solution. Its real value lies in what it makes possible for people: greater choice, resilience and control over their futures. Turning that potential into impact requires a broader coalition of partners, including foundations and philanthropic funders that provide the catalytic capital needed to test, refine and scale new approaches.

This approach delivers results across a range of contexts. In Ukraine, within days of the 2022 full-scale invasion, UNHCR and partners such as Stellar Development Foundation and Circle, Inc. launched a first-of-its-kind integrated blockchain payment solution for digital cash distribution to internally displaced persons and other war-affected people in Ukraine. Recipients could then convert the humanitarian payments to cash, whether dollars, euros, or local currency, and they could withdraw their funds at 4,500 MoneyGram locations in Ukraine and thousands of others globally, depending on where they found safety for their families. Today, UNHCR operates its largest cash assistance program in Ukraine, delivering more than $742 million to 2.5 million people. What is most powerful about this model is not the technology itself, but the speed, choice and flexibility it gives people at a moment when they have so little control over their circumstances.

In Argentina, the same approach helped protect the value of cash assistance during a period of high inflation and currency depreciation, providing greater financial stability for displaced families from Venezuela. That stability allowed many refugees to look beyond their immediate needs and begin investing in micro- and small businesses, creating income opportunities and reducing dependency on aid. For me, this is partnership at its best: not simply helping people get through a crisis but creating sustainable solutions for long-term development.

This is why I believe so deeply in the power of cross-sector partnerships. They do far more than deliver aid. They create new models for solving complex humanitarian challenges and new pathways for people to rebuild their lives with greater stability, opportunity and self-reliance.

Moving Forward Together

I have spent much of my career bringing companies, funders, technical experts and humanitarian leaders around the same table. The most successful partnerships begin when we move beyond asking what each organization can contribute and instead ask what we are uniquely positioned to build together.

With forced displacement at near-unprecedented levels and humanitarian resources under increasing pressure, this kind of collaboration is no longer optional. Businesses, foundations, NGOs, governments and displaced communities each bring essential expertise, resources and perspective.

I remain hopeful because I have seen what becomes possible when those strengths come together with purpose. We can build solutions that are not only more innovative and effective, but also more responsive to the ambitions of the people they are intended to serve. The opportunity before us is to turn partnership into lasting pathways for dignity, resilience and hope.

About USA for UNHCR

USA for UNHCR protects and supports refugees by mobilizing resources, elevating awareness, and driving action through a network of engaged supporters. Established by concerned American citizens, USA for UNHCR is a non-profit organization that strives to meet the unmet needs of the more than 117 million children, women and men who have been forced to flee their homes due to war, violence or persecution. As the only organization dedicated to raising awareness and funds in the U.S. for the UN Refugee Agency, USA for UNHCR has raised more than $700 million in cash and gift-in-kind revenue to help refugees in the past five years.