Emergency assistance is not a lasting solution to poverty: it meets the protective and preventive functions of the Devereux and Sabates-Wheeler (2004[i6j) schema for social protection but not the promotive or transformative objectives. They also have the potential to outperform humanitarian relief in terms of cost, speed and accuracy when a shock occurs: the mechanisms for transfers of cash or food might be already in place, while registries of existing beneficiaries and/or vulnerable households provide information to the government about the at-risk population. A cash transfer programme would need to be operated at a large scale (ideally nationally) for it to be relied upon as a mechanism for emergency assistance and show a much better targeting record than many cash transfer programmes demonstrate.