This Evaluation of the Unconditional Cash and Voucher Response in southern and central Somalia provides an independent analysis of the appropriateness, effectiveness, efficiency and impact of the cash response, with a strong emphasis on learning for future humanitarian interventions using cash globally, and in Somalia specifically. The findings should be considered in the context of one of the most difficult humanitarian operating environments in the world, where the dedicated staff of aid agencies took considerable personal risks and organisations took reputational risks to meet a clear imperative to act in the face of catastrophe. As with any humanitarian response, particularly one implemented at scale and under duress, there were many aspects that could have been improved. Thus the evaluation findings are measured given the alternative - the consequences of a failure to act in the face of one of the first famines of the twenty first century.