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Jordan, Syria, Lebanon: Syria Humanitarian Response – SYR171 (follow up on Appeal to SYR161)
Amman, 08 November 2016
1. Brief description of the emergency and impact
The Syrian crisis is an ongoing multifaceted armed conflict, since unrest began in March 2011. The severity of the humanitarian disaster has been outlined by the United Nations (UN) and many international organizations. The Syrian Centre for Policy Research (SCPR) has found that altogether 45% of the prewar population has been forced to move — including 6.36 million displaced within Syria and more than 4 million who have fled the country to Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, Turkey, Egypt, and Kuwait. With new offenses planned on the city of Raqqa in 2017, these numbers could be set to increase.
Since March 2011, more than 470,000 people have lost their lives. Of the 470,000 war dead counted by the SCPR, about 400,000 were directly due to violence, while the remaining 70,000 fell victim to lack of adequate health services, medicine, especially for chronic diseases, lack of food, clean water, sanitation and proper housing, especially for those displaced within conflict zones. In Syria, poverty increased by 85% in 2015 alone, with consumer prices rising 53% last year and a total of 13.8 million Syrians have lost their livelihood. Overall it is one of the largest refugee exoduses in recent history. Neighbouring countries have borne the brunt of the refugee crisis, with Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey struggling to accommodate new arrivals.
2. Why is an ACT response needed?
Humanitarian needs remain enormous. The delivery of humanitarian assistance, especially in hard-to-reach areas, remains extremely difficult and insufficient to meet people’s needs. Violence, rapidly shifting conflict lines, administrative hurdles and underfunding continue to hamper the relief effort as needs continue to grow in the three countries (Jordan, Syria and Lebanon). Government services and local communal services are under strain due to the increased demand, impacting service quality for both refugees and nationals, and threatening social cohesion and stability.
Refugees are facing trauma, depression and stress over providing for their families, and battling isolation and loneliness. This is particularly true of those spread throughout host communities, who feel increasing hostility directed at them from local residents.
3. National and international response
As the governments of the countries most affected by the crisis do not have the capacity to respond to the emergency, the UN has taken a primary role, in coordination with governmental structures, to address the most pressing issues. As such, a Regional Refugee & Resilience Plan (3RP) has been developed. The 3RP is a nationally-led, regionally coherent strategy, with United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) guiding the refugee response and United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) guiding the resilience response. Over 200 local, national and international actors across the region have been brought together through strategic and effective coordination to address the challenges facing refugees, impacted communities and host countries.
4. ACT Alliance response
The ACT Alliance Jordan, Syria, Lebanon (ACT JSL) Forum was established in November 2011 in response to the Syria crisis and has been active and coordinating closely between members since. The Forum builds on ACT Alliance members ‘decades of experience in Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. ACT Alliance members have been responding directly to the Syria crisis through the Appeal mechanism since 2012 through SYR121, SYR131, SYR151 and SYR161.
5. Planned activities
As well as psychosocial interventions, ACT JSL Forum members have identified food, non-food items, Water, Sanitation & Hygiene (WASH), health, education, shelter and protection as high-impact, priority areas for intervention for the upcoming new appeal – SYR171 starting 01 January 2017.
6. Constraints
The primary constraints to the response include a lack of financial resources, security impediments (especially within Syria), and government restrictions.
Any funding indication or pledge should be communicated to the Head of Finance and Administration, Line Hempel (Line.Hempel@actalliance.org) and Senior Finance Officer, Lorenzo Correa
(Lorenzo.Correa@actalliance.org).
For further information please contact:
ACT Regional Representative – Middle East & North Africa, Gorden Simango (gsi@actalliance.org)
ACT Regional Program Officer, Felomain Nassar (Felomain.nassar@actalliance.org)
ACT website address: http://www.actalliance.org
