The Challenge of the Syrian Refugee Response

As international aid organizations are struggling to use their precious dollars effectively on a multitude of crises, they name the humanitarian situation in Syria the worst in the world. Millions were forced to flee their homes following the outbreak of civil war in 2011, and the number of displaced people continues to grow with no end to the conflict in sight.

More than 12 million people are impacted by the violence, with 7.6 million people displaced inside the country and more than 3 million displaced in neighboring nations. Some refugees live in formal camps, but the majority are living in Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey. Refugees have also fled to Egypt and Iraq, and many remain inside Syria but have had to leave their homes. Many have also been affected by the terrorist Islamic State group.

“One of the challenges for the international community is just the scope of this crisis,” says Blake Selzer, the senior regional advocacy coordinator for CARE, which works with a variety of other international non-governmental organizations and local Syrian organizations to provide food, healthcare, and water and sanitation assistance to those in need.

The sheer number of civilians in need of aid as well as their geographic dispersion present challenges to the variety of aid groups on the ground in the region.

“Refugee camps tend to be somewhat easier for the humanitarian agencies, if not for refugees themselves,” says Daniel Gorevan, a policy adviser for the Syria crisis at Oxfam. Having refugees in a centralized location helps aid organizations keep track of the number of people who need assistance as well as efficiently address their specific needs.

 Aid organizations help run camps in Jordan, but there are no formalized camps in Lebanon, which last week announced new measures to restrict entrance into that country to those with a passport. The Turkish government operates the camps inside that country. According to the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), Jordan is hosting 620,400 refugees. Lebanon and Turkey are both hosting 1.1 million Syrians, Iraq is hosting nearly 229,000 and Egypt nearly 138,000.

CARE runs programs in both large camps in Jordan where Syrian refugees have landed. According to the UNHCR, the Azraq camp houses nearly 11,000 refugees and the Zaatari camp houses nearly 83,000. The U.N. refugee organization notes that those numbers are based upon formal registrations, but the actual populations in the camps could be even higher due to the constant flow of refugees.

As the weather becomes colder, aid groups are tasked with the challenge of not only providing food, water and sanitation services to refugees in need, but also obtaining and distributing winter clothing, weatherized shelter and mattresses. Severe weather has hit the region this week, with rain, snow and wind descending on already-vulnerable populations in refugee camps. Three Syrians were found dead in southern Lebanon after getting caught in the inclement weather.

“The biggest challenge there is funding and getting materials out to population in time,” says Selzer.

Winter kits must also be distributed to those living in neighboring countries, which is difficult because they are so spread out. Selzer says refugees largely seek out aid services, like cash and vouchers to purchase food, after hearing about them by word-of-mouth. In urban centers, these types of food aid programs allows refugees the dignity of deciding how to feed their families themselves, rather than relying on in-kind food donations.

These programs also benefit host communities, under significant strain from the influx of Syrians, because refugees contribute to the economy by shopping in local stores.

Refugees stress health care systems in neighboring countries, many of which barely have the infrastructure to provide for their own populations. The health care system inside Syria itself is practically nonexistent because so many doctors have fled and facilities have been damaged. Those in camps have an easier time accessing medical services provided by aid organizations.

Funding for all of these programs poses a particular issue for an international aid infrastructure drawn in too many directions. In November, the World Food Program announced it was suspending its food voucher program for Syrian refugees due to a budget shortfall. After an international campaign, the U.N. organization raised $80 million as of Dec. 9, enough to reinstate the program for December and into part of January.

“What we have to do as humanitarians, as the U.N. system, we have to prioritize. Unfortunately our … funding appeals in general are running at only 50 percent funding,” says Brian Hansford, senior communications director for the UNHCR, the U.N. refugee organization. “The crises are outstripping what we can do to help even in many cases.”

In December, the U.N. issued its 2015 appeal to address the crisis in Syria. It requested $2.9 billion from donors to fund the Syria Strategic Response Plan to aid 12.2 million people within Syria, as well as $5.5 billion for the Regional Refugee and Resilience Plan to address an estimated 4.27 million people that will be hosted in neighboring countries by the end of 2015.

The U.S. government has been the largest donor to the Syrian humanitarian response, providing more than $3 billion in aid in Syria and neighboring countries. Jeremy Konyndyk, director of the Office of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance at the U.S. Agency for International Development, says the U.S. started spending major money on the crisis in 2012 when the situation on the ground moved from a political crisis to a humanitarian one as well. The recent budget passed by Congress has appropriated $1.9 billion to the international disaster assistance account, which USAID spends on crises around the world.

In addition to struggling to decide where their precious dollars will have the most influence, aid groups must also calculate whether adding another voice to a particular issue will just repeat what other groups are already saying and doing.

Daryl Grisgraber, senior advocate for the Middle East at Refugees International, an advocacy organization, says her group is in a unique position because it doesn’t accept any funding from governments or the U.N., nor does it have staff that provides direct services. Her group works to research conditions refugees face and then make recommendations to aid groups.

“Syria has been a great example because although many of the big NGOs are involved, very heavily and effectively, I should say, it’s been important for [Refugees International] to be involved because we’re able to get on the ground and look at issues in a bit more detail,” Grisgraber says. “We don’t have to worry about where our funding’s coming from or whether or not our staff is being put in danger by saying, ‘Look, this response is imperfect.’”

Like Refugees International, USAID doesn’t have personnel on the ground in Syria. The government organization works in conjunction with the other organizations to direct aid to where it’s needed even as the civil war continues. Konyndyk says a major difficulty for its partner organizations is being able to access areas on the ground in dire need of aid because the Syrian regime has blocked the U.N. and NGOs from carrying out their mandates.

“Access is one of the biggest challenges in Syria both because you have a situation of generalized conflict and insecurity, and so at any given point in time there could be fighting going on somewhere or fighting could flare up and our partners then have to rapidly adjust plans, but also because the regime in particular has often gone out of its way to block humanitarians from access,” Konyndyk says.

Gorevan of Oxfam says his organization, which is primarily focused on providing WASH – water, sanitation and hygiene – assistance to refugees, has been lucky not to see much destruction of their work from armed groups.

“Water is one of the factors, one of the major exceptions, where there seems to be something of an agreement not to destruct it,” Gorevan says.

He says his organization instead struggles with regulations put on groups that are required to register in foreign countries in which they wish to operate.

“Probably the biggest challenge for Oxfam is bureaucratic restrictions and administrative hurdles which are imposed by the Syrian government as opposed to front-line type insecurity,” Gorevan says. “The experience of organizations depend very much on their area of operation.”

Ultimately, aid groups say the only way to end the humanitarian crisis caused by the war is a political solution to the fighting between the Syrian government, rebel groups and the Islamic State group.

“This is a humanitarian crisis but there won’t be a humanitarian solution to the conflict,” Selzer says. “The international community needs to negotiate a political solution to end this crisis and that will bring the humanitarian crisis to an end.”