Local Community Experiences of and Responses to Conflict-Induced Displacement from Syria: Views from Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey

The UN has described the Syrian conflict as "the most dramatic humanitarian crisis that we have ever faced". By August 2015, 1,114,000 refugees had fled Syria to seek safety in Lebanon, 630,000 had fled to Jordan and 1,939,000 to Turkey. Local communities, civil society groups and faith-based organisations in these countries are some of the most important actors responding to the refugee influx from Syria, filling major gaps which exist even when major aid programmes have been implemented by international agencies such as the UN. These civil society responses have included Lebanese, Jordanian and Turkish citizens providing food and shelter to refugees, local faith leaders offering spiritual support to people displaced by the Syrian conflict, and social and material support provided by protracted refugees who were already living in Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey before the outbreak of the Syrian conflict.

All of these initiatives are clearly significant, but little is known about how and why local communities offer assistance to refugees. This project aims to enhance our knowledge by carefully examining a range of responses developed by the members of nine local communities in Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey, asking questions such as What has motivated these responses? and Who has benefited and who has been excluded from these responses? Another important question is How are these local responses perceived by 'traditional' humanitarian aid providers, including governmental Ministries, international humanitarian aid agencies, and UN agencies?

It is important to examine the different implications of local community responses to displacement for different reasons. For instance, although little evidence exists, the UN and traditional Northern donors are increasingly supporting 'local' responses to conflict because this is a way of sharing the 'burden' of providing aid and services to millions of refugees. At the same time, however, academic, political and policy observers express concerns that local responses may be motivated by political, ideological and faith-based priorities, rather than adhering to the international humanitarian principles of neutrality, universality and impartiality upheld by organisations such as the International Committee of the Red Cross. Detailed research is therefore urgently needed to ensure that local initiatives are neither prematurely celebrated nor unduly demonised.

This research aims to improve our understanding of the challenges and opportunities that arise in local responses to displacement, both for refugees from Syria and for the members of the communities that are hosting them. A team of local researchers will spend 6 months in Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey carefully observing how the members of 9 local communities have responded to the arrival of refugees from Syria. They will interview a total of 270 local community members and 270 refugees, asking them about their experiences of providing or receiving local assistance; refugees and community members will also share their views through a number of participatory research workshops and creative writing workshops in Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey. 150 people who work with local, national and international organisations (including UN agencies) will also be interviewed, to examine their views of local responses to refugees from Syria. Doing this will help us identify whether there is national and international support for local community responses for refugees, or if national and international organisations believe that local responses should not be encouraged or allowed.

The project will use this research to develop recommendations for civil society groups, aid groups, governmental ministries and international organisations. These recommendations will provide suggestions on how local, national and international organisations can best work together to support the needs and human rights of people affected by conflict.

Our project will provide a critical evidence base to inform the development of policy and practice that can appropriately address the needs and rights of conflict-affected people, including local communities and refugees. We will critically examine how, why and with what effect local communities have responded to the mass influx of refugees from Syria, with particular attention to both hosts' and refugees' experiences of these local responses. We will disseminate policy-relevant findings and recommendations regularly with key international, national and local stakeholders in the Middle East, Geneva (where most major humanitarian agencies have their HQs) and the UK, and with local community members, local service providers and refugees in Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey. Building upon the demonstrated success of the research team's knowledge exchange activities, we aim to impact upon policy development and practice in the specific context of responses to the Syrian refugee crisis within the life of the project. The broader implications of the project's findings to other conflict-induced displacement scenarios will also be disseminated broadly during the project, aiming to influence policy and practice within 12-24 months of completion.

This will be facilitated through our existing contacts with an established network of practitioners, policy-makers and academics working in the field of humanitarianism who are committed to critically exploring local community experiences and responses to conflict-induced displacement; this network is constantly expanding, including through the conference the PI is convening on gender, faith and humanitarian responses to forced migration in May 2016 at UCL. As the PI, Co-I1 and Co-I2's work with the Joint Learning Initiative (JLI) on the roles of local faith communities illustrates, we have a proven track record of engaging in knowledge exchange activities with stakeholders across the global North and South. Indeed, the members of the JLI - which include UNHCR, OXFAM, CAFOD, Christian Aid, Islamic Relief and Muslim Aid - will provide vital knowledge, advice and feedback throughout the project to ensure that our research is meaningful for academic and non- academic audiences, and that recommendations can be implemented accordingly. In effect, a significant range of key beneficiaries has been identified throughout the preparatory work for this project, and they are already committed to the success of the project.

A range of non-academic engagement activities and outputs will include literary translation workshops and literary readings to be convened in collaboration with PEN-International, PEN-England's University branches, and Stories in Transit, and the publication of translated creative writing in association with PEN-International, PEN-England and Stories in Transit in literary magazines such as Modern Poetry in Translation, Wasafiri and Lacuna. Podcasts, press releases, blog posts, contributions to online fora, and multimedia outputs including radio programmes will be published/distributed throughout the course of the project, providing accessible overviews of the research findings. As a whole, these activities and outputs will contribute to increasing public awareness and understanding of conflict and displacement issues, the politics of humanitarianism, debates regarding the role of local communities and civil society, and the importance of recognizing the agency of refugees and local communities affected by conflict.

The local researchers will develop their data collection, analysis and dissemination skills throughout the project. On-going training opportunities will enable them to develop their capability to undertake thorough and rigorous research in the region beyond the immediate life of this project. They will develop their publication profiles through co(authoring) articles based on their research, and will be encouraged to apply for grants for further research in the field.