Towards a Resilience Based Response to the Syrian Refugee Crisis

A ‘resilience-based development approach’ was endorsed by the Regional United Nations Development Group (UNDG) in November 2013. The approach seeks to ensure that basic resources and infrastructures can cope with the pressure from the increased demand resulting from refugee flows, that households are supported to recover and that declining economic performance and deteriorating social cohesion can be arrested and reversed.

This paper supports the operationalisation of a resilience-based development approach to dealing with the Syrian refugee crisis by exploring how stakeholders understand the current challenges and approach vulnerability and criteria that could inform the targeting and prioritisation of resilience-based development efforts. While the resilience-based approach is not limited to a particular context, the focus of the paper primarily on Lebanon and Jordan, which respectively host 38% and 23% of refugees in the sub-region.