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INTRODUCTION
What is the temporal scope of this analysis?
The humanitarian access constraint scores (0–5 scale) for the selected countries reflect ACAPS’ Humanitarian Access Index data collection period from June–November 2025, a fixed six-month window enabling cross-country comparability despite varying dynamics across the analysed countries. The fragmented authority narratives, however, examine historical and institutional trends extending beyond this time frame to capture evolving causal pathways – providing analytical nuance absent from fixed-period scoring – with post-period developments used only to illuminate structural dynamics already evident during the scoring window, avoiding retrospective bias.
How were the highlighted countries selected?
The four countries selected are illustrative cases portraying distinct fragmentation patterns – Lebanon (hybrid governance), Palestine (territorial and institutional fragmentation), Syria (armed group zones), and Yemen (dual administrations) – analysing how each structure generates specific humanitarian access challenges, although most contexts reveal pattern overlap rather than exclusive categories. In Palestine, humanitarian organisations
must simultaneously comply with Israeli military procedures, Palestinian Authority (PA) coordination requirements, and localised authority demands, with movement approvals varying by administrative zone. In Syria, territorial fragmentation from protracted armed conflict means different regions operate under fundamentally different control
structures – administrative, legal, and coercive – each imposing distinct administrative and regulatory frameworks. In Lebanon, Hezbollah’s informal regulatory authority, through coercive security presence and parallel service provision, overlaps with formal state institutions, generating competing administrative requirements and ambiguous
humanitarian authorisation claims. In Yemen, fragmented administrative authority across the Internationally Recognized Government of Yemen (IRG), the de-facto authority (DFA) in the north of Yemen (also known as the Houthis), southern authorities, and various armed groups leads to separate, territorially bound approval systems that remain mutually
exclusive across zones but overlap at contested boundaries, representing the most extreme – based on the number of competing authorities, complete non-transferability of approvals, and persistent boundary conflicts – administrative fragmentation among the four cases.