Allocation Strategy Syria Humanitarian Fund 2019 1st Standard Allocation

I. Allocation Overview

Project Proposal Deadline: 15 September 2019 23:59, Damascus Time

A) Introduction / Humanitarian situation

1. The Syria Humanitarian Fund (SHF) is a Country-Based Pooled Fund (CBPF) managed by the Humanitarian Financing Unit (HFU) of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) based in Damascus. Established in 2014, under the leadership of the Humanitarian Coordinator a.i. for Syria, its role is to support life-saving, protection, and life-sustaining activities by filling critical funding gaps; promote the needs-based delivery of assistance in accordance with humanitarian principles; improve the relevance and coherence of humanitarian response by strategically funding priorities as identified in the HRP; and expand the rapid delivery of assistance to underserved, high severity and hard-to-reach areas by partnering with the best placed actors.

2. On 20 June, the SHF Advisory Board agreed to allocate US $25 million under the First Standard Allocation to support life-saving activities and service delivery in underserved areas of southern Syria – specifically, Dar’a, Quneitra and Rural Damascus (with a focus on eastern Ghouta) – where severe humanitarian needs persist. The decision came following a detailed prioritization exercise undertaken by the Inter Sector Coordination (ISC) group in Syria which involved a multi-factor analysis of levels of need (with an emphasis on highest severity need areas); accessibility (both in terms of newly-accessible and access-restricted locations); population movement (focusing on those locations where there is a high concentration of both IDPs and returnees); presence and functionality of basic services (including health and education facilities), and coverage (in terms of people reached).

3. A First Standard Allocation of this size will allow an emergency reserve fund of approximately US $5 million to be retained to ensure a rapid and flexible response to unforeseen and sudden onset crises, including developments in North West Syria, to be activated by the Humanitarian Coordinator a.i. as and when the need arises. Since January 2019, some thirteen donors have generously contributed a total of US $42.3million to the SHF, covering around 53 per cent of the 2019 funding requirement based on the US $80 million target agreed by the Advisory Board in March 2019.3 Of contributions received thus far, approximately US $15.8 million has been dedicated to responding to needs in North East Syria, mainly in Al Hol camp, in addition to 10 National NGOs projects recommended in previous years and cleared by the government in 2019.

4. The humanitarian situation in Southern Syria remains extremely complex and highly fluid despite the signing of a reconciliation agreement in July 2018. In the first few months of 2019, armed attacks have risen4 while high-levels of population movement (particularly spontaneous IDP returns) continue to be recorded, along with extensive explosive hazard contamination, large-scale destruction of civilian infrastructure, a fragmented and disrupted health system, major gaps in basic services – especially electricity and water and sanitation networks – and decimated education and agricultural sectors. Overall, there are some 2.8 million people in need of humanitarian assistance across Dar’a, Quneitra and Rural Damascus. 5 Of these, however, only half have been reached in 2019, while populations assisted in Rural Damascus account for more than 60 per cent of the overall 1.4 million supported.