Attachments
2. Rationale
2.1 Background
Syria has experienced over 14 years of conflict, resulting in significant political, economic, and social challenges. The collapse of the Assad government in December 2024 marked a shift in the country’s political landscape. While this change presents an opportunity for a new phase, the recovery process remains complex and demands substantial efforts in both socio-economic and physical reconstruction. The socio-economic impact of multiple crises and shocks is expected to continue intensifying, further straining scarce resources and hindering the population’s ability to cope. Response actors in Syria recognize the need for longer-term, more sustainable interventions that focus on increasing community-level resilience to shocks and stresses, reducing dependence on emergency assistance, and addressing some of the underlying structural causes of insecurity and vulnerability.
Qalaat Al Madiq, specifically, is witnessing one of the highest returns of previously displaced people. The selected communities are almost exclusively consisting of returnees with a marginal number of IDPs and host population.
Despite the wealth of data gathered during the conflict, substantial information gaps persist, especially regarding the evolving needs of both displaced and host populations in the new political context. These gaps include the long-term impacts of displacement on social cohesion, economic opportunities, and local governance structures. This ABA aims to fill these gaps by focusing on the localized and community-driven needs of the returnee population, ensuring that interventions are informed by the realities of the affected communities, particularly in light of the recent political shifts.
2.2 Intended impact
This ABA aims to provide high-quality, actionable data to inform the strategic decision-making processes of Acted, REACH, local authorities, donors, and other humanitarian actors operating in Syria. By capturing detailed insights into community-defined priorities, vulnerabilities, and resilience capacities, the findings will enable the design of tailored interventions that align with the specific needs and priorities of affected populations. As part of this project, Acted and REACH will strengthen the capacity of a local NGO (LNGO) to collect data and to implement CRRPs. As such, the LNGO will receive training on, and participate in, data collection.
The CRRP workshop will also reflect stakeholder recommendations on how humanitarian interventions could better address the identified priorities and gaps. Humanitarian actors and local initiatives will benefit from the ABA results by gaining access to updated, area-specific evidence on community needs, service gaps, and resilience dynamics. These findings can support more targeted, coordinated, and responsive programming across sectors including health, food security, agriculture, and social cohesion. To maximise the ability of organizations working in / interested in working in the area to take account of affected population’s perspectives, REACH will share the relevant, analysed data prior to the CRRP. This will enable the organisations to begin to secure relevant funding ahead of the CRRP. Further, it is hoped that organisations will share with REACH the evidence that they have on the topics of greatest concern to the affected population, thus reducing duplication of efforts and survey fatigue.
The findings will also allow implementing partners and actors in the broader response to refine their programmatic approaches based on a precise understanding of the area's capacities, vulnerabilities, and the views of the local population. This includes their perceptions of needs and priorities, such as concerns to security, livelihoods, health, education, protection, and infrastructure.