ReliefWeb

Executive Summary and Key Findings

With 94% of the Syrians under Temporary Protection in Turkey living within host communities, municipalities are among the primary responders in addressing the impact of the Syria crisis, and have played an essential part in the development of more resilient capacities able to respond to the increase in demand for services.

• Municipalities have demonstrated their resilience by coping with the additional demand for services and resources, and adapting to the refugee influx by extending social and protection services to the refugee population. They have also transformed their role to foster social cohesion among communities.

• The response of Turkish municipalities to the Syria crisis thus offers the world a valuable example of the link between humanitarian assistance and development goals. It demonstrates how refugees, particularly those in contexts of protracted displacement, can be integrated successfully into national and local services.

• However, the Syria crisis did present challenges for local authorities. Besides exacerbating some pre-crisis difficulties, the response of the municipalities has been hampered by two additional issues:

• the legal ambiguity concerning the mandate of municipalities to provide for refugees, and

• the lack of any increase in the transfers which the municipalities receive from central government with which to meet the increase in their expenses arising from the surge in the size of the population in need of their services. Municipalities in southeast Turkey with a 20% refugee population would need an additional USD 215 million per year to expand their capacities to meet the increased demand for services.
This need to support the strategic role of the municipalities motivated the 3RP partners to increase the level of their engagement with municipal authorities, both on service delivery but also on participatory governance.:

• Since 2014, USD 53 million worth of support has been mobilized by the 3RP partners in support of municipalities.

• The scale of this support has been increasing rapidly. In all, 60 municipalities have been supported to date under the 3RP.1 The number supported in any given year has expanded rapidly from only four in 2014 to 29 in 2017. The amount of funding secured for 2018 is three time as much as the support provided in 2016 (USD 25 million has been secured to date for 2018 and beyond, whereas USD 8 million was invested in 2016). The support is targeted and covers those municipalities which host 90% of the refugee population of Turkey. As a result, 85% of the support is directed towards municipalities in the southeast of the country.

• 70% of the support goes to metropolitan municipalities, in line with the decentralization framework in Turkey, which has expanded their prerogatives.

• The material support extended to municipalities under the 3RP has been spread across a range of core municipal competencies including solid waste disposal (USD 18 million), public spaces such as roads, parks and playgrounds (USD 16 million) and firefighting (USD 4.8 million). In 2018, the support being provided is much more concentrated in the areas of solid waste disposal (USD 12 million USD invested in 2018 – six times more than 2017) and waste water management (USD 7 million secured). The demand for these two services has been affected directly by the increase in the population.

• In parallel, the support being extended to municipalities for capacity building and system strengthening is also expanding.
This includes support extended to assist municipalities in delivering specific programmes for the benefit of refugees as well as support that leads the municipalities to function more efficiently by developing their capacities for strategic planning, participatory decision-making and effective management.
The efforts of the 3RP partners to strengthen municipalities have had multiple impacts, as the various partners have sought to tackle the different challenges which the municipalities face. Support for municipal infrastructure and other material support is increasingly being used as a strategic entry point for the introduction of more structural improvements in local governance and service delivery.

• The partners work hand in hand with municipal authorities to help them implement their mandates and use funds to address specific needs of the refugees.

• The partners have also supported municipalities in enhancing participatory decision-making at the local level, improving coordination and mobilizing resources for the delivery of services to address specific needs of the refugees.

• Assistance has also been provided to municipalities to enable them to introduce new technologies and approaches such as reducing wild dumping of waste, relying on waste transfer stations for waste collection, or the use of new leachate facilities for waste water management.

• These new approaches can also generate additional revenues for municipalities, for example through recycling.

• In addition, support extended to develop the project management capacities of municipalities will help them not only to improve their strategic planning capacities and optimize the use of their resources but also to mobilize additional external funding.
Within this context, it is proposed to measure the 3RP impact through two indicators. First, measuring the increase in participatory decision making through the relevant social cohesion indicator on active participation of vulnerable population. Second, it is proposed to quantify the financial impacts on municipal budgets of the different types of interventions implemented by the 3RP partners and to compare the outcome with the increase in demand for services caused by the increase in the population in the main refugee-hosting municipalities.

• To date, when one looks at the municipalities which the partners have supported the most, the total support provided by the 3RP partners amounts to about 11% of the additional amount needed by the municipalities to expand services in proportion with the increases in their populations.

• This figure represents a marked increase compared to 2017, when the total support provided amounted to only 4% of the additional needs of the municipalities.

• A full funding of the 3RP appeal related to municipal services would allow 3RP partners to cover up to two-thirds of the capacity needs of the municipalities.