Linking humanitarian assistance to social protection in MENA: the case of Syrian child refugees

The main purpose of this chapter is to provide a general overview of the issues facing social policy and social protection in MENA countries that are dealing with conflict and refugee populations, most notably the prolonged armed conflict in Syria. Conflict raises significant long- and short-term challenges for the rights of refugees as resident populations in a host country, including access to essential income sources and public services. In the MENA region, this situation raises the issue of how international humanitarian agencies might consider new approaches to their activities that link their relief services to more long-term social protection provision. This, in turn, raises significant implications for issues of entitlement, membership and allocation for national governments. The chapter focuses mainly on the situation of Syrian child refugees in Lebanon and Jordan, but with some reference to Turkey. It addresses the challenges of transitioning from emergency relief to social protection for both national and international actors alike, and more specifically, whether national social policy frameworks in host countries can be made more resilient and proactive in humanitarian relief contexts. In so doing, the chapter reflects upon the “New Way of Working” approach and the related concept of Adaptive Social Protection, and evaluates the extent to which states can adequately accommodate the humanitarian and welfare needs of Syrian child refugees when weak state capacities and pre-existing social and economic hardship among the resident populations already poses historic barriers to adequate social policy provision.