The civil war in Syria now extends to its third year. The number of civilian causalities, internally displaced people and refugees continues to grow to astounding levels. Over 4 million people are displaced within Syria according to UN OCHA and almost 2 million refugees are hosted by Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq, Turkey and countries in North Africa. Recent developments, such as the purported use of chemical weapons around Damascus towards the end of August, are but one indicator of the increasing severity of the crisis.
ACT Alliance members have been providing humanitarian support from the onset of the crisis. With 6.5 million USD raised through the appeal SYR121, members were able to assist conflict-affected families inside Syria, as well as refugees and host communities in Lebanon and Jordan. Since he beginning of 2011, ACT members have scaled up their relief programmes and their decades of experience working in the region has enabled them to reach out to communities and adequately address the most urgent needs, in line with humanitarian principles.
The magnitude and complexity of the crisis, as well as the scale of the ACT humanitarian response, has called for an external evaluation of appeal SYR121 which will be carried out in September/October this year. Recommendations on how to improve programming might lead to a revision of this appeal, SYR131. The secretariat reserves the right to decide whether or not to commission another external evaluation towards the end of the implementation period of the appeal on hand.
ACT members in the region coordinate the humanitarian response as the ACT Jordan/Syria/Lebanon Forum (JSL). The five ACT requesting members in this appeal (IOCC, LWF, FCA, DSPR, DKH) are working in various sectors including health, food and NFI, shelter, education and others. Almost 500,000 people in Syria and neighbouring countries will benefit from the support to be provided by ACT Alliance members through this 12-months appeal.
