City profile Dara'a: Multi-sector assessment

The crisis in Syria has had a significant effect on the country’s major cities, with large scale movements of population, damage to buildings and infrastructure and interruptions to markets. Cities represent multiple and inter-related formal and informal systems and need to be described and analysed in an integrated manner that captures the complexity of urban conditions. Up to now the majority of information available has been sector-specific, rather than integrated or area-wise.

A major characteristic of this crisis has been the shortage of information to inform decision making, from assessment of needs to monitoring of evolving issues and humanitarian response needs and gaps. For example, the majority of displaced families are finding accommodation through host or rent arrangements but information on such dynamics is very limited. UN Habitat seeks to provide up to date, holistic documentation and analysis of the impact of the crisis in key cities, through City Profiles, synthesising information and insight from existing sources and priority sectors, supplemented by direct eld research by UN Habitat teams based in each city, carried out from December 2013 to March 2014. approaches and crisis contexts have informed the development of the City Pro ling process.

Dara'a is the central city of the Syrian southern region, located next to the borderline with Jordan. The pre- crisis population of Dara'a was approximately 117,000, and thus did not have a dominant population in the Governorate of Dara'a that had a population of 1,042,500 distributed in major secondary cities north and north west of Dara'a city. However, the city of Dara'a enjoyed a dominant administrative and economic role, as its strategically located on the main national highway linking Syria with Jordan, and it enjoyed strong markets controlling the trade of the rich agricultural production of the Governorate.