Syrian refugees living in surrounding countries are facing increasing hardships with poverty and access to basic services key challenges, according to a new UN report.
The mid-year report of the Regional Refugee and Resilience Plan (3RP), released by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees and more than 200 other national and international bodies working with refugees in Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq and Egypt, says while there is ongoing displacement of people from their homes in Syria, the rate at which the refugee population is growing in neighbouring countries has slowed to half that of 2015.
But it adds that in some nations where refugees have found safety, “they still face difficulty in accessing services, impacting their ability to provide food, housing, health, and trauma care, and other basic needs for their families”. “They are increasingly exhausting their savings and resources and are falling further into poverty.”
The report shows that in Lebanon 70 per cent of refugee households are living below the poverty line (up from 50 per cent in 2014) while the average debt of refugee households has risen from $US850 to $US990 over the first quarter of this year. In Jordan, the figure is even higher with 90 per cent of registered Syrian refugees in urban areas living below the national poverty line while in Egypt almost 62,000 refugees are living on less than half of the “minimum expenditure basket”.
It says that Palestinian refugees have been made “particularly vulnerable” as a result of the crisis in Syria with 110,000 estimated to have fled from Syria to neighbouring countries. “Many have irregular status and are at risk of refoulement…” the report says.
The 3RP partners have called on the international community to supporting the neighbouring nations who continue to bear the burdens of the conflict in Syria and are “providing an enormous global good and bearing the financial and social costs of the refugee crisis”. It has called on donor nations to fulfill pledges they have made to provide aid funding.
~ www.3rpsyriacrisis.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/3RP-Mid-year-Report-June-2016.pdf
