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Food Security, Human Security

Living in Protracted Exile

Food Security, Human Security

Table of Contents

Introduction: Food Security and Human Security 1

Food Security and Child Exploitation 4

Food Security and Displacement 7

Food Security and Education 10

A context-driven response 15

Conclusion 16

Acknowledgements 18

1

Food Security & Human Security in the Syria Crisis

As the conflict in Syria nears its sixth anniversary, WFP marks this bleak milestone by looking back at beneficiaries’ experience over six years of conflict and displacement. What does it mean to live in protracted exile? In the following pages, we look beyond the numbers and figures to recount exiles’ experience in their own words.

Six years of fighting have driven approximately 4.8 million refugees into exile, of whom 2.2. million are children. Within Syria, some 6.3

million people are internally displaced. In response to this human catastrophe, WFP assists 1.8 million people in the five host countries of Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey, Iraq and Egypt, and another 3.9 million in Syria. Without this support, millions of refugees would not have enough food to survive. Every month WFP extends a lifeline, delivering a measure of security to vulnerable lives, and saving millions from the worst.

There is much we have achieved. But we do well to recall that hundreds of thousands of Syrians have endured six years of fighting with little or no assistance, and that lives have been lost, transformed,

WFP

/Moh

amm

ad B

ahba

hani

These voices and testimony of beneficiaries gathered below are a reminder that the relationship between food and human security is complex and mutually reinforcing. As the conflict has devastated production, the destruction of Syria’s food systems and the collapse of production has had a devastating human impact. For every field no longer under cultivation, another family slides into poverty, sells its assets, marries its daughters early, drops out of school or leaves their land and country. The Syrians whose voices are at the heart of this report are the first to suffer. But ultimately, we all pay a price.

1. Syrian Humanitarian Needs Overview, 2017 UNOCHA2. Food Security Sector Report, 2016

[1]

[2]

million people are internally displaced. In response to this human catastrophe, WFP assists 1.8 million people in the five host countries of Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey, Iraq and Egypt, and another 3.9 million in Syria. Without this support, millions of refugees would not have enough food to survive. Every month WFP extends a lifeline, delivering a measure of security to vulnerable lives, and saving millions from the worst.

There is much we have achieved. But we do well to recall that hundreds of thousands of Syrians have endured six years of fighting with little or no assistance, and that lives have been lost, transformed,

impaired, and constrained as a result. The testimony gathered here is a warning against complacency. For while millions have depended on international assistance to survive, many hundreds of thousands have endured six years of conflict and displacement without any assistance, nor any contact with an agency or NGO. Their testimony is a reminder of both the successes and failures of assistance, of its possibilities and potential as much as its limits.

Voices of those We Serve

We have gathered the accounts of men, women and children from all parts of Syria, from all ethnic and religious groups, dispersed far and wide across the region, in Turkey, Greece, Lebanon and Jordan. Their accounts vary, but one common theme is the profound and enduring way that food security underpins human security. Food is no substitute or replacement for prosperity and peace: but faced with disaster, food brings a measure of stability, protection, health, and helps build and prepare for recovery, just as its absence can only breed instability, displacement and despair. Missing or inadequate assistance can mean a lifetime of thwarted opportunities and sows the seeds of new insecurities for the future.

These voices and testimony of beneficiaries gathered below are a reminder that the relationship between food and human security is complex and mutually reinforcing. As the conflict has devastated production, the destruction of Syria’s food systems and the collapse of production has had a devastating human impact. For every field no longer under cultivation, another family slides into poverty, sells its assets, marries its daughters early, drops out of school or leaves their land and country. The Syrians whose voices are at the heart of this report are the first to suffer. But ultimately, we all pay a price.

WFP/ Joelle Eid

2

3

WFP’s Regional Response: Total Numbers of Beneficiaries & Refugees

WFP Beneficiary Refugees

WFP Non-Beneficiary Refugees

8000

497,965

2,337,335

3,776,5364,568,426

4,834,294

277,299

1,484,647

2,588,0191,934,789 1,817,149

2011 20132012 2014 2015 2016

Refugees WFP Beneficiaries outside Syria

WFP Response 2016 by Country

Turkey10%

Lebanon76%

Jordan94%

Iraq28%

Egypt65%

*Provisional Number

3. Standard Project Reports, 2012-2016; UNHCR data portal

[3]

Food Insecurity and Child Exploitation

The overwhelming majority of refugees in host countries live well below the poverty line. Most have limited or non-existent income opportunities. In conjunction with the rising costs of rent and depleted or non-existent savings, severe restrictions on accessing labour markets translate into a struggle to meet the most basic, daily needs. Often, the first to suffer are children.

WFP/Marco Frattini

IraqEgypt

Lebanon Jordan

93%

37%

70%

65%Percentage of Refugees Living Under the PovertyLine

4. UNICEF, MENARO, 2017 4

[4]

“We are against children working. I want my kids in school,” says Ibrahim, “But needs oblige.’’

WFP

/Edw

ard

John

osn

Yahiya, 16, is the family’s main breadwinner. Because adults are not allowed to work in Lebanon, the near-inevitable consequence is that children take their place. Though illegal, child labour is cheaper for farmers, and presents less risk. There is little enforcement, and children desperate for work are an opportunity too tempting to resist. From the families’ perspective, taking their children out of school and sending them to work is often a matter of survival.Worldwide, refugees are five times more likely to be out of school than their contemporaries. For Syrians, the situation is even worse. There are approximately 1.6 million school-age children in the five host countries, of whom barely half, around 817,000, attend school.

Yahiya’s sister Malak, no longer attends school, but nor is she in work. Like many young girls, her family has found a different solution: at 13, she is engaged to be married. If she is lucky, hopes her mother, she will finish 9th grade in an informal school, prior to her wedding. The family looks uncertain at her new status, as does Malak. Next year there will be, says her father, “one less mouth to feed.”

5

Toulyani settlementBar Elias, Bekaa, Lebanon

“One less mouth to feed”

4. UNICEF, MENARO, 2017

0%5%

10%15%20%25%30%35%40%

2013 2014 2015 2016

Early Marriage Child Labour Withdrawal from School Depleting Savings

Lebanon - Survival Strategies

Lebanon - Food Secure Refugee Households

32%25%

11%7%

5%10%15%20%25%30%35%

2013 2014 2015 2016

6

77%

64%

55%

47%

38%

35%

32%

12%

11%

Reduced Expenditure on Non-Food Essential Items

Purchasing Food on Credit, Borrowing or Sharing Food

Sale of Other Humanitarian Assistance

Sale of Household Assets (Non-Productive)

Socially Degrading, High-Risk or Exploitative Work

Reduced Expenditure on Productive Assets

Sale of Productive Assets

Child Labour

Survival Strategies of IDPs in Syria Food Security Outcome Monitoring, WoS, Food Sector 2016

Child Marriage

Food Insecurity and Displacement

A recurrent feature of the Syria conflict has been the use of food as a weapon of war. More insidious but no less destabilising are the long-term effects when food production and distribution systems are disrupted and destroyed. Where families struggle to put adequate food on the table, displacement, either within Syria or abroad, is the near-inevitable result.

As of December 2016, in Syria seven million people are considered food-insecure.

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5. Food Security Outcome Monitoring, WoS, Food Sector 20166. humanitarian needs overview, UNOHCA

[5]

[6]

For many refugees, the difference between adequate and inadequate assistance is often the difference between staying in the region and undertaking the long and dangerous journey to Europe. Faiza, 24, lived with her family in the outskirts of Aleppo, where they endured five years of fighting. As the conflict intensified, their food security worsened. Her husband found intermittent work, but it was never enough. Finally, in the summer of 2016, they left. There was food in the markets, but no money to spend.

She sold her assets and wedding gifts to pay for the journey. Travelling with her husband and son, aged 5, they crossed the border into Turkey. At no point in Syria or Turkey were they able to access assistance. She spent her last money on people-smugglers. After five attempted crossings, and twice being jailed, she finally made it across the narrow but dangerous stretch of water between Lesvos and the Turkish mainland. Only on her arrival in Greece was she able to register and receive her first assistance, in the form of in-kind food aid. She plans to travel onward to Germany where, she has heard, she will be fed and housed.

Kara Tepe Hospitality CentreLesvos, Greece

“I soldeverything”

WFP/Syria8

WFP/Berna Çetin

Ankara, Turkey

“Our liveswill change”

Muna’s story is different. “Our lives will change,” says Muna as she waits to submit her application in a Social Assistance and Solidarity Foundation branch in Ankara, Turkey. She has lived in Turkey for four years, having fled Aleppo with her four children. Like most refugees, her husband, 54, cannot work legally in Turkey. Her son is the only family member in work, for a pitiful salary. Like most of the 3 million refugees in Turkey, she is in desperate need of help. Many live in abandoned build-ings, are unemployed or work in llegal, underpaid jobs. Most struggle to pay their rent and bills.

For Muna, the Emergency Social Safety Net, or ESSN, is a game changer. Created in collabora-tion with the EU, the Turkish government, WFP and the Turkish Red Crescent, the ESSN aims to reach 1 million refugees and provide them with 100 TL per person per month to cover basic needs such as food, clothes, bills and rent. If, with the help of the ESSN, she can survive, she plans to stay. One day, all being well, she will return to her home in Aleppo.

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Food Security and Education

Food assistance has a direct bearing on education. In both camps and communities in host countries, there is a strong and direct correlation between assistance and attendance. Teachers report better attendance, better attention spans, and easier classes. Where school meals are provided, parents have an incentive to send children to school, helping cut down on household costs.

A common theme of parents’ accounts is the stability and normalcy that only education can confer. Amid the disruption, uncertainty and upheaval of refugee’s lives, education offers a rare prospect of a brighter future. Living abroad, in camps or communities, uprooted from family and home, school offers a rare return to normality. Over the longer term, only education can break cycles of poverty and isolation. And only with education can Syria set about building a post-conflict society.

WFP/Kirstie Campbell

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Sabah’s tale of repeat displacement, child labour and foregone education typifies the experience of thousands of refugees. When the war broke out Sabah, now 18, of Kurdish origin, lived in Aleppo. As hostilities escalated she escaped with her family to the countryside where, for a time, they lived in relative safety. Fearing forced recruitment to armed groups, her father insisted she flee to Turkey with her brother.

In Turkey, she found safety, but no stability. Aged 13, with no money, no papers, and no prospects, she found work in a garment factory in Istanbul. When government inspectors arrived to check for illegal child labour, the manager hid her in a storeroom. When the inspectors left, she worked 12 hours a day, 6 days a week, for the equivalent of $200 dollars a month.

In due course, exhaustion, her pitifully inadequate salary and the mounting costs of living in Istanbul compelled her to return to Syria in the summer of 2015, only to flee once more for Turkey as the conflict escalated. Facing a choice between exploitative work or further exile, she chose exile. Her journey took her across Turkey and finally to Greece. She spent the last of the money she had managed to save for school on the people smugglers who took her to Greece. Now she hopes for asylum processing, onward travel to Western Europe, and, one day, the prospect of returning to school – if it is not too late.

Asked what she would have done if she had received dignified, and sufficient assistance in Turkey, she smiles a rueful smile. “I would have gone to school.”

11WFP/Alexandra Murdo

Kara Tepe Hospitality Centre Lesvos, Greece

“I would havegone to school”

School Snacks Distributed vs. Attendance Figures(Zaatari Jordan)

WFP

/Din

a Ka

ssab

y

12,285

21,647

21,608

51,896

246

383

170

283

50

100

150

200

250

300

350

400

10,000

20,000

30,000

40,000

50,000

60,000

70,000

80,000

2013 2014 2015 2016

Students( Attendees) School Snacks

12

Stu

dent

sM

T

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7. WFP, Jordan Country Office, 2017

WFP/Haya Hassouneh13

Soundos, 12, sees herself as one of the lucky ones. Shortly after the outbreak of hostilities her village was surrounded by troops, and Soundos was shot in the head by a sniper. Miraculously, she survived, though the bullet remains lodged in her skull. Her father was tortured, and shot in both legs. A few months later, still recovering from her head wound, Soundos was shot again, this time in the leg. The family fled to Zaatari Refugee Camp, in Jordan, where for five years they have made a home. Her father works at a WFP bread distribution center to supplement his voucher, and all four of his children now go to school. They miss home and family. All carry the physical and emotional scars of their experience. But they are safe. For families such as Soundos’, schooling is a unique source of stability and hope. Only education offers the prospect of an escape from a life of poverty, and helps repair the psychological damages of war. “We believe in education,” says Soundos’ father. Asked what she want to do when she is older, Soundos smiles: “I want to be a teacher.”

Zaatari Refugee Camp, Jordan

“I wantto be ateacher”

14WFP/Jordan

Mafraq, Jordan

Maysoon, 47, arrived in Jordan in 2013, driven from Syria by fighting and hunger. A widow, she is the head of her household, with five children between the ages of 12 and 22. Having first settled in Zaatari camp, she moved to the nearby community of Mafraq. Over four years she has witnessed the transition and transformation of assistance first hand. In the early days of her exile, vouchers met basic needs, and kept her family alive. But vouchers were conspicuous, and made her feel like a second-class citizen. She has received cash assistance since October 2014. Cash confers dignity and autonomy. Now when she goes shopping she feels people no longer look down on her. She has seen a more tangible outcome closer to home. When she first arrived, she was forced to sell her jewellery, her last reminder of her husband, to make ends meet. Next, her eldest son, Ibrahim, dropped out of school and went to work. Only when she recieved adequate cash assistance was she able to insist to Ibrahim that he complete his education. Food assistance was the difference between Ibrahim finishing school and working to support the family.

“I am willing to do anything to continue his education.”

WFP/ Jordan

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A Context-driven Response

Around 10 percent of refugees from the Syria conflict live in camps. The remainder live in host communities, whether urban, peri-urban or rural areas. An estimated 4.4 million people in host communities, many facing severe livelihood constraints of their own, are directly affected by the influx.

WFP tailors its assistance to needs, using the many tools at our disposal to fashion the most appropriate response according to context. In communities, in-kind assistance is impractical. Accordingly, over six years of crisis, WFP’s assistance has been transformed. WFP began providing voucher and cash assistance from 2013. Today, cash constitutes 99% of all WFP assistance in host countries. Cash is a more efficient form of assistance, allowing for greater autonomy and dignity.

WFP/ Haya Hassouneh

Paper Voucher

2013 2014 2015 2016

E-Voucher

Paper Voucher

Food V

ouche

r Food

Vouc

her

Paper Voucher

E-Voucher

Paper VoucherE-Voucher

in-kind food in-kind food in-kind food

Conclusion

In crises such as Syria’s, with immense human suffering and displacement on an epic scale, food transcends mandates and sectors. Amid the indiscriminate destruction of the Syria conflict, food, too, has been a casualty of war. Syria is an agricultural country: before the crisis, nearly 8 million Syrians depended primarily on agricultural work, and just under half of all Syrians lived in rural areas. Syria was a major wheat exporter. After six years of conflict, there is 40 percent less land under cultivation; agricultural output has plummeted. Before the crisis, agriculture accounted for 18 percent

of Syria’s GDP, and 23 percent of all exports. Six years later, wheat exports have collapsed. Fields that once fed families and sustained livelihoods now lie unploughed and taken over by weeds.

The quality, cost, safety and supply of food have all suffered, and the human fallout has been immense. With every year resources are further depleted, and the strain grows. Rising costs of living, diminished or exhausted savings, over-stretched or non-existent social services, the lack of livelihood opportunities – all make it harder for vulnerable families to put sufficient food on their tables.

WFP/ Jack Turner

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8. 1. Syrian Humanitarian Needs Overview, 2017 UNOCHA

[8]

17

As the testimonies gathered above so vividly convey, the broader impact goes far beyond filling hungry mouths. Food impacts livelihoods and education. Food can be the difference between a child attending school and picking vegetables in a field, or working in a garment factory for pitiful pay. Insufficient food drives displacement. And these are merely the imperfect metrics at our disposal. In violent, dangerous, and vulnerable environments, food is a comfort, a precious and scarce commodity. In the uprooted life of an exile, food confers autonomy and dignity, a link and sustaining connection to home.

WFP’s assistance has kept millions alive, and conferred a degree of security for millions in the region. But we must never forget that assistance is a stopgap, not a solution; a remedy, not a repair. In complex emergencies such as Syria’s, building long-term solutions is often overlooked in favour of immediate, life-saving response. But time is not on our side. WFP’s mission is a world without hunger. If we are to get there, we must begin by accepting that emergency assistance is only the first step on a journey. We must plan ahead. WFP has made a commitment to work

differently, in partnership, towards lasting solutions. Our new, five-year strategy starts with a full and frank assessment of beneficiaries’ needs, their problems as much as their potential, in support of host governments, sister agencies and national and international partners both public and private.

Food security begins with effective and accountable assistance. It ends with the establishment of a just, durable and sustainable food system. Only when we have reached that goal can we serve beneficiaries with efficiency, responsibility and accountability.

WFP/ Dina Kassaby

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This document is produced by WFP’s Regional Bureau for the Middle East & North Africa.

For information and queries, please contact: Syriacrisis.info@wfp.org

WFP thanks the following for their cooperation in preparing the document and for help in arranging interviews with beneficiaries: International Rescue Committee, Lesvos, Greece; UNICEF Lebanon; iMMAP/RFSAN, Amman; Mavrovouni (Kara Tepe)Hospitality Center for Refugees and Migrants, Municipality of Lesvos. Interviews were conducted with WFP beneficiaries’ consent in December 2016 and January 2017 in Ankara, Turkey; Zaatari, Jordan; Bar Elias, Bekaa, Lebanon; and Kara Tepe Hospitality Centre, Lesvos, Greece.

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