social cohesion between refugees and host communities
The region is home to active armed conflicts in Syria, Yemen, Libya and Iraq as well as a protracted conflict in Palestine. Three of those countries, namely Syria, Iraq and Yemen, are also home to three of the four worst humanitarian crises in the world. Five years into the Syrian fighting, refugees are spilling over borders and refugee communities are growing in neighbouring Arab states.
With scarce economic resources, host communities are now also struggling with the added competition for jobs and extra burden to states’ infrastructure and services.
UN Women has designed its response to invest in women's economic resilience as a protection against violence and a shield against poverty in refugee communities. In dealing with the tension between host and refugee communities, we have also designed our programming to foster social cohesion mainly by targeting vulnerable women in both communities through joint classes and activities, mixed women cooperatives, technical assistance to governments to better accommodate refugees and youth-focused projects to challenge stereotypes and build bridges.
In Lebanon, two mixed women cooperatives took off with the support of UN Women and the generous cooperation of the government of Japan and are now independently functional and profitable providing much needed financial support to vulnerable Syrian and Lebanese women.
In Jordan, a joint project with Search for Common Ground and the Asian Football Development Project has started last year to use sports to strengthen community ties and continued this year with the most recent football camp taking place last March. The project is generously supported by the governments of Finland and Italy.
Also in Jordan, a series of social cohesion activities have been conducted with the generous support of the government of Japan, from bringing Jordanian youth into Zaatari Refugee camp to paint the white caravans side by side with Syrian youth, to high level advocacy and direct intervention in poverty pockets in Irbid and Mafraq to improve women’s access to state services across host and refugee communities.
Social cohesion soccer tournament between Syrian and Jordanian youth. Photo: UN Women/Christopher Herwig.
26