Integrated emergency shelter assistance to Palestinian refugees from Syria, Libya, Yemen and Iraq in the Gaza Strip. The proposed action will provide life‑saving emergency assistance to  displaced Palestinian refugees who fled from conflict zones in Syria, Libya, Iraq and Yemen back into the Gaza Strip and are considered as a priority caseload in the allocation strategy.  Specifically, the project will aim at ensuring that the most acutely vulnerable households among the target group have access to safe and dignified shelter in order to avoid excess mortality during winter.

The present proposal is a combination of two HRP top-priority vetted projects under the codes OPT-17/S-NF/98233 and OPT-17/S-NF/98328. As such, it will revolve around two main components: a shelter self-upgrade mechanism and Transitional Shelter Cash Assistance (TSCA). After a household per household assessment of shelter needs, each beneficiary will receive an individualized upgrade plan that could include any combination of upgrade works, winterization, NFIs and rental assistance. Depending on the identified needs, each household could benefit from all modalities or only one. The first aim of the project is to provide safe and durable shelter conditions, if not possible, beneficiaries will at least benefit from winterization activities to protect them during the winter. This built-in flexibility, through case by case need analysis will ensure that each beneficiary receives only the most relevant assistance for his household and will maximize cost-efficiency and impact.

In order to foster ownership and resilience, all assistance will be provided in the form of closely monitored cash grants to be disbursed by beneficiaries in order to implement the activities. In order to ensure this cash approach results in safe and quality shelter conditions, all beneficiaries will receive continuous technical guidance and support throughout the project, with a specific focus on the most vulnerable.

Eventually, the project will mainstream a strong protection, gender and Accountability to Affected Population (AAP) component through the structuration of Community Based Protection Committees (CBPC). Those committees will constitute a two way communication channel between the project team and beneficiaries, and will ensure that the specific needs of each individual are factored in into the assistance design, implementation and evaluation. The CBPCs will be based on members of Haqi, a Community Based Organization that has been established to represent and provide peer support to refugees from the Middle East in the Gaza Strip.

Considering the extreme vulnerability identified among some targeted beneficiaries, the project will have lifesaving impact. The proposed assistance is time critical, in so far as the assessments conducted reveal that the coping capacities of targeted populations are exhausted, and that any further deterioration of their vulnerability could have lethal consequences, especially if no shelter assistance is provided before the winter. Eventually, by covering the most basic and urgent needs of beneficiaries, the project will be critically enabling for other actors to implement highly needed longer term projects, in particular in the education, health and protection sectors.