Emergency Support to vulnerable households livestock keepers to protect their assets for immediate food and nutrition security in South of Syria The Syrian crisis is now in its eighth year. The scale of humanitarian needs in Syria remains extremely high, and the crisis is still evolving rapidly with concurrent displacements and returns of the population taking place. The Office of Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) estimates 6.5 million are food insecure and 2.5 million at risk of food insecurity according to Humanitarian Needs Overview (HNO 2019). A deep economic recession, falling exchange rate, soaring food prices, high unemployment rates especially among youth (estimated at 42 percent in 2015) and women and damage to agriculture production, have resulted in an overall poverty, disrupted markets and food insecurity. Most vulnerable households affected by the crisis have exhausted their coping strategies and are currently adopting negative coping strategies which include selling of productive assets such livestock and others. In Syria, the livestock sector was largely dominated by smallholder and poor families for food and nutrition and as a source of animal protein. 
The project will focus on south of Syria (Rural Damascus, Daraa, and Qunietra, and As-Sweida) to support vulnerable breeders (including returnees and IDPs) to resume their production either through providing protection to their herds (PPR vaccination) or re-stocking (distribution of animals and feed) which will contribute to the overall improvement of their food and nutrition security. The project selected these needs based on the results of FAO/WFP joint CFSAM report. The recommendation of the report suggest that focusing on re-stocking and provision of feed could provide the first step to address the big needs in the livestock sector.
Moreover, the crisis resulted in poor field veterinary services such as vaccination campaigns, preventive programs and disease surveillance programs. In addition, the veterinary vaccine production facilities have been damaged, which resulted in a shortage of veterinary vaccines and left livestock without immunity against contagious diseases and subjected to flare-ups or incursion of those diseases the livestock sector needs urgent support to mount a sound defense against the threats from both endemic and transboundary animal diseases. 
Rural Damascus and neighboring governorates is one of the areas where largest number of small ruminants are kept in the country. Given the needs described above, tThe project aims at supporting 50,000 vulnerable breeders household in south of Syria with PPR vaccination, also 37003,000 vulnerable breeders households will be provided with sheep and/or feed. In addition, 100 veterinarians will be provided with capacity building support to upgrade their skills and knowledge regarding animal disease prevention and animal production, which will indirectly benefit the same breeders who received the vaccines in the targeted area. and 800100 herders out of the beneficiaries who received the sheep and feed support will benefit from training and awareness programs, which this will help them improve their knowledge and skill regarding the livestock management. In total, the above interventions will benefit 322,200 affected people in 53,700 households leading to improved food and nutrition security through supporting the health and well-being of their livestock in the southern part of the country.