# **1. Introduction**

The Syrian crisis has caused one of the largest episodes of forced displacement since World War II and some of the densest refugee-hosting situations in modern history. The Syrian Arab Republic’s immediate neighbors host the bulk of Syrian refugees, with Turkey, Lebanon, and Jordan all ranking in the top five countries globally for the number of refugees hosted. In 2018, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Turkey hosted 3.5 million Syrian refugees, Lebanon 0.94 million, and Jordan 0.68 million.<sup>4</sup> This paper characterizes the displacement and welfare of refugees from Syria, who were living in Jordan (Amman governorate, Za’atari and Azraq camps, and areas surrounding these camps in Mafraq and Zarqa governorates), the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI), and Lebanon. The analysis is based on refugee registration data from UNHCR, quantitative data from the 2015–16 _Syrian Refugees and Host Communities Surveys_ (SRHCS), and qualitative data from focus groups and in-depth interviews.<sup>5</sup> The SRHCS was the first attempt at a comparable and comparative analysis of forced displacement across countries with differing policy regimes governing refugees and internally displaced people. The survey’s goal was to document host countries’ main concerns about hosting refugees and the different strategies they adopted to address the influx of forcibly displaced people. The specific objectives of the multi-country analysis were:

- i. To assess the socio-economic and living conditions of a representative sample of the Syrian refugee and host community populations

- ii. To understand the implications for social and economic conditions in host communities

- iii. To identify strategies to support Syrian refugees and host communities in the immediate and longer term.

There were several challenges associated with conducting a representative survey of the host community population and the forcibly displaced, discussed in detail in Krishnan et al. (2018). In particular, there were no reliable sampling frames for either the resident population or the forcibly displaced.

In Lebanon, survey implementation first required cartographic division of the country into geographic areas small enough for a full listing operation, which provided the sampling frame for the first stage sample. In Kurdistan, the scope of the survey was expanded to include internally displaced persons (IDPs), and a representative sample of the host community, of Syrian refugees in camps and outside camps, and of IDPs in camps and outside camps was selected. In Jordan, the original design based on a nationally representative sample proved infeasible because of inaccessibility to the new sample frame based on the 2015 Population and Housing Census. The design was then amended to include a representative sample of the Za’atari and Azraq camps, which account for

> 4 Lebanon and Jordan ranked first and second in the world in 2018 in number of refugees hosted relative to national population. Lebanon counted 156 refugees per 1,000 national population and Jordan 72 refugees per 1,000 residents  (UNHCR, 2018). These figures are based on official UNHCR registration numbers and do not reflect the unknown number of unregistered refugees.

> 5 The main objective of this paper is to provide a quantitative account of Syrian refugees’ departure conditions and subsequent living conditions among host communities. Qualitative evidence is mostly summarized in footnotes.

2