# **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: Turkey, Lebanon, and Jordan rank in the top five countries globally for the number of refugees hosted. According to United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) data, in 2018, Turkey hosted 3.5 million Syrian refugees, Lebanon 0.94 million, and Jordan 0.68 million.<sup>4</sup> This paper characterizes service delivery in the context of a rapid influx of displaced populations in three different contexts: the arrival of Syrian refugees in Jordan and Iraq, and the influx of Syrian refugees and internally displaced Iraqis to the Kurdistan region of northern Iraq (KRI). In assessing service delivery, the paper includes measures both of access to services and perceived service quality. It encompasses infrastructure services, such as electricity and garbage disposal, and social services, such as health and education. The analysis is primarily based on quantitative data from the Syrian Refugees and Host Communities Survey (SRHCS), conducted in 2015–16. The SRHCS attempted a comparable and comparative analysis of forced displacement across countries with different policy regimes governing refugees (and internally displaced people). The goal was to evaluate the host countries’ main concerns about hosting refugees, and different strategies adopted to address the refugee (and more broadly forcibly displaced) influx.

In the three contexts considered in this paper, host county service delivery systems have played a key role in addressing the needs of Syrian refugees, especially those living outside camps. Education has largely been made available through the public schooling system, often with innovations like double-shift instruction, while health services have been made available through primary health care centers run by ministries of health, as well as through non-governmental organizations. Infrastructure services – electricity, sanitation, water supply – are by and large publicly provided to refugees and host communities. There are three immediate implications of this model of service delivery. First, there is no doubt that the addition of hundreds of thousands of people in need has put these public service-delivery systems under tremendous strain. Second, the expansion of resources – both national and international – has mitigated the strain by allowing for a greater supply of services and expansion in personnel. And finally, the extent of direct local competition with host communities depends on the degree to which the latter were themselves relying on public services as opposed to privately provided services.

In this paper, we document rates of access to infrastructure and social services among hosts and displaced persons, and related perceptions of quality of service delivery, including changes in these perceptions, where the data permit. If displaced populations crowd out host communities in access to services, negative (positive) changes in perceptions about services will be more (less) frequent in areas that receive a larger (smaller) influx. Where the data allow, the analysis compares two similar individuals

> 4 Lebanon and Jordan ranked first and second in the world in 2018 in number of refugees received 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.

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