Harmonizing Refugee Aid in a Changing Landscape: Lessons from a Study in Jordan

Funding cuts in the US and beyond have dramatically altered the state of refugee aid worldwide. These sudden cuts erode the capacity of humanitarian organizations to coordinate displacement response. Research Manager Mansi Kalra uses lessons from the Syrian Refugee Life Study to illustrate the consequences of uncoordinated aid, and how refugees lose when organizations are unable to harmonize their efforts.

In the best of circumstances, delivering aid to refugees is a complex process that requires the cooperation of multiple agencies to develop a complementary implementation strategy. Providing food, shelter, safety, health care, education, and other basic needs for the thousands of people in legal limbo in a particular setting relies on dozens of international and local agencies coordinating the development and distribution of aid across national borders and cultural barriers.

A large system of informal aid is interwoven into this process. Remittances, personal trade, and informal donations — receiving money from friends or food from neighbors — all complement the formal aid system. Together, these resources sustain people seeking refuge. This informal network of support is vulnerable to political and cultural shifts as much as, if not more than, the formal aid system. Its interconnectedness means cutting one source of aid has ripple effects throughout, disrupting the carefully orchestrated system. The consequences of uncoordinated aid have been shown to have drastic, negative effects on refugees. A study of Syrian refugees in Jordan illustrates this relationship in further detail. 

The Syrian Refugee Life Study provided approximately one year of full rental subsidies to Syrian refugees in their existing housing in Jordan, and financed landlords’ renovations to upgrade housing quality. To isolate the effects of the program, researchers randomly assigned 2,870 refugee households in northern Jordan to either treatment or control groups. Researchers also assessed the effects of the program on 2,146 Jordanian neighbors who did not receive assistance. The study collected three rounds of surveys tracking participants’ outcomes: midline (2021), endline (immediately after the intervention in 2022), and a follow-up round (1.5 years after the assistance was delivered). In 2022, the research team also surveyed Jordanian neighbors living near the sample refugee households.

Despite a modest improvement in savings, the study found consistently negative impacts on a range of economic and psychological outcomes. It also returned a surprising result: Participants who received the housing subsidy were 46% more likely to go to sleep hungry than participants who did not receive it. Essentially, refugees in the housing program lost out on food aid that they were receiving prior to participation. This finding calls into question the effectiveness of the housing program, given that it provided housing at the cost of food in a setting where individuals are already struggling to meet their basic needs.

Read the paper and learn more about SRLS.

Researchers exploring this finding believe it could be the result of refugees losing their eligibility for other forms of aid. Without close coordination, it’s likely that they were deprioritized by another aid organization because of their improved housing status. Another likely mechanism is the withdrawal of informal aid by host communities in response to learning of the housing subsidies distributed solely to Syrian refugees. (In light of this dynamic, future programs might prioritize more discrete interventions, like cash, to reduce tension with host communities.) This counterintuitive finding highlights the interconnectedness of aid.

If a lack of coordination between humanitarian organizations results in unintended consequences that negatively impact refugees, the Trump Administration’s recent cuts to existing aid and refugee programs will almost certainly exacerbate the harm. From the suspension of the U.S. Refugee Program in January to the termination of USAID contracts that have left millions of people without access to essential services, this dramatic shift in policy not only directly affects aid programs for refugees but also injects instability into the wider network of support. More than 120 million people are displaced worldwide and conflict in Ukraine, Sudan, and elsewhere continues to drive migration. Evidence tells us that the system needs more stability, financial support, and coordination — not less.

The aid cuts are unlikely to be rescinded soon, and humanitarian responders urgently need donors to fill the funding gaps. In the meantime, U.S. foreign aid, and refugee aid in particular, faces a rushed redesign. As a new approach takes shape, evidence like that from the Syrian Refugee Life Study can help leaders rebuild infrastructure that employs a more collaborative and coordinated approach to implementation. Although some factors, including dynamics of the informal aid system, may not fall entirely within policy parameters, the potential exists for a new version of refugee aid that is complementary and harmonized, if leaders are willing to build these changes into the new system.

Refugee aid is inextricably linked, and when the largest humanitarian donor in the world announces widespread cuts, even organizations that were not directly funded face threats to their work and its effectiveness. In a world where the demand for refugee aid is rapidly outpacing supply, it is critical for the few remaining actors to coordinate their efforts and ensure their work does not inadvertently harm refugees. Evidence can point the way, but we must have the compassion and common sense to follow it.