SITUATION OVERVIEW
The LCRP Steering Committee met in July to review the achievements of the LCRP and way forward. The overall funding requirements were revised downwards to US$1.87 billion with $815m urgently required for critical interventions until December. Preliminary findings of the 2015 VASyR reveal that vulnerability of Syrian refugees is increasing. Households are applying more severe coping strategies and 70 per cent of them are now living below the poverty line ($3.84/person/day), an increase from 50 per cent last year. An indirect result is that more and more vulnerable refugees are seeking for shelters in poor urban neighborhoods where the access to basic urban services is already under strain. These results come at a time when WFP’s funding shortfalls forced it to reduce the e-card value from $19 to $ 13.5 per person. As for education, the ALP programme was launched to provide the opportunity for children who missed school for a minimum of two years, to resume their formal education. Protection concerns were raised as many refugees living in informal settlements in the North, including in the Sahel area and Minnieh Dinnieh, were evicted due to security consideration and requested to relocate far from main access roads and military facilities. The social stability and livelihoods sectors have conducted a gap analysis and noted that 130 vulnerable cadasters remain without active social stability partners or activities implemented in them for the former and livelihood actors are only present in 80 vulnerable cadasters across the country, while actors are absent from some notable urban areas.