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Local Faith Community Responses to Displacement in Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey: Emerging Evidence and New Approaches

Pays
Liban
+ 3
Sources
UCL
Date de publication

Introduction

There is a growing interest within academic and policy circles surrounding the roles played by local faith communities (LFCs) and faith based organisations (FBOs) in responding to displacement.i This trend contrasts with some of the significant negative and secular assumptions that typically frame mainstream humanitarian engagements with faith groups.

For example, humanitarian responses to displacement have been critiqued for their reliance on secular frameworks that too often mistrust faith and religion, seeing them as a problem to be solved rather than as an opportunity to improve and enhance refugee protection.

These assumptions typically stem from a lack of effective knowledge about the ‘interface of governmental, intergovernmental and international non-governmental organizations with local faith communities in the course of humanitarian responses,’ii and they often emphasise the ‘traditionalist’ and ‘conservative’ nature of religion in contrast to the more ‘progressive’ social and political approach taken by humanitarian actors toward, for example, human rights and women’s rights.iii Understanding and exploring these assumptions is a key priority for the authors’ ongoing research into local community responses to and experiences of displacement from Syria in Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey. As part of our AHRC-ESRC funded Refugee Hosts (www.refugeehosts.org) research project, we have been investigating how faith both explicitly and implicitly informs the ways in which people displaced from Syria are hosted by local communities. Based on our research to date in Lebanon and Jordan, we argue that the role that faith plays in times of displacement is far more complicated than the secular assumptions highlighted above might suggest.

In particular, by approaching faith through a focus on everyday dynamics can we begin to identify the diverse faith-based values that inform the nature of assistance offered to refugees by local hosting communities. Similarly, becoming more attuned to these dynamics may also enable international humanitarian organisations to develop a better understanding of the challenges that exist at the local level, such as the proliferation of exclusionary or sectarian practices, whilst simultaneously reflecting on the theological and ethical traditions that in turn guide ‘secular’ humanitarian work.

The need for more thorough, evidenced-led findings relating to the roles played by LFCs in responding to the needs of displaced peoples is clearly vital. A key aim of our project is, therefore, to better understand the challenges and opportunities that exist vis-à-vis local community responses to displacement from Syria, especially when such responses are motivated (either implicitly or explicitly) by faith.

This goes beyond an assessment of service provision, and toward a more nuanced engagement with faith and, relatedly, the ‘embedded theologies’ that shape a range of humanitarian practices, and their roles in shaping the diverse, everyday practices and experiences of hosting, hospitality and hostility which frame the lives, of refugees and hosts alike.

Moreover, as the Refugee Hosts project is evidencing in its research, producing nuanced evidence about the role(s) played by local hosting communities also requires policy makers and practitioners to acknowledge the extent to which hosts are themselves often also established refugees. This raises important questions about the motivations and responses of refugees-as-hosts, in particular how notions of faith-based solidarity and ‘neighborliness’ motivate such communities to offer assistance to other displaced peoples.

Through the Refugee Hosts project, a Religious Literacy Handbook will also be developed in consultation with local communities so that humanitarian actors working with LFCs and FBOs in Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey can be better equipped to overcome unfounded negative assumptions about faith. We also hope this Handbook will enable practitioners to develop policies and strategies that are more attuned to the challenges and barriers that remain, and the exclusionary practices that can sometimes emerge through a misunderstanding of the role(s) of faith in displacement contexts.

In building on these aims, and the related conversations taking place through the Refugee Hosts research project and elsewhere, a two-day workshop on Local Faith Community Responses to Displacement was held in Beirut on 17 and 18 July 2017.2 This workshop, which was funded by the UCL Knowledge Exchange Fund and coordinated by the Refugee Hosts research project, brought together 21 academics and humanitarian practitioners from faith-based and secular organisations who work on or with LFCs in Lebanon, Jordan and/or Turkey. This report summarises the rich conversations which were had over the course of the two-day workshop, pointing to key issues and themes which require further consideration both within the context of the Middle East and further afield.