Local Problems, Local Expertise: Integrating Informal Settlements Across Syria and Lebanon

With Corporation support, Ahmad Sukkar researches the ways informal settlements might become a core element in reconstruction efforts in Syria and Lebanon

By Angely MontillaAugust 22, 2023

Carnegie Reporter Fall 2023 Arab Region Transitions

A Syrian woman walks with her son at the Ketermaya Refugee Camp on February 2, 2019 in Beirut, Lebanon. Lebanon hosts over 1.5 million Syrian refugees, who usually live in informal tent settlements, abandoned buildings, or rent cramped spaces in the country’s decades-old Palestinian camps. (Credit: Franco Origlia via Getty Images)

For more than two decades, Carnegie Corporation of New York has supported academic and scholarly communities in the Middle East, funding scholars across fields and social science disciplines, fostering international networks, and promoting knowledge-based policy discourse. The Corporation has invested in hundreds of scholars across the region whose research is applied by both academic and nonacademic users to help solve local challenges. These investments include support of threatened and displaced scholars who are working effectively despite conflict and academic freedom challenges. This series provides an overview of the projects of select researchers who have benefited from this work.

Syrian academic and architect Ahmad Sukkar, a member of the Middle East Studies Association Global Academy, an interdisciplinary initiative funded by the Corporation, has researched the role of informal settlements in Syria as well as in Lebanon’s reconstruction efforts.

How can informal settlements become a core element in reconstruction efforts in Syria and Lebanon?

PROBLEM:

A large proportion of Syria’s population lives in informal housing, representing an estimated 30 to 40 percent of total dwellings prior to the 2011 uprising. Moreover, housing insecurity is experienced by displaced Syrians in Lebanon, which has witnessed a huge influx of Syrians fleeing the civil war. Despite its prevalence, informal housing and the rights of the populations living in such housing have not received sufficient attention in recent policy discussions around Syria’s reconstruction efforts or with respect to protecting the rights of Syrians to housing.

Meanwhile, Syrian displaced individuals and communities living in informal housing in Lebanon are working to secure access to essential services like water, food, and electricity. Ideally, access to such services should be seen as indissolubly linked to the rights of citizens — but in practice, the distribution of such goods in Lebanon is not equal. Access to goods and services by displaced populations in Lebanon is further complicated by the nature of the country’s political economy, where Syrian refugees are often only able to acquire and secure their rights through informal networks.

Illustration by Lori Langille depicting informal settlements in Syria and Lebanon with scholar Ahmad Sukkhar, a refugee tent, olives, a map of Syria and Lebanon, water, electricity, and a forager.

Lori Langille depicts the layers of informality that exist in Syria and Lebanon, focusing on the ways informal settlements characterize people's experiences with physical space and housing security in the midst of reconstruction efforts. (Credit: Lori Langille/Carnegie Corporation of New York)

SOLUTION:

Sukkar and his team argue that informal housing needs to be a core element in addressing both housing insecurity issues in Syria and the lack of goods and services for displaced populations in Lebanon. They contend that informal housing must be recognized in the legal frameworks surrounding government policies for the provision of affordable housing, goods, and services that are outside of — but not necessarily disconnected from — the formal purview of the state. In Lebanon, most citizens are already accessing resources such as water, food, and electricity from the informal sector.

Through their research, Sukkar and his team demonstrate that the massive informal reality of cities, which predates the regional conflict, demands that the urban planning systems of Syria and Lebanon and their legislative frameworks involve a recognition of informal land tenure.

SOURCES: Ahmad Sukkar, Sawsan Abou Zainedin, and Hani Fakhani, Informal Settlements in Syria: What Approach After the Conflict? (Paris: Arab Reform Initiative, 2021) and Ahmad Sukkar, Hani Fakhani, and Sawsan Abou Zainedin, Syrian (In)formal Displacement in Lebanon: Displacement as Urbanism, Informality as Architecture (Beirut: Asfari Institute for Civil Society and Citizenship, 2020)

Angely Montilla is a program specialist at Carnegie Corporation of New York, where she works on the production of digital, multimedia, and print content that supports the grantmaking goals of the foundation. Previously, she was a Writer’s Workshop fellow at Vox Media.

Lori Langille is a collage illustrator and stationery designer based in Ontario whose work blends vintage imagery with minimalism. She studied fine arts at the University of Ottawa before going on to earn a degree in illustration from the Ontario College of Art and Design (today OCAD University).