As the conflict in Syria enters its fifth year, Jordan is hosting 1.4 million Syrians, of whom 646,700 are refugees. Eighty-five per cent of refugees live outside camps in some of the poorest areas of the country, and a significant proportion are classified as extremely vulnerable. Approximately 23.5 per cent of all Syrian refugees are women, and almost 53 per cent are children, 18 per cent of whom are under five years of age. Providing for their needs has impacted heavily on Jordan’s public finances, increasing government expenditure on subsidies, public services, and security, while further compounding the negative economic consequences of regional instability. In some municipalities refugees outnumber residents, and the impact on inflation, employment, and access to public services and community resources has fuelled local tensions and threatened to spark wider social unrest.

The government’s response to the crisis has been backed by national and international agencies, but there is a growing acknowledgment that current life-saving humanitarian funding and programming are neither sustainable nor sufficient, and should be complemented by a more development-oriented approach to build national resilience and sustain the level and quality of services provided.

The Jordan Response Plan 2015 (JRP) seeks to bridge the divide between resilience and humanitarian systems, and reconcile the programming objectives, funding mechanisms and operating systems that often run parallel to each other in addressing short -term people -centred needs, in addition to medium and longer -term systemic and institutional considerations. The JRP 2015 adopts a resilience - based approach to respond to and mitigate the effects of the Syria crisis on Jordan and Jordanian host communities. The aim of resilience - oriented programming is two - fold, first to ensure that shocks and stresses do not lead to a long - term deterioration in the wellbeing of a particular individual, household, system or institution, and secondly to build capacity to absorb future shocks and deal appropriately with related stresses.