The Third Sector and Refugee Governance in Jordan: Local NGO Contributions to Humanitarian Assistance

Abstract

The Syrian Civil War has displaced millions of people to neighboring countries. In Jordan, the government has handled the crisis in an exclusionary way attempting to reduce its impact on the labor market by enforcing an encampment policy. The refugee regime can only administer relief in compliance with this policy due to its reliance on government consent. This creates scarcity of services for refugees in cities who don’t have efficient access to official humanitarian resources. Consequently, new local organizations have stepped in to provide supplementary services due to the salience of needs and low competition from humanitarian organizations. I argue that there is a moral market for assistance which is filled primarily by small local actors that increase access to welfare to meet society’s moral expectations for protection of refugees. I demonstrate my argument through conversations with nonprofit leaders who organized to address welfare gaps despite state attempts to limit the durability of refugee livelihoods.