International and local/diaspora actors in the Syria response: A divergent set of systems?

This HPG Working Paper on the crisis in Syria is part of a two-year research project entitled ‘Approaches and Innovations Reshaping the Humanitarian Landscape: Opportunities and Challenges for Protection Work’. The first publication from the project (Svoboda, 2014) looked at the challenges involved in providing effective protection. During this initial research it quickly became clear that diaspora/local Syrian groups played a key role in the response in a context where access for international actors is severely circumscribed. Consequently, the paper provides a typology of the wide range of actors gathered under the ‘local/ diaspora’ label, outlines their evolution and growth, sets out their key activities and explores the nature and extent of their interaction with the ‘formal’ humanitarian system.