To meet the shelter needs of affected populations in NWS, IOM through its partners will:

• Repair and rehabilitate housing units and upgrade collective centres;
• Procure, preposition, and distribute emergency non-food items to newly displaced persons and the most vulnerable households;
• Conduct basic IDP site upgrade works;
• Procure and distribute family tents for newly displaced and the most vulnerable households;
• Pilot more durable and dignified transitional shelters with a holistic approach (including site upgrades to protect against weather elements);
• Deliver winterization assistance through cash-based modalities;
• Provide interagency services for common pipeline, preposition, and stock delivery.  

To address the WASH needs of affected populations in Syria, IOM will:

• Provide immediate lifesaving WASH activities in IDP sites (including the provision and maintenance of sex-segregated latrines, provision of safe water supply, solid waste management, hygiene kit distribution, and hygiene promotion);
• Hygiene promotion and cholera response-related activities;
• Menstrual hygiene management and kit distribution;
• Water quality monitoring and surveillance;
• Construct decentralized sewer network systems and wastewater treatment systems in IDP sites and ensure proper operation and maintenance;
• Conduct hydrogeological surveys and improve water networks in IDP sites;
• Support the operation and maintenance of existing WASH infrastructure in informal IDP sites, particularly in sites where IOM is also providing shelter support;
• Improve WASH facilities and provide basic WASH services in health facilities.  

To address the significant protection needs of affected populations in Syria, IOM will:

• Raise awareness on protection risks related to child protection, GBV, trafficking in persons, civil status documentation, housing, land, and property (HLP) and risk education, based on up-to-date situational assessments;
• Establish and strengthen existing internal and external referral pathways to different service providers (protection and non-protection actors) in the targeted areas, including income-generating activities and cash assistance, shelter and NFI to complement protection outcomes;
• Provide GBV, child protection (CP) prevention activities such as life skills and psychosocial support (PSS) sessions to improve the protective environment for children, caregivers and GBV survivors. This will supported by legal advisory services to mitigate protection risks;
• Provide GBV and CP response activities including case management supported by cash assistance and legal advisory, if needed; to respond to protection risks and violations including various forms of exploitation such as trafficking in persons (TIP);
• Provide cash and in-kind individual and household (HH) protection assistance (IPA) in coordination with specialized service providers;
• Strengthen community networks for addressing protection risks and developing mechanisms to raise awareness, mitigate risks, and address existing impacts including the provision of cash to community-led initiatives for the mitigation of protection risks;
• Ensure the provision of integrated, specialized protection services in all the IOM-supported camps in NWS;
• Expand protection service coverage of informal IDP sites and hard-to-reach and heightened-risk areas with mobile teams, including in the most under-served areas close to frontlines with low protection service coverage. Services will include prevention and response activities such as raising awareness, CP and GBV case management, IPA, structured PSS, mental health and psychosocial support (MHPSS) including psychosocial first aid (PFA), anti-TIP activities where relevant, and protection monitoring and legal counselling in hard-to-reach areas. IOM and partners will work on rehabilitating and equipping rooms within schools in the targeted communities and also rely on partners’ facilities to be used as static locations for conducting specialized activities to ensure access and maximum confidentiality;
• Enhance access to legal advisory services, including individual legal counselling, with a focus on reaching informal/self-settled IDP sites, with a focus on the most vulnerable. A sub-component specifically targets women and girls with their legal concerns through women’s orientation sessions on inheritance, divorce, and marriage, as well as access to civil documentation. Another sub-component specifically focuses on the rights of adolescents, again through awareness raising sessions;
• Conduct an IOM-designed HLP rights due diligence process to verify land tenure and reduce the risk of land/property disputes, and support trainings , and operational guidance;
• Provide HLP rights due diligence support, trainings, and operational guidance across sectors including IOM shelter interventions;
• Provide dignity kits to newly displaced women and girls to support the wider mitigation GBV efforts;
• Ensure the inclusion of persons with disabilities in all protection interventions, based on information from needs assessments;
• Enhance protection capacity and response in frontline communities and high-risk areas through a community-based response for the provision of capacity-building and protection mainstreaming support to IOM and partner staff, including on GBV risk mitigation and safe referral in case of GBV disclosure;
• Support the inclusion of persons with disabilities in all protection interventions, based on the Washington Group methodology;
• Engage in ongoing community mobilization and outreach;
• Conduct regular protection monitoring and protection risk analysis to inform ongoing programming. 

All protection activities will be conducted in consultation and collaboration with communities to ensure meaningful participation of vulnerable groups, especially women and girls, children, persons with disabilities, or any other group in vulnerable situations. Protection principles are mainstreamed across interventions to ensure safety and dignity, avoid causing harm and guarantee meaningful access to assistance for all persons in need, without discrimination. This includes GBV risk mitigation and inclusion of persons with disabilities throughout the programme cycle. Particular attention will be given to effective participation and empowerment of the community, ensuring that complaint and feedback mechanisms (CFM) and other reporting mechanisms related to prevention against sexual exploitation and abuse (PSEA) and IOM's Child Safeguarding Policy are in place to prevent misconduct and guarantee accountability to the affected population, in line with the IOM AAP Framework.  

To address the immediate food needs of affected populations in NWS, IOM will:

• Provide monthly assistance through cash-for-food interventions for food-insecure persons;
• Provide one-off short-term food assistance through cash as an emergency response for crisis-affected vulnerable people.

To support the health needs of affected populations in NWS and reduce the spread of communicable diseases in supported displacement sites, IOM will:

• Help address the critical gaps in healthcare services in NWS by supporting primary healthcare facilities, covering the facilities’ running medical supplies, costs, salaries of essential staff, and urgent rehabilitation, and conducting health promotion through community health workers (CHW);
• Operate mobile health teams to provide health-care services in camps that are in remote locations and currently lacking access to services, and provide referrals to health facilities when necessary;
• Respond to disease outbreaks such as cholera by establishing, supporting, and operating cholera treatment units (CTUs) and, in coordination with the WASH team, through improved access to WASH facilities.

MHPSS activities will be offered in all IOM-supported camps and other locations in community centres in Jarablus and Afrin districts, and through multidisciplinary psychosocial mobile teams (PMTs) in hard-to-reach areas, such as Ariha district. In 2024, IOM will:

• Provide MHPSS services at all four tiers of the IASC pyramid of intervention in emergency settings, including psychosocial considerations in the provision of basic services and security, and family and community support. IOM’s activities will aim to strengthen collective and interpersonal support systems essential to psychosocial well-being. IOM will also provide focused psychosocial support, and specialized services, including psychotherapy provided by clinical psychologists;
• Support communities in organizing socio-relational, cultural, rituals and celebrations, sports and play, and creative and art-based activities. These activities can allow children and adults to safely vent feelings, express tensions, problems, and emotions through metaphors, and foster social connections while helping people develop positive coping skills;
• Distribute PSS recreational kits to children aged 6-12 years old and organize structured activities to reduce levels of distress among children and adults, including peer support groups and guided discussions;
• Provide psychoeducation in the form of sessions on how to cope with distress, sensitization on and de-stigmatization of mental disorders, and indirectly through parenting skills training;
• Provide non-specialized and life-saving specialized MHPSS services, including psychotherapy provided by clinical psychologists;
• Provide individual psychological consultations along with referrals to specialized mental health care services for people with severe mental health conditions.   

In displacement sites, IOM and partners will:

• Implement site management activities, including reception, registration, data collection, vulnerability mapping, maintenance of gender-balanced and inclusive camp governance, regular information-sharing, awareness-raising on AAP mechanisms and hazards and service information in IDP sites/camps;
• Coordinate multi-sectoral assistance through other sectors' partners (food, health services, protection, non-food items) through inter-agency/community coordination meetings, mapping services and routine assessments;
• Enhance community participation in IDP sites/camps through providing continuous support to site/camp management committees and the delivery of training to the committees including but not limited to participation and representation, and search and rescue and first aid training;
• Improve the living conditions in the camps/IDP sites through the implementation of regular care and maintenance activities;
• Mitigate the risk of fires in the targeted IDP sites by providing fire points equipped with fire extinguishers and first aid kits.  

IOM will continue to host the Whole of Syria PSEAH programme and support the inter-agency humanitarian response in joint implementation of PSEAH commitments. Through an established, robust inter-agency PSEAH Network, IOM will continue to support the inter-agency partnership to decrease the risk of crisis‐affected communities experiencing incidents of SEA by humanitarian workers and provide technical and operational support to humanitarian actors to prevent, investigate and assist SEAH cases. IOM will also continue to support the inter-agency response with information management services. IOM will:

• Undertake humanitarian information management, reporting and SEAH trend analysis on behalf of the inter-agency response;
• Coordinate between the inter-agency PSEAH Networks in all hubs, as well as between PSEAH Networks and the GBV and Child Protection Area of Responsibility (AoR) to ensure a survivor-centred approach and systematic referrals to available services;
• Build the capacity of humanitarian workers and other stakeholders on PSEAH, including investigatory capacity-building;
• Raise awareness of and consult with affected populations;
• Support the implementation of risk and mitigation measures;
• Integrate and mainstream PSEAH into the broader humanitarian infrastructure;
• Maintain the inter-agency community-based complaints mechanisms (CBCMs), including the Humanitarian Hotline.  

Building the capacity of local and international NGO partners (IPs) remains critical, both to enhance the quality of implementation but also to contribute to the sustainability of the humanitarian response. To build NGO capacity, IOM will facilitate trainings, coaching sessions, workshops, and learning exchanges, and develop guidance documents in key areas such as:

• Procurement, transhipment, logistics, and strategic planning;
• WASH infrastructure implementation and management;
• Humanitarian access negotiation;
• NFI, operations and cash-based interventions;
• Food security, early recovery and livelihood;
• Community engagement, accountability, and governance;
• Improving institutional processes and procedures in resource mobilization and management.  

Related to Shelter and NFI activities, IOM plans to:

• Preposition 15,000 emergency non-food items and 7,500 tents to prepare for new displacements and to respond to disasters such as floods.
• Support and capacitate partners to develop people-centred, simple, and low-cost multi-hazard early warning systems through a participatory process; and adapt it to the needs of users (including social and cultural requirements) with the consideration of appropriate channels for hazard-related disaster early warning information.

Given the significant levels of displacement in Syria, IOM continues to promote durable solutions, where possible, for affected populations residing in IDP sites and planned camps, and will:

• Conduct financial or in-kind support for entrepreneurial activities, particularly for micro, small, home-based enterprises, and community groups;
• Conduct labour market-informed vocational and skills training including financial or in-kind support business grants; 
• Rehabilitate key socioeconomic services and infrastructures e.g., markets, shops, storehouses, irrigation facilities, and processing facilities;
• Enhance inclusive community participation and social cohesion through community engagement and improved equitable access to basic services;
• Provide income-generating activities such as food processing, small business grants with technical support and cash for work (CfW), aiming to support the graduation efforts of beneficiaries from humanitarian aid reliance to self-reliance.

To support the provision of WASH to the most vulnerable, and ensure sustainable access to quality WASH services, IOM will:

• Ensure more durable water supply sources and systems are in place;
• Conduct a hydrogeological survey and assessment for NWS;
• Conduct water quality monitoring and surveillance;
• Establish a durable wastewater management system for NWS;
• Conduct comprehensive solid waste management including composting and plastic recycling;
• Ensure gender-friendly and accessible sanitation infrastructure is available in camps and communities;
• Undertake water network and sewage network repair, rehabilitation, and expansion;
• Solarize the water supply network;
• Undertake wastewater quality monitoring and reporting;
• Provide technical and capacity-building support to WASH Cluster partners;
• Provide WASH services in healthcare facilities;  
• Provide flood mitigation and drainage activities for NWS camps;
• Put faecal sludge management system in place;
• Provide technical and capacity-building support to WASH cluster partners.

To strengthen healthcare facilities preparedness and respond towards cholera outbreaks, IOM will:

• Ensure availability of necessary medical supplies by procuring and replenishing the stocks providing 5 cholera kits each kits serves 100 patients total of 500; 
• Translate and contextualize the training materials and guidelines to the context and local language, one training material will be translated to Arabic;
• Conduct trainings on cholera management and IPC measures for healthcare workers targeting 100 health workers; 
• Establish cholera treatment units (CTUs) or ORP and isolation units based on the developed response plans, needs, geographic areas and priority groups supporting one center for three months.