Introduction and needs Provide of life-saving assistance :
The overall humanitarian situation remains dire for the people living in NW Syria. According to HNO 2021, an estimated of 13.4 million people are still in need of humanitarian assistance with increase comparing to 2020 (11 million) and the number of people in need of humanitarian assistance in NW Syria has increased from 2.8 to 3.4 million people. 2.7 million are IDPs, many of whom are living in over-crowded locations with limited access to essential services. As of February 2021, approximately 1.7 million IDPs were living in 1,385 camps or informal sites (including 24,800 people displaced in January and February 2021 alone). Women and children represent 80 per cent of this caseload while more than 22,000 IDPs are reported to be persons with specific needs and the expanding impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has further complicated the lives of people in humanitarian settings in northwest Syria.
During March 2021, MASRRAT conducted rapid need assessment to determine the best practices and most suitable methodologies to support the food security and livelihoods of families in Atareb. Wherein, according to the latest assessments the population in Atareb is 185354, among those more than 88823 are PIN and 5925 are at risk PIN (as of CARI 2021). Also, 62332 of them are IDPs lives in camps (as of January 2021). The primary data has been collected by MASRAAT field team from LCs/farmers and community members via several tools (KII, FGD, Survey) and compared the results with the secondary data from OCHA/flash update2021- OCHA/Covid19 most recent assessment.
According to the most recent gap analysis issued by FSL cluster for January/2021, Atareb sub-district is covered by just 64% for acute PIN and IDPs site population with food assistance and by 14% with livelihoods assistance. Also, Atareb is ranked as high priority location with average score of 4.6 in the allocation paper. The conducted assessment covered Al-Atareb area which is considered one of the large agricultural areas, and the region has been affected because of damage of agriculture extensively during the last season due to displacement, recent battles and bombing early at the beginning of 2020. To date, 18 active covid-19 cases with one associated death in the last seven days are confirmed in Atareb sub-district, with possibility of the outbreak due to the low awareness of the population in general in NW Syria. The result of the assessment identified: – More than 61% of the population of Atareb sub-district own lands suitable for cultivation wheat. Most of the population in the Atareb area works in agriculture. The number of farmers who depend on rain-fed agriculture is estimated at 7000 while the number of farmers who depend on irrigated agriculture is estimated at 2900.
Most of the farmers agreed that the agricultural sector has declined significantly compared to five years ago. The reason for the decline is due to several factors, most notably are: the deteriorating security situation, the difficulty of transportation, and the difficulty to reach many areas for some farmers as well as the high costs of harvesting, irrigation, agricultural inputs and losing of the major energy sources (electricity and diesel) in addition to the absence of the role of agricultural associations or concerned bodies to support agriculture.
In the same context, MASARRAT participated in the survey related to bakeries, mills and silos conducted by HNAP 2021 in Atareb, wherein the data shows there are 11 bakeries in operation, 8 bakeries closed and four bakeries need to maintenance.
according to the KIIs, a lot of livestock breeders are facing some problems with their livestock in the present time like the high cost of commercial animal feeds and the number of the livestock breeders estimated by 2000 families and the number of sheep about 25000.
Number of Camps in Atareb area is 36 camps with 10248 families/62332 individuals. Also, 17 camps did not receive any food assistants six months ago.
The Project of Provide of life-saving assistance :
This project pursuits scaling-up efforts to sustain minimum food consumption needs of the most vulnerable IDPs and host community population in western rural of Aleppo province.
This intervention will complement our ongoing project and will make big contribution towards addressing the critical food insecurity and instability of the IDPs in the camps through distribution of free bread as well as supporting the livelihood assets through supporting the wheat value chain and access to agriculture.
MASRRAT will Support the local wheat value chain through marketing, wherein MASRRAT has an ongoing project supporting 600 wheat farmers beneficiaries in Aleppo countryside (funded by OCHA). So, MASRRAT will purchase 360 tons of wheat seeds with supported price from the beneficiaries and other farmers (600 kg from each farmer) based on specific criteria for ensuring the pureness of the wheat. The purchased wheat will be used as follows:
- 240 tons of the purchased wheat will be milled to produce 192 tons of wheat flour and 48 tons of wheat bran (80% + 20% of the purchased wheat seeds) and supply flour directly to bakeries and provide free bread distribution (175.8 tons white bread and 55 tons of bran bread) to 2400 of the most vulnerable IDP HHs for four consecutive months in the targeted locations whose access to subsidized bread is limited. Wherein, MASRRAT will contract with four bakeries to increase the community participation and reduce work pressure and to ensure that the bakeries will not exceed the daily production capacity which will affect the bread quality (part of the resulted wheat bran will be used to cover the costs of milling the wheat flour).
- The other part of the purchased wheat seeds (120 tons will produce 114 tons of pure wheat after screening, 5% impurities) will be used for improving access to agriculture by distributing it to 456 new wheat farmers. Every beneficiary will receive 250 kg of wheat seeds, one fuel voucher for supplementary irrigation 125 $ as well as three technical training sessions about GAP. The beneficiaries of wheat activity will be from the local community and IDPs who settled for a while, own or renting land between 7 to10 donums suitable for wheat, as well as the farmers who meet the selection criteria.
This project will support 14420 beneficiaries affected by the Syrian crisis (3750 men, 3186 women, 3648 boys and 3835 girls including 303 PWDs) by promoting their accessibility to the humanitarian assistance significantly. All the people in the targeted villages and markets will benefit directly/indirectly from the project where the wheat will be available in the markets at normal prices. The project is designed with consideration to the cluster and WHO recommendation on prevention and mitigation measures related to COVID-19 especially during the distribution of support and conducting trainings. In addition, protection cluster recommendations were taken into consideration, wherein all the population in the targeted locations will benefit from MASRRAT protection Centers in Aleppo, in the event of any GBV referral cases.
The target villages in Jebel Samman district/Atareb sub-district are considered from the most densely populated areas:
Jeineh 6272 HCs & 2580IDPs
Atareb 23950 HCs & 8632IDPs
Kafr Karmin 7100 HCs & 6000 IDPs
Babka 2800 HCs & 1650 IDPs
Abin Samaan 12920 HCs & 6257IDPs
Batbu 4800 HCs & 5030 IDPs
Kafr Naseh Elatareb 3960 HCs & 7491 IDPs