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From Emergency Needs to Sustainable Recovery: An Integrated Response in Al-Qusayr, Homs

Years of conflict have left communities across Syria with damaged homes, deteriorating infrastructure, unreliable essential services, and limited financial resources. According to Syria's 2026 Humanitarian Needs and Response Plan, the crisis has left 15.6 million Syrians in need of humanitarian assistance and over 30% of Syrian households with limited access to improved water sources. These challenges are evident in Al-Qusayr, in western Homs, where years of conflict and displacement have severely strained infrastructure, essential services, and local livelihoods.

Since the political transition in December 2024, families forced to leave their community and displaced to other parts of Syria or neighboring countries due to the crisis are returning. This increases demand for already overstretched essential services, combined with limited livelihood opportunities, high unemployment, and poor housing. Heightened protection risks, including Explosive Ordnance contamination and community tensions, make it difficult for families to rebuild their lives and meet their basic needs.

An Integrated Response to Recovery Needs

With communities facing interconnected challenges, DRC took a holistic approach to support recovery in Al-Qusayr. The intervention, funded by the Syria Humanitarian Fund, combined WASH, shelter, protection, and cash assistance to restore access to essential services and deliver support that responds to the complex needs of affected communities. Under this integrated response, coordinated actions have been implemented across the community to address priority needs:

Restoring Essential Services in Al-Qusayr

Before DRC’s intervention, many families relied on costly water vendors, while deteriorating sewage infrastructure posed environmental and public health risks. At the same time, many residents lived in partially damaged homes facing increased financial constraints. Through its intervention, DRC rehabilitated a drinking water borehole and installed a solar-powered pumping system, restoring reliable access to safe water for 10,000 people while reducing reliance on fuel and the unreliable electricity grid. The rehabilitation of the sewage network also improved sanitation and environmental conditions for 7,000 people.

Rebuilding Homes and Dignity

For vulnerable households living in partially damaged apartments, shelter rehabilitation helped restore safer, more dignified living conditions. Repairs to roofs, doors, windows, walls, and basic household infrastructure reduced safety and protection risks and helped families remain in or return to their homes. For those families, improved housing conditions supported sustainable return and reintegration, helping them rebuild their lives while reducing the risk of secondary displacement. Beyond physical repairs, the intervention helped to restore a sense of security, dignity, and stability that many families had lacked for years.

Supporting Household Recovery

Multi-Purpose Cash Assistance gave vulnerable households the flexibility to address their most urgent needs, cover essential expenditures, manage debts, and meet immediate needs. The flexibility of cash assistance reinforced dignity and supported self-reliance. Complementing this support, DRC also provided agriculture-focused assistance to help vulnerable households restore productive capacity and strengthen livelihood resilience. By enabling farmers to resume or boost agricultural activities, the support contributes to household income and food production.

Strengthening Protection and Well-being

Through its community center, DRC provided complementary protection services, including case management, psychosocial support, and legal aid. These services helped returnees, displaced families, and other vulnerable community members address protection risks related to housing, land, and property, as well as civil documentation, while offering individual and group support to help them cope with stress and the challenges associated with displacement. Beyond addressing immediate protection concerns, these services supported people’s sense of safety, well-being, and dignity, helping individuals and families rebuild their lives and reintegrated into their communities.

By adopting an integrated approach, DRC addressed both community-level infrastructure needs and household vulnerabilities, helping restore essential services, improve living conditions, and strengthen resilience. For the residents of Al-Qusayr, this support is helping to address immediate needs and strengthen conditions for recovery, return, and reintegration.

“Before the rehabilitation of the Al-Damina Al-Sharqiya well, water was available only once every ten days, even as more families returned. Today, we are seeing a clear change, with basic services available again.”

Hiba Zeitoun, Head of the Executive Office of Al-Qusayr City Council

Al-Damina Al-Sharqiya water well after rehabilitation, including installation of a solar system. DRC 2026.

A Safe Return Home

After thirteen years of displacement and hardship in camps and across Lebanon, 70-year-old Ahmed returned to his hometown of Al-Qusayr in Homs Governorate with his wife, 65-year-old Wafaa, three of their sons, and their families. After years of displacement across different locations, the family was finally reunited in Syria, hoping to rebuild their lives together. Instead, they returned to a home lacking basic necessities. The doors and windows were missing, the kitchen was almost completely destroyed, and access to water, sanitation, and electricity was severely limited. For the 14 family members, settling back home was an overwhelming challenge.

Wafaa recalls: “We were so happy to return home with our children and grandchildren, but the reality was very difficult. Fourteen of us were living in one house with no usable kitchen and no doors or windows. I was very afraid for the young children because stray dogs could enter the house. We had no privacy or sense of security.”

Through DRC’s shelter rehabilitation and integrated support through cash assistance, the family was able to repair their damaged home, improve access to essential facilities, and address urgent needs. The support helped restore safer and more dignified living conditions, allowing the family to begin rebuilding their lives together.

“My son is the sole breadwinner, and he was injured while working. The monthly financial assistance was a lifeline for our family. And we never expected the renovations. Now we have a door we can close and feel safe. I no longer have to wash dishes on the floor, and we have a bathroom that meets our needs as elderly people,” says Wafaa.

For Wafaa and her family, the support went beyond repairing their home and meeting immediate needs. Safer and more dignified living conditions have helped restore their sense of security, dignity, and stability, giving the family greater confidence as they rebuild their lives in their community.