Author: International Alert, 2017

This study presents a snapshot of the situation in Syria early 2016, when the field research was conducted. The situation on the ground and around Syria has changed since then: a marked hardening of European Union (EU) refugee policy, the increased role played by Russia, the renaming of the Jabhat al-Nusra (al-Nusra Front) to Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, the fall of Aleppo and the gradual reduction in the area under the control of the so-called Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) are just some of the developments. Nonetheless, many of the underlying gender dynamics described in this report that affect the lives of individual Syrians have not changed.