Rawya Khodor

Thesis: Aid conditionality and politicization in refugee crisis settings: Challenges and sustainability strategies in the NGO sector in Lebanon

Key Topics: Aid, humanitarian operations, NGOs

Profile:

My background links my education in Nutrition and Public Health to professional practice in the field with various stakeholders at the level of primary health care and social development centres and with different types of underprivileged communities in Lebanon (including vulnerable Lebanese, and Syrian and Palestinian refugees) as well as to work in policy-oriented research related to the topics of migration, refugees, and development. My professional roles were related to the coordination, field supervision, planning, data collection and analysis, and monitoring and evaluation of a number of research and outreach projects through working with international NGOs, ministries (mainly the Lebanese Ministry of Social Affairs and the Lebanese Ministry of Public Health), UN agencies (mainly the United Nations Development Programme and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees), and research institutes.  

Building on my work and research experiences, my research will analyse how humanitarian operations and practices, particularly those related to NGOs, are affected by their dependence on official aid. It will look at the interrelationship between donors and NGOs in context of aid conditionality and politicization in refugee crisis settings in Lebanon, while focusing on how NGOs in the context of the Syrian crisis have been responding to aid conditionality and politicization in Lebanon through the identification and analysis of the challenges faced as well as the sustainability strategies that are adopted as a response.

Primary supervisor: Andrea Rigon

Secondary Supervisor: Naji Makarem

Other:

I completed the Global Health Delivery Intensive (GHDI) program at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, after receiving the UAE/Global Scholars Program Scholarship from Harvard Medical School Center for Global Health Delivery.

Interests and hobbies: Playing Piano and horseback riding