Assessment Report I NRC KEY RECOMMENDATIONS 1. Given the level of destruction and damage of HLP assets and HLP documentation highlighted by the assessment, significant funding is required for reconstruction and alternative accommodation; as well as investment in HLP initiatives such as awareness raising activities, legal counselling and legal assistance. The latter focuses on informing Syrian IDPs of the importance of protecting and recovering any documentation they have access to, as well as assisting them in proving, by alternative means, their ownership and occupancy rights to property they left behind when they were displaced. It will also be important that funding is provided for initiatives to preserve HLP records and enable IDPs to access them. Key messaging to those at risk of displacement should reiterate the importance of safeguarding documentation. 2. Humanitarian agencies should strengthen activities that promote tenure security for IDPs and protection against forced eviction. Given the high levels of insecurity of tenure of IDPs and the exploitation of the IDP population highlighted by the assessment, Camp Coordination and Camp Management (CCCM), shelter, water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH), food security and livelihood (FSL) and early recovery actors need to perform due diligence in order to ensure that they are dealing with the lawful owner of the property on which the interventions they conduct take place and that the necessary agreements are in place so as to ensure that IDPs are able to remain in accommodation provided and/or use land on which these interventions take place, without the threat of forced eviction. They also need to ensure that IDPs are able to remain on the land/ in the property on/in which the intervention takes place for a reasonable period of time and make use of written agreements to document IDPs’ and owners’ rights and responsibilities. The assessment also highlighted an urgent need for rental support interventions. 3. Programmes aimed at providing information and assistance on safeguarding, updating or replacing documents should pay particular attention to women’s disproportionate lack of civil and HLP-related documentation. In particular, shelter, CCCM and other humanitarian actors need to ensure that women’s names are recorded on documentation such as handover certificates and rental agreements so as to better protect their rights. 4. IDPs and others living in areas outside of Government of Syria control need to be able to register life events and access civil documentation that will be officially recognised in order to avoid the risk of statelessness and protect other rights in the short and longer term. UNHCR and other UN and international actors need to engage with and facilitate the Syrian authorities in this regard. It will also be important to ensure that those who have accessed unofficial documentation, often obtained by IDPs to secure basic emergency needs, are not prejudiced in any way for having done so. 5. Given the widespread challenges for IDPs in obtaining civil documentation, it is crucial that humanitarian actors providing assistance, donors supporting relief activities, and authorities do not make the delivery of life-saving humanitarian assistance contingent upon the possession of civil documentation, and that other forms of documentation are acceptable as a means of proving the identity of humanitarian aid recipients (for example, witness statements, NRC Assessment Report I 5