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affect its social cohesion, fears from terrorists among refugees or terrorist attack, beside the problem of securing its borders in the face of new wave of refugees.
All of these can make refugees as a threat to Europe’s national security. For this reason, and in parallel to the absent of a foreseeable solution in the near future for the crisis, building resilience of the refugees and the host community became the new national, regional and international approach in response of the Syrian refugee crisis for both Jordan and Europe. The following section will conceptualize resilience as a term and its use in foreign and security policy for the EU and Jordan.
III�3�4� Conceptualizing resilience
The crisis of the Syrian refugees does not only represent a humanitarian crisis, but moreover, after the Europe Migrant Crisis , also known as the refugee crisis, which began in 2015, the European Union (EU) has taken the migration and displacement as key priority in the 2016 European Union Global Strategy (EUGS) for Foreign and Security Policy. In other words, in order to respond to such a crisis, the EU has adopted building resilience of states and societies as one of its
five priorities and a key security policy (European Union Extrenal Action, 2016).
Resilience as a word stems from the Latin word “resilire.”
“Salire” means to leap or jump; the suffix “re” indicates repetition, or backward motion. As for its origin, resilience is often traced back and attributed to the ecologist Holling who used the concept to refer to the ecological systems’ ability to absorb change and disruption (holling, c. s. 1973; WalKeR , j. – coopeR , m. 2011). Others have emphasized the important contributions from psychology, where resilience implies a shift in the focus from vulnerability and deficits to protective factors and adaptive capacities (BouRBeau, p.
2013).
Risk scholars as the risk scholar Wildavsky, illustrated and defined resilience as “the capacity to deal with unanticipated dangers after they have become manifest, learning to bounce back”
(WildavsKy, a. 1988 p. 77.).
Consequently, resilience also found a home in the natural disasters studies.
As for the EU, building resilience has been integrated into the EU humanitarian and development policy by the EU Commission from 2012, as it was understood as the capability of
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states, societies, communities and individuals to manage ,tackle , adapt, and recover from shocks and crises (European Commission, 2012). However, it is important to be mentioned here that the EU was not the only one to consolidate resilience to its policies, others like the UN, the US and other NGOs have also adopted it, but it is beyond the scope of this paper to trace the resilience history for them.
On the other side, mapping resilience in the EU humanitarian and development policy, as will be illustrated in the following section, is crucial to understand the characteristics of the EU building resilience and how it is applied on its Foreign and security policy.
Mapping resilience in the EU humanitarian and development policy
Since its publication of The EU Approach to Resilience:
Learning from Food Security Crises in 2012 (European Commission, 2012), the European Commission has systemically used the term in its humanitarian and development policy. In this document, the Commission has illustrated that resilience is the ability of the states, societies, communities and individuals to manage, tackle, adapt, and recover from shocks and
crises. Borrowing from the Global Alliance for Resilience Initiative, it confirms that resilience-based approach is the base to reduce vulnerability, in particular, to climate change-induced disasters (tocci, n. 2019).
In the Conclusion of the Council of the European Union on The EU Approach to Resilience in 2013, resilience has been stretched to be more comprehensive; it was not only restricted to natural crisis, but also resilience to other kinds of crisis including, for instance, conflicts and weak governance.
More importantly, the council has highlighted two important aspects of building resilience. Firstly, the humanitarian and development nexus and the significance of their actors working together;
secondly, the Council’s emphasis that building resilience requires working closely with local communities, civil society, local authorities, and the private sector.
Nevertheless, it recognizes that resilience is an overall national government responsibility (Council of the European Union, 2013).
Following that shortly, the European Commission published the Action Plan for Resilience in Crisis Prone Countries, designed to reinforce the momentum of the resilience agenda (European
Commission, 2013).The
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importance of this document as Tocci confirms is that the three characteristics of the EU building resilience are clearly notable.
First, the plan affirms that all EU actors (humanitarian, development, political) should work diffierently and more effiectively together to achieve resilience objectives.
Second, it asserts the responsibility of the national and local government to achieve resilience, which implies the need for integrating resilience in national policies and planning for development. In addition, the plan asserts that a resilience approach has to be sustainable, multi-sectoral, multi-level, multi-partner, and jointly planned by the people, communities, or governments at risk (tocci, n. 2019).
Third, a resilience approach is characterized as people-centered and focused on the most vulnerable groups .The indication is that resilience does not only aim to increase their ability to absorb shocks and to cope with stresses, but it also constitutes an opportunity for transformation, in regard to adaptation, to changing
environments, improving livelihoods and economic opportunities (Council of the European Union, 2013).
What is important here, in term of the Syrian refugee crisis, is the indication of the notion that crises
present possibilities and chances for development, which can be read as a precursor for the EU framing refugees as an economic asset and a development opportunity for the refugee׳s hosting states. This can be found in later policy documents like Lives in Dignity: From Aid-dependence to Self-reliance: Forced Displacement and Development (European Commission, 2016).
Growing concerns over the refugee and migration crisis in 2015 paved the way for this policy which aims to fostering the resilience and self-reliance of forcibly displaced people.
This illustration was crucial in order to understand the EU׳s approach towards resilience and its characteristics, and since this paper aims to illustrate resilience as a security strategy of the EU towards the Syrian refugee crisis, the following section addressing and mapping briefly the EU foreign and security policy in term of its relation with Jordan, the shift in its approach after the 2015 refugee crisis toward its Southern neighboring countries, and its adoption of building resilience as one of its five priorities in its 2016 European Union Global Strategy (EUGS), in comparison with the 2003 European Security Strategy (ESS). Though this shift was not only restricted to Jordan, in particular, but it was extended to be
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a priority of building resilience of the EU as a whole, its states, and the Southern and Eastern neighboring countries.