Stimulating resilience for recovery: building adaptive resilience in emergency WASH response in Haiti, the Philippines and Lebanon

Recovery deficits are often witnessed within disaster-affected societies following post-disaster interventions. Humanitarian operations have struggled to find coherence between relief and recovery activities, which has resulted in a perceived operational ‘gap’ between relief, recovery and development. Building individual/household resilience within the humanitarian sphere has been theoretically posed to be fundamental for recovery; a programmatic consideration that could ensure former weak resilience would not hinder post-disaster recovery. Therefore, could a resilience building approach offer much needed solutions to the challenge of recovery within post-disaster contexts? This paper will present findings from recent doctoral research undertaken in the 2010 Haiti earthquake response, as well as presenting case study evidence from the 2013 post-disaster responses in the Philippines and the Syrian response in Lebanon. The paper will look specifically at the common barriers to recovery experienced by individuals/ households in a crisis event, understanding how emergency response operations within the WASH sector affects recovery, individual/ household resilience within the post-disaster environment will be detailed, gauging its relevance for stimulating recovery; giving case study examples of how in practice resilience at the individual/ household level can be operationalised in emergency response programming.