Executive Summary
This report presents the findings of the second workshop of the Beyond Borders, Beyond Crisis (BBBC) Initiative: Reimagining Humanitarian Responses to Displacement Under Siege in the WANA Region. Convened in May 2026 under Chatham House Rules, the workshop brought together researchers, humanitarian practitioners, policy specialists, and regional experts to examine the implications of the US/Israeli war on Iran and its wider regional reverberations for populations living under conditions of siege across Gaza, Lebanon, Yemen, Sudan, and Syria.
Building on the findings of the first BBBC report, Humanitarian Access and Protection Under Siege (Fiddian-Qasmiyeh 2026), this report argues that recent developments should not be understood as a rupture or as an entirely new phase of crisis. Rather, the regional escalation has intensified existing dynamics of displacement, deprivation, restricted mobility, humanitarian constraint, and political marginalisation. The report therefore argues that siege is increasingly operating both through territorial enclosure, and also through interconnected regional systems that shape circulation, mobility, humanitarian access, finance, and governance.
Across the five contexts examined, participants identified three major regional reverberations of the US/Israeli war on Iran. First, humanitarian attention and funding have been diverted away from ongoing crises, further marginalising contexts already experiencing severe humanitarian need. Second, disruptions to airspace, maritime routes, energy systems, and supply chains have increased operational costs and constrained humanitarian action. Third, the normalisation of exceptional security measures has further restricted humanitarian access and reduced opportunities for civilian protection.
The report demonstrates that these developments have contributed to the intensification of physical, political, financial, and operational barriers for people and communities across Gaza, Lebanon, Yemen, Sudan, and Syria to access and receive international support, protection and engagement. While these effects manifest differently in each context, they collectively point to the emergence of an interconnected polycrisis environment in which pressures across logistics, finance, energy systems, food production, displacement, and governance reinforce one another. Humanitarian crises are therefore becoming more interconnected, more prolonged, and increasingly shaped by processes operating across regional and global scales.
The report also identifies significant transformations within humanitarian practice itself. Humanitarian organisations are operating under conditions characterised by restricted access, financial uncertainty, shrinking civic space, and heightened political pressure. Adaptations including remote management, localisation, flexible delivery models, and regionalised procurement systems have become more common. However, the report argues that adaptation should not be mistaken for transformation. Many of these developments enable humanitarian actors to continue operating under conditions of siege while leaving the structures that produce those conditions fundamentally intact.
The workshop further identified a deepening crisis of humanitarian financing, accountability, and legitimacy. Funding reductions, shifting donor priorities, and intensified competition are contributing to increasingly uneven humanitarian responses. The report argues that humanitarian financing should be understood as a question of resources, but also as a mechanism through which visibility, legitimacy, and access to assistance are distributed across crises. It also identifies growing concerns regarding the erosion of accountability mechanisms, the selective enforcement of international legal frameworks, and the limited capacity of existing institutions to provide effective protection or justice. Under conditions of regionalised siege, accountability itself becomes unevenly accessible, with opportunities to seek redress, influence decision-making, and secure protection distributed unequally across populations and contexts.