The modern architecture of international humanitarian assistance has established a template of provisioning for refugees fleeing armed conflict which is based on notions of encampment and vulnerability. The narrowness of that assistance framework coupled with an unsustainable policy of regional containment have created greater poverty and misery for Syrians fleeing the armed conflict in their country. How this has been allowed to happen on the eastern shores of the Mediterranean Sea – where extraordinary social linkages and networks have existed for centuries – lies mainly in the disparities between perceptions, aspirations and behaviour among refugees, practitioners and policy makers in Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey.