Refugee shelter

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Refugee shelters are structures ranging from the most temporary tent accommodation through transitional shelter to building temporary pics and settlements and include the most basic kind of ad hoc structure. They are created in the aftermath of a conflict or natural disaster as a temporary residence for victims who have lost or abandoned their homes. Refugees and IDPs are people fleeing their homes or countries of origin due to natural disasters, war and political or religious persecution in search of refuge and resettlement. Living in these shelters refugees may force marriage crowded, noisy, dirty, disease filled grounds where thousands of families are cramped together and surviving day by day. [1]

Contents

Nyanzale camp, DR Congo Nyanzale camp Congo.jpeg
Nyanzale camp, DR Congo

Refugees and IDPs can often be found living in refugee camps or IDP camps and in these shelters for upwards of a decade. Design models, disaster-relief programs, and land tenure issues play a large role in the progression of recovery and categorization of settlements as temporary.

Aims

The design of temporary houses is especially important as these are the first spaces that provide a degree of normality after the disaster. Temporary housing is initially modeled only to account for vital and functional needs of victims during the period of resettlement. Agencies design their models with the premise of meeting the individuals’ basic needs in addition to creating awareness regarding the need for a “home” instead of merely a shelter after a forced resettlement. [2] After disasters, since people suffer a complete break in the social, economic, and physical aspects of life, there is an urgent need for protection and shelter. [3] Temporary housing with minimum living conditions are almost always limited and loosely involve spaces to live, sleep and socialize as well as areas for food preparation, personal hygiene, and privacy. The basic stages and design of a post-disaster environment aim to create an ideal situation including temporary housing that is practical, aids in psychological recovery, and is environmentally sensitive.

Bamboo and thatch houses built by refugees in Nong Samet Refugee Camp on the Thai-Cambodian border, May 1984 Houses in Nong Samet.jpg
Bamboo and thatch houses built by refugees in Nong Samet Refugee Camp on the Thai-Cambodian border, May 1984

Living conditions

Disasters, particularly those triggered by nature, are often followed by a swift humanitarian relief response. Emergency humanitarian relief focuses on responding to the immediate need for restoration of basic services, medical treatment and medical supplies, food, and temporary shelter; and is a short-term, strenuous and often improvised effort. Unlike most normal construction projects, post-disaster housing projects are diverse in nature, have unique socio-cultural and economical requirements and are extremely dynamic. Due to the immediate need of resources, shelter, and medical services created by disaster or conflict, a quick, affordable, and available solution in the form of tents is usually implemented. The aim of refugee shelter is to protect families from outside dangers and create spaces inside to protect their privacy and bring back feelings of security.

Tents

For the majority of refugee and IDP populations under direct aid via government or humanitarian relief groups, camps of thousands live in small scout-style tents. [4] These emergency shelters consist of unplanned and spontaneously sought locations that are intended only to provide protection from the elements and typically constructed in large open areas. Simple tent structures, grouped together to form a "tent city", are commonly made of canvas military issue tents which are criticized for being heavy, bulky, uninsulated, poorly made and for rotting in under a year. [5] Extensive issues – e.g. they soon become crowded, uncomfortable, and unsafe – have been encountered in refugee camps throughout the world.

Shelter from tarp and sticks Shelter from tarp and sticks.jpg
Shelter from tarp and sticks

Secondary disaster

Temporary housing situations often lack several qualities of homes that are significant at this stage for victims, such as windows, warmth, color, space, and security. [6] The problem of noise also contributes negatively to the privacy of the residents of temporary houses. Sounds of crying people after an earthquake or other disaster are chronic in neighboring houses. Additional damage is caused by rain, leading to floods, and gas leaks which often create fires. In these secondary disasters, temporary housing units frequently become dysfunctional, and the disaster-victims become homeless once again. [7] Other problems have been described as such: lack of privacy, lack of private life; lack of space; all family members forced to sleep in the same space; lack of opportunity to consider feelings of others, including fear, sadness and grief; weather conditions; disease-ridden; the presence of public toilets and their sanitation; considerations of hygiene; toilets constantly being blocked; lack of water, including for laundry and dish-washing; heating, cooling, electricity problems; humidity; leakage of rain water into the housing space; the presence of insects; lack of windows; lack of sunlight in the houses; transportation to and from the housing location; difficulty of obtaining food; and insufficient quantity of shelters. [2] All this can be perceived, by the victims, as secondary disaster. A quote from a journalist recording the daily lives of refugees in Palestine expresses her feelings after visiting a camp for the first time:

"Entering the refugee camp, I feel I am entering some medieval ghetto. I walk along a narrow alleyway, skirting an open sewage ditch. I pass tens of dozens of one and two-room houses, each leaning on the other for support. I am in a ghetto without streets, sidewalks, gardens, patios, trees, flowers, plazas, or shops—among an uprooted, stateless, scattered people who, like the Jews before them, are in a tragic diaspora. I pass scores of small children, the third generation of Palestinians born in the ghetto that has almost as long a history as the state of Israel itself. Someone has said that for every Jew who was brought in to create a new state, a Palestinian Arab was uprooted and left homeless." [8]
Rwandan refugee camp in east Zaire Rwandan refugee camp in east Zaire.jpg
Rwandan refugee camp in east Zaire

Design considerations

When considering emergency, temporary, housing the following revolve around the success of such shelter and relief efforts: [9]

The questions presented above are often incompletely answered and accounted for when preparing for a post-disaster settlement.

User involvement

Since the most effective relief and reconstruction policies result from the participation of survivors in determining and planning their own needs, the successful performance of assisting groups is dependent on the accountability to appeal to and include local aid. Psychologists and humanitarian groups suggest that it is advantageous for both individual and community participation in the financing of their own shelter programs, especially permanent reconstruction. Incorporation of potential users not only with regard to having a say in the shelter, but also in the design, planning and constructing of the shelters has been shown to contribute to pain relief and suffering. [10] Architects and psychologists have been in collaboration to construct design models that are holistic and functional, providing for both the most basic, physical needs as well as the psychological expectations from a post-disaster reality.

Roles and responsibilities

In some cases, the entire burden of assistance and relief is placed on the national government, whereas in others, responsibility is varied across multiple levels of government and outside aid. Reconstruction is closely linked to land tenure, government policy, and all aspects of land-use and infrastructure planning. Resource management and availability is always a consistent issue in emergency recovery however there has been success when relief is found as locally as possible. [5]

Refugee camp, Chad Refugee camp Chad.jpg
Refugee camp, Chad

The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees or UNHCR, is a United Nations agency that protects and supports refugees. [1] When the UNHCR was first established, material aspects of refugee relief (e.g., housing, food) were seen to be the responsibility of the hosting government. As many of the world's more recent major refugee communities have occurred in less developed countries, the UNHCR has acquired the additional role of coordinating material assistance for refugees and returnees. Although this was not UNHCR's original mandate, coordination of material assistance has become one of its principal functions alongside protection and the promotion of solutions. [11]

Innovative practices

There are scores of innovative approaches to constructing temporary shelters, but few make it to the field. Architect Shigeru Ban has designed temporary and permanent structures with paper tubes as the underlying structure, used after the Kobe earthquake. Cal-Earth Institute has also developed "superadobe" which makes use of sandbags and barbed wire to form an emergency shelter for disaster relief.

Shigeru Ban is a Japanese architect famous for innovation with recycled paper/cardboard and has quickly and effectively housed disaster victims. He began working with cardboard tubing in cooperation with the UNHCR during the humanitarian crisis of war-torn Rwanda in 1994. Designed for easy construction by an unskilled labor force, each barn-shaped unit consists of a paper tube frame covered with plastic tarps. Polyurethane-coated cylinders are linked together with plywood joints and rope, resulting in a very stable, waterproof structure that maximizes internal space. Sand filled crates acts as a platform and floor for the shelters and protects from floods, rain, and snow. The paper is low cost low tech, recyclable, and replaceable. As designed the shelters take less than six hours to construct.

In addition, the social enterprise Better Shelter and the UNHCR have developed a modular refugee shelter in collaboration with the IKEA Foundation (philanthropic arm of a large furniture company notable for its user-friendly setup and mass production). These models include light-weight polymer panels attached to a steel frame. They take only about four hours to assemble and come flat-packed with panels, pipes, connectors, and wires, with a solar-powered LED light inside with a USB outlet.

Despite numerous attempts — Shigeru Ban's cardboard houses, the Better Shelter flat-pack shelter, the superadobe, and more — designing the appropriate shelter that encompasses all the necessary characteristics for refugees continues to be an ongoing process involving architects and psychologists alike. [11]

Related Research Articles

United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees United Nations agency mandated to protect and support refugees

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is a United Nations agency mandated to aid and protect refugees, forcibly displaced communities, and stateless people, and to assist in their voluntary repatriation, local integration or resettlement to a third country. It is headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, with over 17,300 staff working in 135 countries.

Internally displaced person Person forced to leave their home who remains within their country

An internally displaced person (IDP) is someone who is forced to leave their home but who remains within their country's borders. They are often referred to as refugees, although they do not fall within the legal definitions of a refugee.

Refugee camp Temporary settlement for refugees

A refugee camp is a temporary settlement built to receive refugees and people in refugee-like situations. Refugee camps usually accommodate displaced people who have fled their home country, but camps are also made for internally displaced people. Usually, refugees seek asylum after they have escaped war in their home countries, but some camps also house environmental and economic migrants. Camps with over a hundred thousand people are common, but as of 2012, the average-sized camp housed around 11,400. They are usually built and run by a government, the United Nations, international organizations, or non-governmental organization. Unofficial refugee camps, such as Idomeni in Greece or the Calais jungle in France, are where refugees are largely left without support of governments or international organizations.

Emergency shelter Type of temporary shelter

An emergency shelter is a place for people to live temporarily when they cannot live in their previous residence, similar to homeless shelters. The main difference is that an emergency shelter typically specializes in people fleeing a specific type of situation, such as natural or man-made disasters, domestic violence, or victims of sexual abuse. A more minor difference is that people staying in emergency shelters are more likely to stay all day, except for work, school, or errands, while homeless shelters usually expect people to stay elsewhere during the day, returning only to sleep or eat. Emergency shelters sometimes facilitate support groups, and/or provide meals.

Shigeru Ban Japanese architect

Shigeru Ban is a Japanese architect, known for his innovative work with paper, particularly recycled cardboard tubes used to quickly and efficiently house disaster victims. Many of his notable designs are structures which are temporary, prefabricated, or incorporate inexpensive and unconventional materials in innovative ways. He was profiled by Time magazine in their projection of 21st-century innovators in the field of architecture and design.

Frederick C. Cuny was an American humanitarian whose work spanned disaster relief, refugee emergency management, recovery from war and civil conflict as well as disaster and emergency preparedness, mitigation and peacebuilding. He was first and foremost a practitioner, but also a prolific author, an educator and a field-based researcher. He has been described as “a great American – a sort of universal Schindler, a man with lists of millions of people in Asia, Africa, Latin America and Europe whose lives he succored or saved.” Another tribute to Cuny claimed that he “was one of the world’s most accomplished disaster relief experts, both a pioneer and an iconoclast in the field of international humanitarian aid.”

Medair Natural disaiser aid organization

Medair is an international non-governmental organisation (INGO) whose purpose is to relieve human suffering in some of the world's most remote and devastated places. Medair aims to assist people affected by natural disasters and conflict to recover with dignity through the delivery of quality humanitarian aid.

Transitional shelter

Transitional shelter is any of a range of shelter options that help people affected by conflict or natural disasters who have lost or abandoned their housing until they can return to or recover acceptable permanent accommodation. The term refers to an incremental process rather than a product, in which a shelter can be:

  1. upgraded into part of a permanent house;
  2. reused for another purpose;
  3. relocated from a temporary site to a permanent location;
  4. resold, to generate income to aid with recovery; and
  5. recycled for reconstruction.
Norwegian Refugee Council

The Norwegian Refugee Council is a humanitarian, non-governmental organisation that protects the rights of people affected by displacement. This includes refugees and internally displaced persons who are forced to flee their homes as a result of conflict, human rights violations and acute violence, as well as climate change and natural disasters.

Nader Khalili was an Iranian architect. He is best known for his inventive structures that incorporated a range of atypical building materials to provide shelter in the developing world and emergency contexts.

MERCY Malaysia or Malaysian Medical Relief Society is a non-profit organisation focusing on providing medical relief, sustainable health related development and risk reduction activities for vulnerable communities in both crisis and non-crisis situations. As a non-profit organisation, MERCY Malaysia relies solely on funding and donations from organisations and generous individuals to continue their services to provide humanitarian assistance to beneficiaries, both in Malaysia and internationally. The organisation is a registered society according to the Societies Act 1966 in Malaysia, and the headquarters is in the capital city of Kuala Lumpur.

National Disaster Management Organization Government agency in Ghana

The National Disaster Management Organisation (NADMO) is the government agency that is responsible for the management of disasters as well as other emergencies in Ghana. The board operates under Ghana's Ministry of Interior.

INTERSOS is a non-profit humanitarian aid organization that works to assist victims of natural disaster and armed conflict. INTERSOS has operated as an independent organization since its foundation in 1992. A Mine Action Unit was established within INTERSOS to deal specifically with the mine danger and its effects through mine awareness, victims assistance and mine clearance operations.

Africa Humanitarian Action is a non-governmental organization that provides relief services to countries in Africa. It was founded by Dr. David Zawde in 1994 in response to the Rwandan genocide.

Relief International is a humanitarian non-profit agency that provides emergency relief, economic rehabilitation, development assistance, and programme services to vulnerable communities worldwide. Relief International UK is non-political and non-sectarian in its mission. It is based in Washington, D.C. and in London.

Qatar Charity

Once known as Qatar Charitable Society, Qatar Charity is a humanitarian and development non-governmental organization in the Middle East. It was founded in 1992 in response to the thousands of children who were made orphans by the Afghanistan war and while orphans still remain a priority cause in the organization's work with more than 150,000 sponsored orphans, it has now expanded its fields of action to include six humanitarian fields and seven development fields.

Syrian refugee camps

Syrian refugee camp and shelters are temporary settlements built to receive internally displaced people and refugees of the Syrian Civil War. Of the estimated 7 million persons displaced within Syria, only a small minority live in camps or collective shelters. Similarly, of the 8 million refugees, only about 10 percent live in refugee camps, with the vast majority living in both urban and rural areas of neighboring countries. Beside Syrians, they include Iraqis, Palestinians, Kurds, Yazidis, individuals from Somalia, and a minority of those who fled the Yemeni and Sudanese civil wars.

Mercy Relief is a non-governmental humanitarian organization in Singapore. The organization was officially launched in 2003, by the then-Deputy Prime Minister of Singapore, Mr Lee Hsien Loong, it seeks to promote a life of compassion, care and volunteerism.

Al-Khair Foundation (AKF) is an international Muslim aid NGO based in the United Kingdom, and is the third largest Muslim charity in the UK. It was established in 2003, and aims to deliver aid to the poor and vulnerable, as well as education for the Muslim community. It specialises in humanitarian support, international development, emergency aid and disaster relief in some of the world's most deprived areas.

Emergency sanitation Management and technical processes required to provide sanitation in emergency situations

Emergency sanitation is the management and technical processes required to provide sanitation in emergency situations. Emergency sanitation is required during humanitarian relief operations for refugees, people affected by natural disasters and internally displaced persons. There are three phases of emergency response: Immediate, short term and long term. In the immediate phase, the focus is on managing open defecation, and toilet technologies might include very basic latrines, pit latrines, bucket toilets, container-based toilets, chemical toilets. The short term phase might also involve technologies such as urine-diverting dry toilets, septic tanks, decentralized wastewater systems. Providing handwashing facilities and management of fecal sludge are also part of emergency sanitation.

References

  1. 1 2 UNHCR: The UN Refugee Agency." UNHCR News. N.p., n.d. Web. 13 Nov. 2013. <http://www.unhcr.org/cgi-bin/texis/vtx/home>.
  2. 1 2 Yuksel, B. and Hasirci D. "An Analysis of Physical and Psychological Expectations of Earthquake Victims from Temporary Shelters: A Design Proposal." METU JFA 29 (2012): 225–40.
  3. ↑ Yuksel, B. and Hasirci D. "An Analysis of Physical and Psychological Expectations of Earthquake Victims from Temporary Shelters: A Design Proposal." METU JFA 29 (2012): 225–40
  4. ↑ Al-Khatib, Issam A., and Ahmad Ju'ba. "Impact of Housing Conditions on the Health of the People at Al-Ama'ri Refugee Camp in the West Bank of Palestine."International Journal of Environmental Health Research 13.4 (2003): 315–26. Print.
  5. 1 2 Murphy, Denis, and David Ndegwa. "Mental Health of Refugees in Inner-London."Psychiatric Bulletin 26.6 (2002): n. pag. Print.
  6. ↑ Evans & Wells, 2003, p485
  7. ↑ Rueff, H., and A. Viaro. "Palestinian Refugee Camps: From Shelter to Habitat." Refugee Survey Quarterly 28.2–3 (2010): 339–59
  8. ↑ Halsell, Grace. Journey to Jerusalem. New York: Macmillan, 1999. Print.
  9. ↑ Wardak, Zabihullah S. "Rebuilding Housing after a Disaster: Factors for Failure." (2012): 292–99.
  10. ↑ Wardak, Zabihullah S. "Rebuilding Housing after a Disaster: Factors for Failure." (2012): 292–99.
  11. 1 2 Arslan, Hakan; Ünlü, Alper (2008). "The Role of NGO's in the Context of Post-Disaster Housing in Turkey" (PDF). humanitarianlibrary.org. i-Rec 2008.

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