Shelter in displacement (Forced Migration Review 55‪)‬ Oxford University

Flooding in 2010 affected 18 million people in Pakistan. With declining donor funds and flooding again in 2011 and 2012, the humanitarian community required low-cost solutions that could be scaled up.

All displaced people need some form of shelter, and circumstances dictate that in reality not much of it conforms to the typical picture of a tent or tarpaulin nor meets official standards.

We need to develop refugee settlement planning processes that not only facilitate long-term planning but also allow for incremental upgrading. The case of M’Bera in Mauritania illustrates this.

Current humanitarian guidelines do not sufficiently cover what shelter means in volatile and protracted conflict settings, particularly outside organised camps. We propose improved tools that will address that gap.

When challenged to investigate accommodation options for refugees in their city, architecture students found that there are simple and plausible architectural answers for the integration of refugees in medium-sized European cities such as A Coruña.

Most families recovering from the catastrophe of a disaster rebuild their own homes. This practice of self-recovery by non-displaced communities has potential for displaced populations too.