Editor-in-Chief Latin America
Editor-in-Chief Latin America
Given the increasing frequency and intensity of climate-related disasters, the need for sustainable and humane emergency shelter is more important than ever. However, those that have existed lately are ad hoc, lack physical protection and protection, and leave other displaced people stranded far from their homes. their communities of origin.
According to a recent study, climate change is expected to wipe out some 167 million homes worldwide by 2040. Following historic floods in Pakistan this year, some a million people were forced to flee to camps, and nearly 8 million more have been forced to flee to camps. have been expelled from their homes.
Months later, tens of thousands of flood survivors in Pakistan’s hardest-hit Sindh province remain in tent villages and relief camps. They are not alone: Millions of other people around the world now live in makeshift housing long after disasters.
For example, after an earthquake and floods destroyed a pile of homes in Peru’s Amazon region earlier this year, most families were sent to live in tents. dengue virus. The tents had little security.
“We couldn’t stay in the store. We were afraid. Someone had to stay there with our stuff,” Cleotilde* told The New Humanitarian. After 4 months, the circle of relatives moved into an undeniable bamboo-framed space that she and her husband built not far from the ruins of their old house, a few meters from the overflowing Utcubamba River.
The government said it planned to move families into manufactured homes. But it provided citizens with little information about transitional housing, only to say they would measure five to three meters, too small for families like Cleotilde’s.
Felipe Pérez Detquizán, regional director of Peru’s National Institute of Disaster Attention (Indeci), said families want to “understand that there is a procedure involved in the reaction” and that COVID-19 restrictions are delaying government reactions.
Cleotilde’s new house, built on land belonging to her father-in-law, was, she feared, only a temporary solution. Although they felt more comfortable during the day, the circle of relatives returned to the tents at night, fearing that someone else would wash them away by the flood. “We’re scared here and we don’t feel comfortable,” he said. “But there is no choice. “
Families from the nearby community, Santa Rosa de Pacpa, were also waiting to be relocated; in particular, they were eager to return closer to home, as they had been sent to a camp set up by the regional government in San Luis, about three hours away. Drive away. One way.
When The New Humanitarian visited St. Louis in April, aid staff were conducting a consultation to warn and prepare survivors of gender-based violence, which is normal in displaced communities where transient structures offer little privacy.
They were told they were to be moved imminently to prefabricated houses in an arid domain called El Reposo, an hour north of San Luis camp, far from any service, and even farther from the land they were still seeking to tame near their demolition. Houses: Many returned to Santa Rosa, even though landslides and earthquake damage had made it unsafe to live in.
The Red Cross is the first to provide emergency shelter to other homeless people after mistakes: it provides equipment to repair broken houses or build transitional shelters, and it provides financial assistance so survivors can buy materials or pay rent to live with a host.
Ela Serdaroglu, head of shelters at the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), explained why emergency shelter is so vital. “This is vital not only after a disaster, but also to repair the dignity of communities. and build their resilience to long-term impacts and dangers,” he told The New Humanitarian.
The UN refugee agency, UNHCR, is leading the shelter reaction for refugees and other internally displaced people as a result of the conflict, specifically in Africa, Southeast Asia, the Mediterranean, the Middle East and Latin America. It spends about $970 million a year on shelters, whether tents or rental cash, for about 600,000 more people.
UNHCR money can also be used to repair homes and buy non-food items such as solar lamps, mats and blankets. The company buys between 70,000 and 100,000 tents a year, while maintaining inventory to accommodate a million more people at the event. of a primary emergency.
For years, the aid sector has tried to move away from relying on tent camps as an option of last resort. Francesca Coloni, UNHCR’s chief technical officer in its resilience and response division, said two-thirds of IDPs and refugees live outdoors in camps. .
The company needs as many other people as possible in tent camps to be moved to housing that is “more sustainable from a perspective of local progress,” he said, referring to giving survivors a greater ability to reintegrate into local society and economy.
Staying longer in tents, which cost $400 to replace, can also be expensive, especially in difficult situations like deserts, where wear and tear is greatest, according to Coloni.
And displacement can go on for decades. On average, it is 20 years for refugees and more than 10 years for internally displaced persons (IDPs).
In such cases, Coloni said, UNHCR defends the property rights of refugees and other displaced people who are unable to return home. ,” she said.
Most aid teams agree that while tents are far from ideal, they have several attributes that make them a must-have form of shelter in the event of a crisis: they remain reasonable and easy to store, transport and assemble on suitable racks. terrain.
However, in recent years, housing planners and architects have come up with designs that can better reflect the wishes of displaced people, adding in urban areas. One of the proposed answers is IKEA’s compacted refugee housing, which is considered much more durable. than tents. However, burden is a factor with those alternatives.
“It’s a solution, less an emergency solution and more transitory,” Coloni said of the RHU, which UNHCR has deployed in Iraq, Ethiopia and the Greek island of Lesvos.
Michael Hopper, a professor of plan-making at the University of British Columbia, said the very concept of standardized shelters can defeat the purpose of helping others in a disaster.
“The only position where you can meet those criteria is in a flat, well-drained site, with little to do, wide open and on the perimeter of a city, where there are few social networks, relatively little infrastructure and [few] tasks opportunities. Then you end up abandoning the other people who have been willing,” he said.
Working with student Martha Pym, Hooper looked for opportunities in Haiti and added two-story shelters that can be set up in smaller spaces closer to city centers. They were told.
“Agencies are so overloaded, which is why shelters move to the perimeter, but also why inventions at first glance are difficult to implement,” Hooper said.
Barrett Ristroph, a planner who has researched the resettlement of displaced indigenous communities in Alaska and Louisiana in the United States, agreed that finding answers can be tricky.
“We are already dealing with communities that have experienced social trauma,” he said. “Often there is no transparent consensus on the network about what they want. “
For survivors of the crisis in the Peruvian Amazon, as in so many other parts of the world, the truth is that neither investment nor practical responses are in a position to find a good enough shelter or resettle when they want it most.
After 97 of the 159 families living in tents in San Luis were moved to even more remote prefabricated sets last August, the Peruvian government told all the other displaced people in the territory that it no longer had the budget to supply temporary housing. Instead, starting in December, they would get 500 soles ($125) a month in rental assistance. This included Cleotilde and her family, who were told to move to a safer flat and start over.
*For security reasons, we publish Cleotilde’s first name.
Save the Children transportation for reporting in Peru and coordinating interviews with affected families.
Edited by Cristian Salazar.
Hundreds of thousands of readers take for granted with The New Humanitarian each month for quality journalism that contributes more effective, accountable and inclusive tactics to improve the lives of others affected by crises.
Our award-winning stories tell policymakers and humanitarian workers, demand accountability and transparency from recipients to those in need, and provide a platform for verbal exchange and discussion with and among the affected and marginalized.
We can continue to do so thanks to the help of our donors and readers like you, who are at the strength of independent journalism. These contributions help keep our journalism loose and available to everyone.
Show your measure as we build the long-term media through the onboarding of a member of The New Humanitarian.