The closure system in the West Bank refers to a series of restrictions placed by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to control the movement of more than 2.3 million Palestinians living there. The Israeli government states that these closure measures…
It is estimated that the average lifespan of a refugee camp is 17 years, with such settlements developing gradually and usually organically from an emergency camp into what is fundamentally a new town. With this reality in mind, what role…
Humanitarian guidelines and standards for how to work with shelter in displacement have been formulated but in practice are often understood in too general terms and do not always take into account fast-changing and diverse conflict contexts. There is little…
As teachers in a school of architecture, we challenged our students to consider how our city – A Coruña, in north-west Spain – would cope if we had to accommodate a large number of refugees. We all felt that what…
Along with over half a million Filipino families, Erica and John Rey and their twelve children saw their house blown away by Typhoon Haiyan. Two years on, they had designed and rebuilt their house. They received some materials, a small…
The approach of the One Room Shelter Programme that IOM (the UN Migration Agency) Pakistan implemented to meet the recovery needs of affected populations in 2010 marked a move away from the usual emergency response. It favoured vernacular building methods…
The human need to dwell involves a form of feeling 'at home' in inhabiting, even for a short time, a place which we feel belongs to us and in which we belong. This feeling is fractured by displacement. First it…
Over one million refugees and migrants undertook the perilous journey into Europe from early 2015. At the start of this emergency the enormous number of arrivals on the Aegean islands of Lesbos, Chios, Samos, Leros and Kos overwhelmed local municipality…
Our company learnt two things in particular from our first couple of experiences of dealing with shelter in displacement. Firstly, we became aware of the complications that exist around access to decent accommodation, making it inaccessible for much of the…
The Better Shelter or the Refugee Housing Unit (RHU) is a joint project of Swedish social enterprise Better Shelter, UNHCR (the UN Refugee Agency) and the IKEA Foundation. The project, initiated in 2010, was rolled out on a large scale…