Charles Parrack Addresses UNHCR on Shelter in Conflict

Charles Parrack addressed a side event 68^th Meeting of the Standing Committee, 15 March 2017 The Title of the session was Nobody Left Outside: Shelter as a Catalyst for Recovery, Development, and Protection. 

I will describe three ways in which shelter acts as a link between immediate humanitarian response and longer term effects.

First: Shelter is linked to protection

Protection can be strengthened or weakened by decisions made about physical characteristics of an intervention. Locations for shelter are considered in terms of the threat of physical attacks, threats to safety or environmentally unsuitable areas.

In addition it is essential to understand statutory, legislative and customary access rights to land, water and other natural resources as well as inheritance rights. This will reduce the risk of conflict erupting due to issues of shelter location.

The link to conflict is made and that is my second point.

A crucial element of the relationship between conflict and shelter is the contestation of space related to land ownership and access to land resources - often root causes of the conflict. Interventions related to access and use of land will be embedded in the conflict, highly politicised and putting humanitarian principles at stake. ‘Domicide’ - the planned and deliberate destruction of homes is an instrument of war, causing displacement in an attempt to control populations and affecting the ways in which sheltering may take place during conflict. Similarly, destruction of cities or land, evidence the political nature of shelter in conflict.

In conflict, the traditional division between relief, recovery and development does not work. Indeed the humanitarian- and emergency phase may last a long time with lapses and relapses of violence and insecurity forcing populations to keep moving or stressing the need for protection over material deliveries. After a ceasefire or a peace agreement, reconstruction only works if it is linked to stabilisation and recovery.

Whatever shelter strategies are implemented, there will be a significant impacts on conflict, either by fuelling conflict or to be a driver for conflict transformation by creating dialogue in daily practices. Research on urban violence shows that interventions on space and rehabilitation of public spaces in particular, when conceived as an integral urban project aiming for social change and development, becomes the main driver for reducing urban violence.

Which brings me to my third point

 Shelter is linked to cities.

The majority of the world’s population now live now in cities, a movement which increases, and as noted by Habitat 3, urbanisation will be one of the 21^st century’s most transformative trends. Cities will continue to be a location of conflict, and a key destination in displacement. Shelter strategies are evolving to deal with this complex and multi-layered environment.

We need different ways of thinking about how to work in cities, and one productive approach is Systems thinking which focuses on the interconnections and interrelationships between different parts of a system, not just the elements themselves. It recognises uncertainty and complexity and works with change and resilience.

There are many developmental linkages through working in cities. Habitiat 3 and its rights based approach links the humanitarian and development agendas, as well as sustainable development goal 11 sustainable cities and communities.

To conclude: What does this mean in practice?

I am an academic, and I work alongside operational agencies in the Global Shelter Cluster to develop shelter policy.

A humanitarian programme has unrivalled access to information in a crisis. There is a significant opportunity to gather and analyse this information in order to contribute to evidence based policy and advocacy, which is too often not taken. This is understandable, of course, due to the ongoing pressure of operating in a crisis, but research capacity needs to be strengthened in these challenging contexts.

A final word about people, the people who we will need to involve in these challenges. My centre is located in a school of Architecture. It is one of my goals to see global issues of migration and displacement disseminated through architectural and built environment courses in order to provide meaningful dialogue with the future expert practitioners in complex environments. 

Transforming conflict through mitigating climate change: DEP field trip to Colombia

Fatma Ozdogan and Corinna Vulpiani (DEP 2016-17) write:

In January 2017, six students from the Masters programme on Development and Emergency Practice travelled to Colombia with Dr Brigitte Piquard as part of a project started by CENDEP three years ago: the observatory of Symbolic Violence. The research theme was around resilience to conflict in different local communities. This year the focus was also on climate change and resilience. The aim was to analyse the similarities of resilience to conflict and climate change.

Fifteen days of field research in the municipalities of Trujillo, Bajo Calima, and La Rivera allowed the group to analyse the communities’ strategies for adapting to conflict and climate change. In each locality we held discussions with farmers, teachers and community leaders, human rights defenders. We asked about the effects of conflict and physical and especially psychological coping strategies, as well as the impact of climate change.

All the way through this field research, the group observed the relation between a well-organized community and resilience. Even in the rural areas that have been highly affected by climate change and conflict, communities adapt to these challenges by standing together. Despite the conflict causing large scale loss of life for years, the peace process in Colombia creates hope.

At the end of the trip, the group shared their outcomes with FECOOP (Foundation for Cooperative Education, the NGO that is CENDEP’s partner). Following the field research, the studies continue in Oxford.  

After more than 50 years of conflict, peace was long awaited and desired in Colombia. There is still a long way to go before lasting peace can be realized. However, visiting Colombia in the beginning of this peace process was a great opportunity for us. Understanding the dynamics of the peace, the reflections of the community and talking about 'peace' instead of conflict allowed us to contextualize and apply what we spent the semester studying and to understand deeply the complicated and fragile reality of a civil war-torn country such as Colombia.

On the other hand, Colombia is facing not only the effects of years of political disorder and violence but, especially in rural areas, has also been affected by the growing impact of climate change. Indeed, because of the combination of those two factors, the country maintains the second highest record in the world for the number of internally displaced persons. For all these reasons, we aimed to analyse and understand the phenomenon of resilience to climate change and conflict thanks to several interviews with local actors and activists and especially through the collaboration with FECOOP, whose work is focused on education and development. Their main aim is to increase the quality of education, providing alternative activities for future generations and creating awareness in the rural areas.

What emerged the most from interviewing the youngest in the villages is the lack of recreation and activities for young people who are in search of a better future far from the fields where the previous generations built their lives. Eager to keep up with the times and to become economically independent, they end up succumbing to the allure of the crime, and consequently fuelling the conflict.

As a result of climate change, livelihoods are changing, deforestation and urbanization are increasing and more people are left vulnerable because of issues such as food supply, water management, job security and lack of education. After the peace agreement, Colombia is trying to move forward from the violence, stigmatization and stereotyped vision that the world has of the country. The country has huge potential to do so although there are still massive internal problems that need to be addressed. The diversity of Colombia’s cultures and geography, such as the indigenous or urbanized Andean Highlands, the Afro-Colombian Caribbean costs and the Pacific lowlands or the Amazon Rainforest region, presents a variety of traditions, lifestyles, languages, and knowledge, which complicates finding answers to these problems.

The fieldwork of this course opened our eyes to how difficult yet necessary the process is to overcome a dark history and heritage of conflict in such a fragile state.  We will take with us many skills and experiences, learning how to transform a state of conflict through mitigating climate change and adapting to a new environment.

CENDEP Open House

Cathrine Brun writes:

On 14 March 2017, the Centre for Development and Emergency Practice welcomes everyone who wants to learn more about our work and meet staff and students to join us for CENDEP Open House. The event takes place in the Atrium of the Abercrombie building at Oxford Brookes Headington Campus from 2.30 pm till 5.30pm. CENDEP Open House coincides with the opening of the Oxford Human Rights Festival, which is run by our masters students in Development and Emergency Practice together with students from International Relations, Film Studies, and Business and Marketing Management.

The programme for CENDEP Open House is:

2.30 – 3.30: Presentations on CENDEP’s work: our research, masters programmes and other activities

3.30 – 4.30: Informal mingling to meet staff and students around posters that present our work.

4.30: Presentation on Emergency Shelter exhibit by representative from the organisation Shelterbox (that has kindly lent us a shelter for the festival)

4.30: Joint reception and opening of the Festival, including talks by some of the artists exhibiting their work in the Festival Exhibition

This event concludes with the opening film of the festival, winner of the BAFTA award for best film this year,  I, Daniel Blake directed by Ken Loach. We are very honoured to have Ken Loach with us to discuss the film after the screening.

The Oxford Human Rights Festival has ‘Home’ as its theme this year. ‘Home’ is a topic that brings together much of CENDEP’s research and teaching which concentrates on Shelter after Disaster; Forced migration and Human Rights; Humanitarian Action and Conflict; and Development, Risk and Disasters. Experiences and notions of home are strongest when the home is under threat or lost. Much of CENDEP’s work circles around experiences of loss and uncertainty. Through our work we show the resilience that many people show in adversity. We have conducted research that shows – even in the most difficult of circumstances - how home-making takes place in recovery after disasters and conflicts and during displacement in temporary dwellings such as in refugee camps.

Much of our work concentrate on the Global South, but CENDEP also work on precarious housing and marginalization in our home environment. The film I, Daniel Blake helps us to understand the constraints people may face in their lives when they need to seek assistance. We have shown in our research that the humanitarian system or a social benefits system that many victims of disasters, conflict and poverty have to relate to, may, if not working well and adapting to the local context, prevent you from creating a future for yourself. Consequently, we also work on what humanitarian workers and policy makers do and can do in disaster and conflict settings and for creating social change. If you join us for the CENDEP Open House, you will be able to hear more about our work and see the festival-exhibition on ‘Home’ in the Glass Tank and in the atrium.

We will also present our study programmes: our on-campus, prize winning Masters in Development and Emergency Practice, our newly established online Masters in Humanitarian Action and Peacebuilding  run together with United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR), and our Postgraduate Certificate in Shelter after Disaster, in addition to a presentation about our doctoral studies.

Welcome to Oxford Brookes on 14 March from 2.30 pm.