Charles Parrack presents shelter research at Global Shelter Cluster

At the Global Shelter Cluster annual conference in Geneva on 3-4 October Charles Parrack presented the chapter he co-authored with Professor Ian Davis on ‘The Long View of Shelter’, reviewing progress and changes in the shelter sector over the past 40 years. The chapter also discusses how lessons can be learned from disaster response from as long ago as the Lisbon earthquake in 1755, as well as more recent disasters such as the Haiti earthquake of 2010. The chapter is part of the inaugural publication of the State of Humanitarian Shelter and Settlements.

One of the main findings when reviewing shelter responses was that a separation continues to exist between emergency shelter response and permanent housing development. This reflects the division between the humanitarian sector, which focuses on short-term disaster relief, and the development sector, which works towards long-term recovery. Although efforts are under way to close this well-recognized gap, through initiatives such as the World Humanitarian Summit ‘Humanitarian - Development Nexus’ and the rise in prominence of the concept of resilience, progress remains slow.

Few humanitarian agencies possess an in-house technical capacity to create dwellings, or desire to become involved in permanent shelter and settlement, due largely to their restricted operational mandate, and time and financial constraints. For surviving households, the sheltering process from immediate protection to permanent housing is a continuous one. But for supporting agencies the process is usually fragmented into discrete phases (relief, recovery, reconstruction) due to budgets, capacities and timeframes. This fragmentation ultimately undermines longer-term recovery.

The consequences of shelter assistance are long lasting: settlements become housing, camps become temporary cities. The responses to some of the most significant disasters in history not only determined subsequent development patterns for the cities affected, but led to changes and developments that continue to influence housing and city design around the globe today. The 1666 Great Fire of London led to the first building regulations, while the 1755 Lisbon earthquake resulted in the world’s first urban plan designed to reduce the risks posed by earthquakes, tsunamis and urban fires.

Despite a wealth of evaluations, there has been little long term assessment of the harms and benefits of more recent shelter responses. The chapter calls for more initiatives in this area.

Disasters journal 40th anniversary conference

Disasters journal has been providing a rigorous analysis of relief work for 40 years and has been instrumental in changing attitudes to disasters and their response, based on good evidence and research. Charles Parrack represented CENDEP at the journal's prestigious 40th anniversary conference and writes that it was great to see former CENDEP staff and associates presenting:

Professor Ian Davis at the Disasters conference

CENDEP visiting professor Ian Davis gave the keynote address. Ian published a paper in the first issue of Disasters and is still writing and publishing on shelter after disaster today. Ian also continues to teach at CENDEP in the Shelter after Disaster module.

John Twigg, CENDEP external examiner, is currently one of the editors of Disasters, and chaired a panel discussion on what has changed in policy and practice of disaster risk management.

Dr Hugo Slim, former CENDEP director, now Head of Policy and Humanitarian Diplomacy at the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Geneva, presented on the policy landscape in conflict.

Yasemin Aysan presented on the development of humanitarian practice. Yasemin was formerly director of the Oxford Disaster Management Centre (a precursor to CENDEP). She went on to join the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) and became Under Secretary General for Disaster Response and Recovery.

Ian Davis reviewed what had changed in 40 years of disasters. He mentioned that urbanisation is colossal and the large numbers of migrants are contributing to the complexity and scale of disasters. Climate change has had a significant influence. Mobile phones have had a significant impact in less developed countries in tracking people and providing warnings of impending disasters, which has contributed to significantly fewer deaths from tropical storms in South Asia. Mega events are more common, even in developed countries such as Japan and the USA.

Ian commented on how some concepts and the words we use to describe them have changed over 40 years. Disaster prevention was a term that was first used in discussing disaster response, then mitigation and then disaster risk reduction, then adaptation. Now the discussion is more framed in terms of resilience, a term taken from the engineering sector, which is useful because it can mean different things to different groups. Even this concept of resilience is under discussion with commentators now talking about  'building a safety culture'.

There is still much donor-driven work in housing, which is poured into areas of emergency shelter and transitional housing, but little focus is placed on the important aspect of permanent housing. Urban risk is growing at a phenomenal rate and it is a complex area. Cultural barriers to progress remain an issue.

Yasemin Aysan discussed pilot work and how there are great pilots that are not scaled up. In disaster risk reduction work there is only a short time scale, of 3-4 years, but building up institutions to have the capacity to scale up these initiatives would take a much longer time, more related to developmental approaches.

Hugo Slim reflected that Disasters journal had a great influence on conflict studies, placing a much greater emphasis on conflict economy and conflict analysis. One of the changes Hugo has seen over time is how the humanitarian community of practice has embraced rights-based programmes and protection approaches. The second change is the politicisation of humanitarian action and the affected population. In terms of ICRC, the change Hugo has seen is the rise of urban warfare and there is much work to be done on urban protection and rights in conflict. Hugo concluded by saying that recent research has been more biased towards political theorists, and he would like to see more of an emphasis on research practice-oriented issues.