The Philippines: Typhoon Haiyan 10 years on

An opportunity to look back at the impact of shelter assistance. 

Typhoon Haiyan in 2013

On 8th November 2013, Typhoon Haiyan, locally known as Yolanda, made landfall in the Philippines. It was the most ferocious storm in recorded history and caused a swathe of destruction through the Visayas region, with wind speeds exceeding 300 km/h. In addition, a tsunami-like storm-surge devastated communities along the eastern seaboards of Leyte and Samar islands, claiming at least 6,300 lives and displacing 4 million people. Hundreds of thousands of families lost their homes and livelihoods. While accustomed to typhoons and floods, the Filipino people struggled to cope with the magnitude of the disaster triggered by this super-typhoon. Tacloban City was one of the worst affected urban areas but countless smaller rural communities were also devastated. To mark the ten-year anniversary of Typhoon Haiyan/Yolanda, it is timely to look back, celebrate people’s efforts to recover, remember the people killed and the enduring trauma of such a momentous event. It is also an opportunity to reflect on the ways that academic research and humanitarian practice can inform each other, an ambition that sits at the heart of the Centre for Development and Emergency Practice (CENDEP) at Oxford Brookes University.

CENDEP has a long-standing partnership with CARE International UK’s (CIUK) Global Shelter Team. This partnership with humanitarian practitioners and researchers is one of many that underpins the teaching and learning in the Development and Emergency Practice / Global Development and Humanitarian Practice Master’s programme at CENDEP.  Associate lecturer Bill Flinn is a Senior Shelter Advisor at CIUK when he is not co-leading the Shelter After Disaster module with CENDEP’s Charles Parrack. Selecting the Shelter After Disaster module allows direct-entry Master’s students and those studying for their Part 2 Architecture qualification to gain a deep understanding of one of the UN-mandated humanitarian sectors; Shelter and Settlements. Many of Charles and Bill’s former students have gone on to work in the humanitarian Shelter Sector, as coordinators, practitioners and researchers, including Sue Webb (DEP Master’s student 2018-19) who currently works as a researcher at CENDEP and a Shelter Researcher at CIUK. Sue, Bill and Charles have worked together for several years on a series of research projects that have endeavoured to learn from and to enhance humanitarian shelter assistance. Bill was closely involved with CARE Philippines’ response to Typhoon Haiyan/Yolanda and later research to understand the impacts and outcomes of such programming.

Response to Typhoon Haiyan by CARE Philippines 

CARE Philippines responded to the disaster in 2014-2015 through an innovative shelter programme, the Post-Haiyan Self-Recovery Housing Programme. In the wake of a disaster, communities and households are often the first responders, and frequently begin the process of rebuilding without support from external agencies—a process known as self-recovery. In the wake of a major disaster, needs almost certainly outstrip available resources, so CARE’s humanitarian programme in the Philippines placed self-recovery at the heart of its approach. It was designed to support people in their efforts to recover their homes and livelihoods, whilst encouraging them to rebuild in a way that reduced the vulnerabilities their homes had before the disaster. The photo below was taken two weeks after the typhoon—people were already starting to salvage materials and beginning to rebuild.

The programme targeted remote inland communities across the islands of Leyte and Panay. These rural communities had been severely affected, with a high percentage of totally destroyed houses. 16,000 families were supported with cash, materials and tools coupled with relevant technical assistance. CARE distributed Shelter Repair Kits consisting of CGI metal roofing sheets, tools, materials such as nails, wire and strapping, and a cash grant of PHP 3,000 (about £43). Several weeks later, some recipients qualified for a ‘top-up’ cash grant of PHP 5,000 (about £70). Many community members received technical training in carpentry and all beneficiaries were reached with awareness raising in safer building techniques. 

One of the key features of the programme was the use of ‘roving teams’ of carpenters and social mobilisers who accompanied the families in their rebuilding efforts with encouragement and technical advice. In the spirit of ‘bayanihan’, a Filipino word meaning a spirit of community cooperation and cohesion, the burden of construction was often shared between community members, ensuring that vulnerable families were given priority and extra help.

This innovative shelter response by CARE Philippines and its local implementing partners won the World Habitat Award in 2017.  The award press release at the time stated that

CARE Philippines have helped thousands of people to rebuild their lives and their homes quickly. This is the first time self-recovery has been used on such a large scale. It has helped more people more quickly than traditional disaster recovery programmes. The potential of this approach to be used elsewhere is absolutely huge. 

David Ireland, Director of World Habitat, funders and co-ordinators of the World Habitat Awards

Ongoing research on supporting self-recovery

CIUK’s Global Shelter Team and CENDEP have continued to attract academic research funding in order to develop and share knowledge about this ‘supporting self-recovery’ approach to shelter assistance. For example, a Global Challenges Research Fund Translations Award grant (2019-2021) enabled the co-production of the first guidance document for organisations interested in adopting this approach and aiming to produce an enabling environment for self-recovery in their programming. Pathways Home - Guidance for supporting shelter self-recovery was published through the Global Shelter Cluster’s Recovery Community of Practice in 2022. It was written through a collaborative effort informed by three learning workshops with input from a broad range of practitioners. More recently, Higher Education Innovation Fund (HEIF) funding from Brookes enabled the publication, translation and dissemination of Pathways Home into a much shorter ‘field version’:  Pathways Home-The Fast Track-Summary Guide, also available in Arabic, French and Spanish. CENDEP and CIUK co-lead the Global Shelter Cluster’s Recovery Community of Practice which creates a platform for wider influence and knowledge management within the sector. 

Ten years later—their stories

With support from USAID, the CARE Global Shelter Team conducted some valuable learning by reviewing the recovery in Tacloban City ten years on from the Typhoon. This presented a rare opportunity to revisit the scene of a major humanitarian response and ask the question: ‘what happened next?’. The research focus was early recovery programming that included repairs and the construction of transitional shelters in urban locations with a focus on community-led methodologies.

The review team of three faced some interesting challenges. Many years on people’s recall of the events was sometimes sketchy and contradictory. There was still evident trauma surrounding the disaster. Causal links between shelter and settlements and their contribution to recovery was hard to trace. Even finding many of the survivors was a challenge as some had moved multiple times and now live in government-funded permanent relocation sites many miles to the north of Tacloban City.

The government declared a 40 metres coastal ‘No Build Zone’ soon after the disaster. Ten years on, and the inhabitants of this coastal strip, mostly informal settlers who were washed out by the storm, have moved and moved and moved again, to be finally relocated seven miles to the north far from their livelihoods and communities. .

The team took a participatory, inclusive and collaborative approach to the research. Focus group discussions, co-production of recovery timelines, household interviews  and transect walks all contributed to learning. The team from CARE International UK was able to map the diverse pathways towards recovery that individuals and communities had taken. Ultimately, the goal of the research was to capture people’s experiences of, and perspectives on, humanitarian assistance, something that, due to lack of resources and capacity is not often possible, but that is essential to understanding the long term impact of INGO programmes on people’s lives. 

Initial findings and next steps

In the wake of the review, the team has started to reflect upon some of the crucial topics they are keen to take forward, with a view to these eventually contributing to reports and guidance for wider humanitarian learning around post-disaster shelter programming. Some of these topics include the importance of housing, land and property (HLP) issues and the long-term capacity INGOs can create within a community by supporting households to understand their rights to adequate housing. The conundrum of the pros and cons of relocation was another key area that emerged during the fieldwork, in particular the question of whether INGOs can or should play a role when populations are faced with ‘inevitable’ relocation. Finally, the gulf between humanitarian assistance and long-term housing solutions was a topic communities spoke about at length and an area INGOs continue to grapple with in the context of their programming.  

At this stage, some preliminary findings around practice and programming have been identified. The importance of putting communities at the centre of their own recovery, and the long-term impact this had on social cohesion, well-being and confidence within the community emerged very clearly from the household interviews and group discussions. There are further opportunities for multi-sectoral programming at the settlement level; participants felt that livelihood support would have had a positive impact on their overall recovery. 

Although the review is still in its early stages, the team has hopes that the findings from this case study can contribute to the development of wider discussion and thought on what ‘recovery’ looks like, how it can be supported by INGOs such as CARE and what aspects of programming help or hinder people from their own perspective.

A version of this blog also appeared on CARE Insights

“THE STORY OF THE NBZ OVER TEN YEARS”.

	Mapping a typical ten year journey of households displaced from the devastated coastal strip by Typhoon Haiyan/Yolanda: from the NBZ, via a transitional site to a permanent home ten kilometres to the north.
	2013 Typhoon Haiyan destroys urban coastal land in Tacloban that is later designated ‘No Build Zone’ (NBZ).
	The NBZ in 2016 (Magallanes / Old Road): People return and rebuild their homes themselves with salvaged material.
	2014 to 2016. Some families moved to ‘transitional sites’ for a limited period. Two years later, after the agreement with the landlord expired, many families had to return to the NBZ while they awaited a more permanent solution.
	NBZ (Anibong) 2018: Households continue to live in the NBZ in makeshift shelters constructed themselves while they wait for permanent housing.
	The No Build Zone 2023: the city government begins to clear the NBZ and relocate people to ‘permanent relocation sites’ to the North of the city. Despite this, some newer households are beginning to rebuild on the NBZ.
	Northern Relocation Site (Villa Sofia) 2023: households have gradually been relocated across the North in different sites. Despite challenges, life is beginning to normalise for households and some families have been able to establish businesses in the sites, as well personalise their houses to create a true sense of home.

Mindful Sheltering: how can the Shelter and Settlements sector recognise and enhance its impact on mental health in humanitarian crises?

Sue Webb and Emma Weinstein Sheffield write:

“Improved shelter conditions can save lives, reduce disease, increase the quality of people’s lives, help mitigate the impact of climate change ... and ... contribute to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals”

Recognition of the linkages between adequate housing and health has been gaining ground in high income and development settings in recent years and is now having an impact on humanitarian discourse and practice. Adequate housing for people displaced by disaster and conflict can help to protect them from respiratory borne infections like COVID-19 and mitigate other housing related risk factors for physical ill-health like household air pollution, overcrowding, thermal extremes and poor access to sanitation. Inadequate housing also impacts mental health both directly and through the stress related to physical ill-health. Inequalities in access to adequate housing and green spaces are particularly acute in humanitarian settings, where people living in overcrowded buildings and camps are at greater risk from a multitude of health issues, and have limited power to influence improvements to their living conditions. Awareness of these issues and related knowledge gaps prompted further investigation within the humanitarian Shelter and Settlements sector, responding to a need to uncover and better articulate the impacts of existing Shelter and Settlements practice on mental health and well-being and to plot a path towards more deliberate and documented beneficial impacts.

Why humanitarian action must promote healthier homes for all

Emma Weinstein-Sheffield and Sue Webb write:

World Humanitarian Day on 19th August reminds us that “in 2020, nearly 168 million people will need humanitarian assistance and protection. This represents 1 in about 45 people in the world, and is the highest figure in decades” (UN website). The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has brought into focus how poor housing quality and overcrowding can be detrimental to both mental and physical health.

Housing and humanitarian shelter programmes can contribute to the Global Humanitarian Response Plan to COVID-19, especially its strategic priorities to “contain the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic and decrease morbidity and mortality”. Leilani Farha, the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to adequate housing, noted recently that “housing has become the front-line defence against the coronavirus”. Currently though, many aspects of inadequate housing, in rich countries as well as poorer ones, contribute to significant inequalities in mortality and morbidity.

Prioritising indoor air quality in building design can mitigate future airborne viral outbreaks, discussed in recently published research on how poor indoor air quality can amplify the effects of airborne viruses such as COVID-19:

“Rather than promoting health and wellbeing, our built environment often worsens air quality through inadequate ventilation, air recirculation, material specification and the additional pollution load from mechanical heating and cooling.”

This is arguably particularly true in humanitarian settings where people are frequently living in poorly ventilated, crowded conditions and with insufficient access to clean water and sanitation facilities. Responses to humanitarian crises can provide an opportunity to ensure that ‘healthy housing’ is an integral part of future shelter responses. Indeed, good humanitarian shelter programming can have beneficial impacts on mental and physical health that can reach beyond the current pandemic and contribute to healthier lives in the short- and long-term.

COVID-19 and informal settlements

Photo: 1to1 Agency of Engagement, 2020

Chloe Loader writes:

The emergence of novel coronavirus COVID-19 has had huge social and economic impact, causing high excess mortality and significant economic decline. The pandemic has and is affecting different groups disproportionately, its effects amplified by existing challenges in housing. As humanitarians respond to the ongoing crisis, it is vital to understand and implement key aspects of the humanitarian development nexus to address long-term impacts. This blog post will focus on the risks being faced by those in informal settlements during the pandemic, predominantly considering those in South Africa. Inadequate housing is strongly linked to an increased vulnerability to disease due to overcrowding, poor ventilation, sanitation and lack of services This particularly impacts communities facing additional hazards such as flooding and fires, increasing the risk of transmission and chance of infection. The pandemic has highlighted the inequality experienced by these communities, with social distancing and self-isolation a privilege not accessible to all.

Key questions:

What are the increased risks for residents of informal settlements to infectious diseases, such as COVID-19?

How can design principles be implemented in informal settlements to allow for social distancing and/or safe hygienic practices?

How can humanitarian responses to COVID-19 incorporate development initiatives that prevent communities from facing long-term vulnerability to infectious diseases?

Existing literature on the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on residents of informal settlements is so far limited due to a lack of quantitative data. However, there are organisations such as 1to1 Agency of Engagement that are working on the ground directly with residents to engage communities with making masks and provide handwashing facilities and soap. There is however literature discussing the impacts of other infectious diseases, which will impact residents in similar ways.  Investigation of the impacts of COVID-19 on informal settlements is vital so that long-term management practices, spatial adaptations, attitude changes and increased availability of resources can be implemented for residents. With unreliable data available for many countries, particularly for informal settlements, it is difficult to establish the extent of the issue. Cases for low and middle income countries, such as Brazil, Peru and South Africa are currently rising, highlighting the increased risk to poorer communities.

My personal experience working in South Africa this year in January, not long before the first cases of COVID-19 were detected in the country, highlighted to me the risk of infection for people living in informal settlements. It is difficult to understand fully the conditions of a slum until you have experienced it. Overcrowding and lack of hygiene/access to facilities is a daily norm. In South Africa, residents have been fighting for their homes to be legalised, electricity and water to be installed and conditions to become safe. This is a long process, with many political and economic hurdles to overcome. On my return to the UK, the people I met in South Africa have been at the front of my mind as the pandemic has worsened, unable to comprehend the risk that these vulnerable communities now face. While COVID-19 has caused suffering for so many globally, the impact of livelihood/education/living conditions of many in developed countries is minimal in comparison to the most vulnerable communities.

COVID-19: What are the implications for humanitarian shelter?

Sue Webb and Emma Weinstein-Sheffield write:

Key messages: 

1. The current COVID-19 pandemic amplifies existing humanitarian and development challenges, including those relating to housing.
2. Shelter practitioners need to be aware of the immediate and long-term impacts of COVID-19, including the economic impact on renters and marginalised groups and should address these risks as best they can during the peak of the crisis.
3. Immediate risk mitigation should include addressing overcrowding, poor ventilation and access to sanitation and hygiene facilities and will require close coordination with the WASH and health sectors.
4. The pandemic highlights how poor-quality housing and settlement planning increase the risk of communicable diseases and exacerbate some non-communicable diseases. There is a need for further research on the potential beneficial health impacts of humanitarian shelter responses. 

Work in Progress: Shelter self-recovery

The majority of people affected by conflict and disaster ‘self-recover’: they rebuild using their own resources with little or no support from outside agencies. In the context of ever-increasing need for humanitarian assistance and grave constraints on humanitarian funding, there is an imperative to understand how communities self-recover and how best to improve support for that process.

At the first of this semester’s Work in Progress seminars, Bill Flinn (CARE International UK) will be introducing the ‘Self-Recovery from Humanitarian Crisis’ project, a research collaboration between CENDEP and CARE, with other humanitarian partners. Funded by a Global Challenges Research Fund Translations Award grant, this project aims to understand the priorities and agency of individuals, families and communities who are rebuilding their lives after natural disaster and conflict. The project will co-develop best-practice guidance for the support of that self-recovery process and investigate the wider impact of shelter humanitarian interventions, using longitudinal and action research fieldwork in Indonesia, Venezuela and Malawi. The guiding principles of the project’s research are that:

• ·       Self –recovery is an inevitable process. So we need to understand how best to support this process.
• ·      The agency of families and communities is of paramount importance. They have a right to choose and their priorities will vary from family to family and also over time.
  

Bill will elaborate on what his previous work with CARE in the Philippines after Typhoon Haiyan in 2013 taught him about the lived experience of people after disaster and how they prioritise their recovery pathways.

Charles Parrack (CENDEP) will discuss the importance of partnerships between academic institutions and humanitarian practitioners. Sue Webb (recent DEP student working as research assistant) will outline initial findings on the connections between shelter and health. The seminar will consist of a short presentation followed by open discussion of the themes introduced.
The seminar is at 16.30-18.00 on Thursday 6 February in room JHB303 in the John Henry Brookes building, Headington Campus. (The full list of seminars for this semester is here.)

What evidence do we have for building safety in shelter self-recovery?

The humanitarian sector is increasingly aware of the role that good quality evidence plays in the underpinning of effective and accountable practice. An evidence review by Louise Harriss (visiting researcher CENDEP) Charles Parrack (CENDEP) and Zoe Jordan (CENDEP) addresses the need for reliable evidence by evaluating current knowledge about the intersection of two key outcome targets of post-disaster shelter response: supporting shelter self-recovery and building back safer. Evidence about post-disaster shelter programmes that aim to improve hazard resistance while supporting shelter self-recovery has been systematically analysed and evaluated. Technical support, especially training in safer construction techniques, was found to be a central programme feature, but the impact of this and other programme attributes on building safety was largely not ascertainable. Programme reports and studies lack sufficient detail, especially on the hazard resistance of repaired houses. Accounts of shelter programmes need to include more reliable reporting of key activities and assessment of outcomes, in order to contribute to the growing evidence base in this field. 

Read more here

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31343759

Cendep Wins Research Award for Innovative Research Solutions to Help the World's Most Vulnerable People

Charles Parrack writes:

Earthquakes, storms, floods, and conflict cause untold damage to housing, infrastructure, services, agriculture and livelihoods. Householders themselves are invariably the first to respond, and the majority - 80 to 90% - receive little or no assistance from the international community and they become the main drivers of their own recovery process. This process has been termed 'self-recovery'.

This project, led by the Centre for Development and Emergency Practice at Oxford Brookes and CARE International UK and in partnership with Catholic Relief Services, Habitat for Humanity, CRAterre and the British Geological Survey, builds on previous research focused on understanding how housing self-recovery works to develop guidance and tools, which will help operational agencies support the process.

The Funder, UK Research and Innovation, made the following announcement:

UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) has awarded 18 international partnerships, £14.8M – shared between UK HEIs and global research partners. They are specifically aimed to deliver scalable solutions to issues faced by low and middle-income countries.
  
The projects have been funded as part of UKRI’s GCRF Innovation and Commercialisation Programme, developed to fast track promising research findings into real-world solutions.
UKRI Director of International Development, Professor Helen Fletcher, said:

“This is a really exciting opportunity to fund 18 projects through the Global Research Translation awards. Each and every one will make a massive difference to peoples’ lives in communities spread across the world to ensure some of the most challenged communities have a brighter future.

“Over the next year and a half, UK researchers will work with their international counterparts, policy makers, businesses and local organisations to turn promising research into solutions that can be taken forward through various pathways such as spin-out companies and social enterprises to make a positive difference to people who live with the reality of challenges such as climate change, poor sanitation and disease every day.”

https://www.ukri.org/news/innovative-research-solutions-identified-to-help-the-worlds-most-vulnerable-people/

For more information contact Charles Parrack cparrack@brookes.ac.uk

Humanitarian Evidence Week: Long-term impacts of shelter programmes

Charles Parrack writes:

Earlier this year, in 2018, CENDEP hosted a one-day workshop on longitudinal studies in shelter at Oxford Brookes University. Attendees came from a wide range of backgrounds with experience in the humanitarian sector, shelter and academia.

The topic has been raised in various shelter cluster and non-cluster meetings over several years. At the Global Shelter Cluster meeting in Geneva 2017, the Shelter Projects working group found strong interest in longitudinal studies and, as a result, proposed to advance discussions on a more organised approach to methodology, procurement, dissemination and sectoral learning/evidence.

Longitudinal studies are by no means a new concept; indeed, evidence shows them to be a part of other sectoral practice, however they are something that the shelter sector does not yet embed into its own practice. Why is this? Some thoughts from the workshop suggested the answer to be a combination of rapid agency staff turnover, funding challenges, a lack of accountability and perhaps a fear of sharing programme failures.

Photograph: © Patrick Brown/UNICEF/Panos Pictures

Why are they needed?

Discussion ranged over the following questions: How would impact measurement benefit the sector? How would it benefit affected communities? There was a consensus that the outcomes of impact studies would encourage institutional learning particularly if disseminated and shared as best practice. There is a need within the sector to see the long-term consequences of our actions; to understand how beneficiaries take ownership of shelter and how safety is enhanced or reduced after implementation. Following up on programmes, two years, five years or even ten years after completion can enable agencies to better understand and engage with issues of prevention, sustainability, resilience and cost-efficiency which can feed back into and improve future programming. Whether it is the original agency who carries out the study, or an independent organisation, it is important that the results consider the context both past and present and are not a biased representation. Consideration of the learning opportunities for affected populations, implementers and donors drew an extensive list in the workshop highlighting a strong benefit for many actors.

Methodology

Longitudinal studies involve repeatedly gathering data on the same focus area over a long period of time. The unit of analysis, that is what is being measured, can be a person, shelter, household or community. It is important the unit of analysis is confirmed and remains the focus of the study as the methodology’s most important aspect is being able to compare in order to fully understand change overtime. Time is the best test of a programme’s viability, effectiveness and sustainability.

Shelter is delivered in various forms, both soft and hard interventions, and it is not necessarily a structure in the physical sense of the word. Perhaps 90% of what the shelter sector delivers is provided to meet short-term emergency needs. It does not take into account the future long-term consequences and may therefore, be difficult to locate, let alone measure. With this in mind, discussion looked towards certain shelter interventions that are quick and common enough for us to be able to find out what their impact has been, for example, transitional shelters. Transitional shelters are intended to be transformative in their nature, therefore it may be possible for us to track their transformation. The question of how their transformation may be followed and what exactly we may want or need to understand generated further conversation. What was voiced by many was the role of the affected communities in longitudinal studies; that perhaps it is the residents themselves who document their own recovery and their qualitative data can be understood by agencies in a more quantitative way if preferred. Participation from affected communities must continue to happen to institutionalise the process of learning so we, as a sector, can continue to develop and improve programming that meets the needs of the user. For shelter in the context of conflict, the journey of displaced populations may offer the opportunity to study soft modalities in the form of long-term displacement.

Questions and challenges

As long-term studies are not standard practice in the shelter sector challenges and questions surrounding the implementation of such studies were raised:

-          What are the criteria for success?

-          Do long-term studies link with the localism agenda?

-          Changing the building culture takes time and is not part of the emergency     programme

-          How to fund studies with long-term intentions when the programmes are inherently short-term?

Conclusions

Long-term effects of shelter programming can be both positive and negative but these effects cannot be quantified in the end of a project evaluation; they require time to develop and change in response to the intended user. It is clear from this workshop and Global Shelter Cluster findings that many organisations have the willingness to carry out long-term studies, but do not have the time or indeed, the funding. Understanding the consequences of our actions will enable better design and implementation of improved shelter programmes for reduced costs and greater effectiveness.

The group suggested many ways we can measure shelter, from technical standards like the Sphere Standards to quantifiable measures like value for money; to less tangible, but just as important, indicators such as level of happiness and sense of ownership. The shortlist of these was; safe shelter and settlements, user satisfaction, enabling informed decisions, adaptability, saving lives and value for money. Uninterrupted sleep and beauty were shortlisted as overall proxy indicators of a successful shelter. In general, the discussants agreed that the Sphere Standards offered good indicators for identifying success when looking at; security, peace, dignity, security of tenure and protection from forced eviction.

Based on the day’s thoughts, it is likely that these studies would have a varied audience including funders, agencies and university courses with wide opportunities for learning and improving practice for all. Whether you prefer to call them ‘longitudinal studies’ or ‘long-term impacts’, the interest for putting them into action is strong and we look forward to continuing the conversation from the workshop.

Graham Saunders, 1961-2017

This obituary by Ian Davis, visiting professor at CENDEP, and Maggie Stephenson , independent consultant, first appeared in Disasters journal.

Graham Saunders, a prolific peer reviewer for and a very good friend of Disasters, died on 6 November 2017. He leaves in place the architecture of a humanitarian shelter sector that he developed and promoted over the past 20 years. His contribution is broad in scope, including institutional mechanisms for coordination and collaboration and a broader understanding of the significance of shelter for survival and recovery in crises.

In the messy world of shelter, housing, and settlements, Graham worked tirelessly to develop coherence and shared principles. He communicated the significance of where and how people live, to donors, governments, and the media, as well as to the people involved in planning and implementing shelter programmes.

Graham was committed to learning, and to mentoring young, new, and local people. He was dedicated to research, to sharing knowledge, to improving practice. He was sceptical of innovation for its own sake, of supply-driven solutions, and of high-cost ‘best practice’.

While those around him might have been overwhelmed by the acute and complex demands, Graham could always be relied upon to be strategic and positive in finding solutions and was boundless in his energy to implement them. His passionate enthusiasm, incisive intellect, and warm sense of humour were applied to any undertaking.

Born in London in 1961, Graham described his significant early influences in Humanitarian Architecture: 15 Stories of Architects Working after Disaster:

Neither of my parents had a professional background, although my father was an optical
craftsman and ingrained in me an interest in how things are made and the skills, tools, time
and application required. I was also certainly aware that the world wasn’t necessarily an
equal place, and that hardships could be experienced by family and friends as well as those
in the headline news. My mother grew up in London during the Second World War, in
the latter stages of which her home was bombed and she had to be dug out of the rubble.
She was effectively an internally displaced person for the remainder of the war and having
lost everything, was dependent on relief assistance to provide her and her family with clothing and temporary shelter (Charlesworth, 2014, pp. 157–172).

After studying Architecture at Liverpool University and the Architectural Association, Graham worked for Michael Hopkins and Partners from 1983–88, notably on the Mound Stand at Lord’s Cricket Ground. Later he worked with Roger Zogolovitch and undertook part-time teaching at the University of Cambridge.

A great cyclist and adventurer, Graham embarked on long trips in his twenties, including across Africa and Eastern Europe and remote areas of northern Russia, seeing first-hand the diversity of locally built environments, from Soviet apartment blocks to African huts, as well as the extent of need in many places for better housing, facilities, and services. His experience prompted him to seek opportunities to deploy his architectural expertise in development contexts.

Graham made a radical career change in 1993 when he signed up to work for CAFOD. He was posted to Tirana, Albania, to assist with rehousing former political prisoners and displaced people after the collapse of the Communist regime. In 1996, he was one of the first humanitarian construction professionals to work in Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina, with Catholic Relief Services (CRS) after the end of the war, living there for eight years and dealing again with displaced people. His subsequent global role with CRS saw him eventually deployed in Nairobi, Kenya, leading projects such as the rehousing of families displaced by the eruption of the Nyiragongo Volcano in Goma, Democratic Republic of the Congo.

In 2006, the IFRC was invited by the United Nations to form the Global Shelter Cluster, an inter-agency coordination mechanism to support people affected by crises by giving them the means to live in safe, dignified, and appropriate shelter. The Secretary-General of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) sought to appoint a person with the best global experience in the shelter and settlement field. The search inevitably led towards Graham. Graham accepted the challenge and set up the Cluster, together with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, and co-led it for 10 years.

Graham played a vital role in helping architectural professional bodies to widen their focus of concern to the humanitarian field. His contribution led to the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) becoming a founding member of the Global Alliance for Urban Crises. On behalf of the IFRC, he supported the creation of the UK Built Environment Advisory Group, a collaboration between architectural, planning, and structural engineering professional bodies. In recognition of his engagement with the sector, Graham was made a RIBA Fellow in 2016.

As a strong advocate for research and academic partnerships, Graham contributed to the establishment of the IFRC’s Shelter Research Unit and partnerships with universities in Australia, Spain, and the United Kingdom. He was committed to accountability and collective responsibility, promoting the importance of measuring impact and outcomes in shelter interventions.

One of Graham’s greatest strengths was his unerring ability to analyse complexity, to consider the long-term consequences of any project, and to apply a developmental approach. He promoted a settlements approach to shelter and a multidisciplinary way of working. He built coalitions between emergency response and urban development, between education and practice, between businesses, professional bodies, and NGOs, between health, livelihoods, and housing. He always looked forward. He saw an urbanising world and urban crises as an opportunity to harness a wider range of actors and resources in humanitarian response, but he was also aware of the risks of fragmentation, frustration, and irrelevance and the increasing importance of coordination.

Perhaps Graham’s interest in exploring the wider context of every problem grew from his diversity of interests and his delight in relationships. His wife, Sarah, noted that he was:

extremely proud of the organisations he worked for and with, and the work he was involved
in. Most of all, he really enjoyed working and learning with people, whether team members
or programme beneficiaries. He also had many interests outside the office. His family,
books (his aim was to read every book ever written!), art, films, theatre, music, history,
and politics, getting out and about on his bikes and in his Triumph Stag soft-top classic
sports car, and watching a whole day’s worth of Tour de France, cricket test matches, and
endless rugby games.

At Graham’s funeral service, Tom Stewart, an architect in Berwick-upon-Tweed, noted that he and Graham cycled more than 17,000 kilometres together over the years, often sharing tears of laughter over the absurdity of the situations that they found themselves in when way off the beaten track.

Graham’s IFRC Shelter and Settlements Programme colleague, Sandra D’Urzo, underlined the rich human qualities he brought to his vocation and his commitment to the Red Cross and Red Crescent movement:

You always led by example: with your charisma, outstanding professional rigour, your contagious enthusiasm. You demanded much from us as a team, but first of all from yourself. You worked tirelessly, leaving your footprint in the major disaster responses, from Haiti to Pakistan, from the Philippines to African countries. If an initiative succeeded you would congratulate all of us; if it failed, you often blamed yourself and would try it differently. You would never give up. You would never let us down. . . . Be reassured that the legacy you left behind will continue and grow. Inspired by your example, new generations of architects will leave their well-funded jobs in London city to improve the living conditions of slums in Nairobi and rebuild after disasters.

Many more actors will join the shelter network you’ve started, and, in turn, thousands of families will have dignity and safer living conditions thanks to the alliances you built. Talented young professionals from less fortunate places will study in Oxford thanks to the scholarship established in your name.

Graham was particularly supportive of the work of the Centre for Development and Emergency Practice (CENDEP) at Oxford Brookes University and fostered a long-lasting and strong collaboration between CENDEP and the IFRC. Consequently, Graham’s family have expressed a wish to set up a scholarship in his name at CENDEP.

We wish to thank Graham’s family, friends and colleagues for their valued contributions to this obituary.

Graham is survived by his wife, Sarah Hargreaves, and their two children, Kezia and Joel.

Reference:
Charlesworth, E. (2014) Humanitarian Architecture: 15 Stories of Architects Working after Disaster. Part Three: Interview with Graham Saunders. Routledge, Abingdon.

If you would like to remember Graham Saunders by supporting a CENDEP student, please give online by going to: www.brookes.ac.uk/support-cendep