Shelter, understood as a place where temporary protection is provided, is a priority in an emergency. However, the right to shelter is entangled with other issues, thus making it difficult to set a defined humanitarian standard (Babister and Kelman 2002). “Adequate housing” ( OHCHR 2009) is listed in both the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. However, there is not a definition of adequate housing. Shelters and housing do not constitute the core mandate of humanitarian agencies; therefore, there is no standardized policy for related issues, such as homelessness or slums. In humanitarian contexts, shelter is a temporary need for displaced people. The United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration and the International Refugee Organization sheltered people displaced by World War II. In 1950, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) was instituted as the only commission in charge of shelter. The Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees, approved in 1967, enlarged the geographical scope of the UNHCR, whose mandate to support displaced people was applied all over the world.
Ian Davis explored the ways in which shelters were historically built and used in different parts of the world, stating that “shelters must be considered as a process, and not as an object” (1978: 33). This statement constitutes the basic theoretical approach to shelters, even though its implementation was difficult to integrate with humanitarian practice. Although solutions such as self-resettlement or the use of local facilities are formally prioritized, there are other variables in the provision of shelters, such as potential resistance by host government, security, and timing of the intervention. There is often a tension between the need to provide “temporary” shelters and the difficulties in quickly granting people adequate accommodation. Shelters need to be built fast, and it is important that they appear “temporary,” to avoid the host population seeing them as something permanent and thus creating hostility (Babister and Kelman 2002). Protecting shelters from external threats is also important, as humanitarian shelters are often located in conflict-affected areas. Events such as the attacks on the Palestinian refugee camp of Shatila by Christian Maronite militias in 1982 or, more recently, the far-right attacks against refugee camps in Chios (Greece) in 2016, the accidental bombings of Kamona refugee camp in Syria (2016), Rann refugee camp in northern Nigeria (2017), and Makhmour refugee camp in northern Iraq (2017–2018) show how the location of the shelters and the security arrangements are crucial. Critics have noticed that humanitarian management of shelters is a way of controlling displaced people until they can be resettled under the control of another authority (Rajaram 2002). Scholars have also described the provision of shelters as a process of dehistoricization and depoliticization of displaced populations (De Lauri 2016; Malkki 1996). These critics emphasize how humanitarian organizations focus on abstract standards rather than involving displaced communities in the “process” of sheltering.
The bureaucratization of sheltering has led to a progressive focus on the shelter as a product. In 2005, UNHCR and some non-governmental organizations arranged the “Shelter Cluster” to set common standards of sheltering, involving experts such as architects and designers. In 2017, the IKEA refugee shelter was awarded “Design of the Year.” However, this standardized shelter, very similar to a tent in size and functions, was criticized by humanitarian organizations as a finished product that did not leave rooms for local appropriation (Scott-Smith 2018). The lack of an agency focusing on shelter contributes to the fact that tension between the idea of shelter as a process and the need of standardized tools remains unsolved. In recent interventions connected to Syria’s crisis, the use of alternative shelters in the camps increased. In Greece (Dicker 2017), Italy, Germany and Turkey (Feyzi et al. 2018) there are experiences of sheltering models based on urban housing and self-settlement. These models are criticized because they are not seen as temporary solutions by host societies and they make displaced people more difficult to protect. The removal of refugees from the Italian town of Riace (2018) and the evictions of refugees spontaneously sheltering in the Athenians neighborhood of Exarchia (2019) show the frequent resistance of state authority toward these alternative models. However, solutions like this help the UNHCR to reach its formal target to reduce the percentage of people living in camps (Culbertson et al. 2016; Dicker 2017). The tensions between the temporariness and quality of the shelters, as well as issues of security and freedom of displaced people, remain the main concerns in humanitarian sheltering, and frequently erupt in tensions between state authorities and different civil society actors.
References
Babister, E. , Kelman, I. (2002) The Emergency Shelter Process with Application to Case Studies in Macedonia and Afghanistan. The Martin Centre, University of Cambridge.
Culbertson, S. et al. (2016) Rethinking Coordination of Services to Refugees in Urban Areas: Managing the Crisis in Jordan and Lebanon. RAND Corporation.
Davis, I. (1978) Shelter After Disaster. Oxford Polytechnic.
De Lauri, A. ed. (2016) The Politics of Humanitarianism. Power, Ideology and Aid. I.B. Tauris.
Dicker, S. (2017) Solidarity in the City: Platforms for Refugee Self-Support in Thessaloniki . Save the Children.
Feyzi, B. et al. (2018) Welcoming Diversity: The Role of Local and Civil Society Initiatives in Welcoming Newcomers. IMRC Policy Points, XIV.
Malkki, L.H. (1996) Speechless Emissaries: Refugees, Humanitarianism, and Dehistoricization. Cultural Anthropology, 11(3): 377–404.
OHCHR (Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights) (2009) The Right to Adequate Housing. United Nations.
Rajaram, P.K. (2002) Humanitarianism and Representations of the Refugee. Journal of Refugee Studies, 15(3): 247–264.
Scott-Smith, T. (2018) A Slightly Better Shelter? Limn, Issue 9.