Dear List Members,

I wish to inform you that an electronic version of the publication

Zetter, R. (1995), Shelter Provision and Settlement Policies for
Refugees : A State of the Art Review, Nordiska Afrikainstitutet (The
Nordic Africa Institute)/Swedish International Development Agency,
Studies on Emergencies and Disaster Relief, Report No. 2, Uppsala,
Sweden, ISBN : 91 71063625.

is now available on line on the Brookes University Website, at the
address:

http://www.brookes.ac.uk/schools/planning/dates/publicat.html

With best regards
Silva Ferretti

- - -

The context of the state of the art review

This idea of this short retrospective introduction, written some 10
years after the Review was first conceived, is to explain briefly the
origins of the Review and to set it in the current context. This State
of the Art Review was originally commissioned for the First
International Workshop on Improved Shelter Response and
Environment for Refugees organised by the UNHCR in Geneva
1993. The Review which follows is a revised and much expanded
version of the original paper and was originally published by the
SIDA and Nordiska Afrikainstitutet in 1995. It is reproduced here
with kind permission of the original publishers.  The Workshop was
convened in response to limitations in shelter responses for
refugees highlighted after the first Gulf War in 1991 and the ongoing
humanitarian emergency in former Yugoslavia. Until then the
experience of providing shelter for refugees had largely been
developed in many parts of Africa, Pakistan, South-east Asia and to
a lesser extent in Central America. The humanitarian emergencies
of the early 1990s, however, raised new demands and demanded
new practices. These emergencies occurred in temperate/semi
temperate rather then tropical latitudes, thus posing different climatic
requirements for shelter; local construction technologies and
materials were very different; cultural contexts likewise contrasted
substantially. At the same time the mass refugee exodus from
Mozambique into Malawi and Zimbabwe in 1990/1 highlighted
significant gaps, but also new practices - for example linking shelter
and settlement planning to hosts' needs as well as refugees - which
had not been documented. The Workshop addressed this changing
shelter environment for refugees whilst at the same time building on
practice which had developed over the previous decade. Drawing on
these crosscurrents of new and consolidated praxis, the State of the
Art Review offered an overview of these developments.

A year after the Workshop, in 1994, the humanitarian crisis in
Rwanda occurred. This raised again, but on an even vaster scale,
many of the same logistical, technical, political and humanitarian
issues related to refugee shelter and settlement which had
exercised both the experts at the Workshop and practitioners who
had worked on earlier refugee crises in Africa. Although evaluation
of practices emerging from the Great Lakes was not documented
until later in the decade some preliminary experience were available
and this is reflected in the Review.

Building on the responses to the first version of study at the 1993
Workshop, the current version of the State of the Art Review dates
from 1995. It is very much 'of its time', and it is important to stress
that point. Much has developed since then in research and practice
related to refugee shelter provision and settlement planning. It is
tempting to think that this Review helped to play a seminal role in
these developments.

We now have a more sophisticated knowledge about the needs for
and responses to shelter and settlement planning for refugees in
different situations, environments and locations. Programming and
logistics have improved. Settlement planning principles are more
responsive to local needs and conditions. Shelter technologies - a
particularly thorny issue at the 1993 Workshop - have improved
substantially and the responses now resonate more effectively with
local cultural and environmental precepts. The significance of
interagency co-ordination in this sector, as indeed in all the other
sectors of humanitarian assistance to refugees has arrived centre
stage. Many of the main agencies working in this field have
developed and continue to improve their own practice guidelines.
The work of the SPHERE project (Humanitarian Charter and
Minimum Standards in Disaster Response,
http://www.sphereproject.org) now provides the current state of the
art for agencies and practitioners working in the field of shelter
provision and settlement planning for refugees.

More generally, of course, the context within which shelter provision
is enacted, has changed remarkably. We are much more aware
about the nature of complex humanitarian emergencies - a new
concept at the time of the Workshop - and their significance to the
social and political process of shelter and settlement provision.
Similarly a major new development since the mid 1990s has been
the role of shelter in repatriation of refugees and reconstruction of
war-torn societies.

Much remains to be done. The exchange of information, practice
and experience in the field of refugee shelter provision and
settlement - one of the objectives of Workshop and the State of the
Art Review was to stimulate such exchange - remains problematic.
The role of housing in post-war reconstruction - as a symbolic,
social and physical commodity - also remains a major challenge to
practitioners, policy makers and donors alike. Embedding the needs
of both refugees and hosts, especially with regard to settlement
planning rather than shelter provision (a major theme of the Review)
is a similar challenge. Likewise, the tension between emergency
shelter provision and more permanent long-term needs is an
enduring phenomenon with complex political implications.

Thus, although the original Review was indeed of its time, its
significance now remains less for the detailed technical information
it provides which is inevitably 'time limited', but more in the sense of
the generic and holistic guiding principles which it elaborates. Not a
practice handbook, instead it offers a systematic way of
understanding and responding to refugee shelter and settlement
needs. Based on a spatial framework from the level of individual
shelter scaling up to camp, local, regional and national levels, and
embracing hosts needs, environmental parameters, short and long
term needs at each level, the Review provide an enduring and still
relevant set of working principles.

Professor Roger Zetter
Oxford 2003

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