Shelter is one of the first priorities in any humanitarian intervention. Yet humanitarian organisations often struggle to provide shelter to communities affected by conflict or disasters without secure land tenure. Looking at land titles in places where there are major land conflicts often takes a long time, but shelter needs are immediate and urgent. In addition, the lack of information about land rights, or the refusal by landowners to allow construction, can delay the provision of shelter significantly. Without shelter displaced people remain vulnerable and unable to rebuild their lives.
'The challenge is that we face protracted conflict, natural disasters, urban explosion, and the fact that many inhabitants have ambiguous tenure. Some are informal dwellers, or do not have a recognised tenure status. There is a multiplicity of tenure arrangements, some deriving form customary traditions, some from statute, and frequently a combination of both. Because it's complex no one wants to talk about it,†says Raquel Rolnik, the UN Special Rapporteur on to adequate housing, who is developing guiding principles on security of tenure for the urban poor due to be presented to the Human Rights Council in March 2014. The report will include a set of guidelines for practitioners, including humanitarians, from the perspective of the human right to adequate housing.
'It is very difficult for donors and for organisations coming from the outside, but if we don’t look at this issue, we run the risk of making things worse. If housing reconstruction is available only for those who have individual freehold registered titles, we will leave behind the vast majority of those who really need assistance. We need to have operational instruments in order to deal with acknowledgment of tenure issues even if it's complex and politically sensitive', she added.
Organisations like NRC have to approach this issue from both a humanitarian and an operational perspective. Having a strong legal aid programme (ICLA) and a large shelter component, NRC is now looking to find better ways to provide shelter to people without security of tenure. For example, displaced women who survive conflict may not receive shelter assistance because they lack documents to prove land ownership, or may live in a country where women are discriminated against in their access to housing and land.
“If we get this right, this is ultimately about putting roofs over people’s heads at a time when they need it the most,” says Ingrid Macdonald, NRC’s Resident Representative in Geneva. “We often see in our work the risk of providing shelter when tenure is insecure. But when we talk about risk it is really the population we aim to serve who face the greatest risk. We need to find a way that makes it easier for people, who are often facing the worst situations of their lives, to have a roof over their heads without increasing the risk to them. An important first step is to work across all the sectors to better understand the different legal and operational issues.”
NRC is not alone in the search for more effective ways of providing shelter. NRC and the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), in collaboration with the Special Rapporteur, are working on developing strategies to assist the most vulnerable: those who do not own land.
“The lack of a common recognition of diverse forms of tenure beyond property title makes the life of a vulnerable person even more precarious, and can prevent them receiving shelter assistance after disaster,” says Graham Saunders, Head of Shelter and Settlements at the IFRC.
“Our field teams often find pragmatic solutions to tenure-related problems they face on the ground, but there is a need for a common understanding on what is ‘secure enough tenure’ amongst the international humanitarian shelter community – donors, practitioners and lawyers – to ensure shelter assistance can be provided to all those in need.”
NRC, IFRC and the UK Department for International Development brought together about 40 practitioners, donors and representatives of foreign missions for two days of discussions led by the Special Rapporteur on adequate housing on 27 and 28 June 2013 in Geneva. The aim was to discuss the challenges of tenure security in emergency response and the implications for humanitarian shelter assistance, with the agreement among practitioners that this debate needs to progress. The discussions will also inform the work of the Special Rapporteur.
Following these events, NRC and the IFRC will publish a paper about security of tenure in humanitarian shelter operations aiming to get to the crux of what is needed on the ground. The paper will be published in the autumn.
