ABSTRACT
In 1982, the United Nations Disaster Relief Coordinator (UNDRO) published the influential report Shelter After Disaster in which it summarised current practice and areas for improvement in the field. Though it was positive about improvements in the areas of medicine, health and nutrition response, it reported that ‘there remains one particular sector in which too little progress has been made, and in which many conservative and obsolescent attitudes survive, that is: emergency shelter, and shelter after disaster in a more general sense’. 1 Ten years later the same point was reiterated by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR): ‘What is needed is a comprehensive shelter strategy with appropriately developed standards, supply methods, specifications for shelter units and industries to make the right products available in time.’ 2
