ABSTRACT
To say that the provision of shelter after disaster by humanitarian aid actors is costly, complicated and fraught with problems would probably be one of the greatest understatements in humanitarian aid. While often consuming large amounts of expenditure, too often the story of shelter after disaster has been an unhappy one. This year’s Humanitarian Emergency Response Review (HERR), commissioned by the UK Government’s Department for International Development (DFID, 2011, p. 25) to review how the UK Government should respond better to disasters, reached the same conclusion: ‘Providing adequate shelter is one of the most intractable problems in international humanitarian response’. Reasons for this include sorting land ownership, materials procurement, organizing engagement with those affected by disaster and, increasingly for urban areas, density, rubble clearance, governmental involvement (or the lack of it), space and coordination. This last point especially was singled out by the HERR as not working well in relation to Emergency Shelter Cluster 1 coordination.
