This Basic Guide enables professionals and experts working in different health areas to address, in a timely manner, the needs inherent to caring for a displaced or refugee population during a crisis. The Basic Guide is designed as a set of questions to give an idea of the appropriate actions or response principles required for these situations. This Basic Guide is not a substitute for disaster preparedness or planning to comprehensively address emergencies involving persons displaced by natural or manmade disasters.

This chapter is divided into two sections, comprising 1) Shelter and Settlement and 2) Non-Food Items: Clothing, Bedding and Household Items. Both sections provide general standards for use in any of several response scenarios for both displaced and non-displaced households, including:

The environmental health conditions faced by people are largely affected by the location and organization of the site where they are obliged to live in the days, weeks or months after a disaster. Security, the presence of a suitable water supply and the conditions necessary for adequate sanitation are probably the three most essential factors to consider when choosing and equipping, or improving a site for disaster-affected people. The quality of shelter available has a great impact on health and well-being.

This booklet is a short guide for shelter practitioners with little experience of disaster waste management. It highlights key issues and priorities of disaster waste management in different settings. It provides simple examples of re-use and recycling of building waste materials in temporary and permanent shelter programmes. Further reading and other sources of more indepth information are provided.

These set of tools are designed to alleviate the difficulties of shelter and settlement needs assessment in the immediate aftermath of a disaster and before the recovery phase. An assessment or estimate of the situation is a precondition for disaster response and recovery planning. The tools suggest what shelter and settlement data to ask for, who to ask, when to ask and how to share the answers.  

The Transitional Shelter Standards are common standards and indicators, consistent with Transitional Shelter Guidelines, for both locally produced and stockpiled, airlifted family transitional shelters, developed and agreed upon by a multi-agency Project Consortium.

The Transitional Shelter Guidelines project involves the development of a set of practical guidelines that can be used in the field in order to facilitate the implementation of more effective transitional shelter programmes.

The latest Transitional Shelter Prototypes booklet (November 2009) presents concept designs from six of the manufacturers participating in the project.

Refugees or internally displaced persons (IDPs) may have no other option than to seek protection and assistance in camps. Although camps are necessarily a choice of last resort, they often represent the

Part B of IASC Gender Handbook. Mainstreaming gender perspectives in camp coordination and camp management processes and activities facilitates addressing basic needs of women, girls, boys and men and this directly supports planning protection services and assistance. Gender analysis and gender perspectives should be addressed in a culturally acceptable manner while ensuring the principle of equality of women and men is implemented.

The UN-HABITAT assistance to displaced population is part of the joint inter agency efforts ongoing in several cities in the Somali region. The upgrading of the existing settlements’ conditions is part of the tripartite strategy developed by UNHCR, UN-HABITAT, DRC, and NRC aiming at improving the lives of slum dwellers on three fronts: (1) permanent resettlement, (2) improved transitional shelter solutions, and (3) upgraded existing living locations.

These guidelines are aimed at assisting all stakeholders, including governments and humanitarian and development organisations, in agreeing and implementing together integrated strategies for transitional settlement and reconstruction, in support of the varied needs, resources and capacities of communities affected by natural disasters. These guidelines are the result of a collaboration between Shelter Centre and UN/OCHA.

This booklet sets out why engineers should involve both men and women in infrastructure projects and why women's participation has a special emphasis. It introduces ways in which engineers and technicians can ensure their projects focus on the needs of men and women.  As well as providing an introduction for engineers and technicians who have not covered some of the social issues before, this booklet is also useful for managers who do understand the issues but are seeking ways to tackle these, or for those who wish to explain the problems and solutions to their colleagues.