Introduction & Acknowledgements
The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) response to the January 12th 2010 earthquake in Haiti has been the largest IFRC operation in a single country in living memory. 124 Red Cross and Red Crescent national societies, supported by their public, the private sector, their governments and multilateral funding organizations rose over $ 1.1b to support emergency response and recovery operations in Haiti. Twenty eight per cent of these funds went towards recovery shelter programmes managed by the IFRC and twelve national societies and their local partners which took over 30,000 families out of camps for the internally displaced (IDP) and into improved shelter conditions.
In the emergency phase the IFRC and its members, working with the Haitian National Red Cross Society (HNRCS), distributed emergency shelter items to nearly 180,000 families and replacement shelter items to 67,000 of these beneficiary families. Recovery shelter solutions included the construction of eleven different types of transitional or progressive shelter; house reconstruction and repair and rental support. Some Participating National Societies (PNSs) working with the HNRCS continue to support those still living in IDP camps through improving the original emergency shelters and finding alternative shelter solutions outside the camps.
Strategies and shelter options required considerable flexibility in the shelter approach in order to cope with the considerable contextual challenges such as land mapping and tenure, logistic supplies, weakened local authorities, lack of building standards and codes, construction chain quality control, the complexity of the environment, endemic poverty, poor security and the impact of additional crisis, such as cyclones and a cholera outbreak.
Various activities were integrated into the shelter programming, such as Federation community mobilization assessment and response tool adaptation, site planning and risk mitigation, water and sanitation, livelihood support, vocational training and community technical capacity reinforcement, rubble removal and recycling.
In support to the Haitian Red Cross, Federation shelter programme coordination and implementation has mobilized massive funding and required vast technical support, both in country and at global level.
Due to the scale and complexity of the shelter programme, especially in the recovery phase, the IFRC decided to conduct a review of best practices and lessons learned from the past two years of shelter programming in Haiti that could inform its membership and secretariat for any new major catastrophe in Haiti as well as inform shelter operations world-wide. The best practice and lessons learned review was also an opportunity to learn about membership services and Movement cooperation. During March and April 2012 two consultants were engaged to discuss with PNSs, the HNRCS and the IFRC secretariat their own views of best practice and lessons learned, both at the field and headquarters level as well as conduct field visits to meet with national society staff and make technical observations of the different types of shelter solutions.
The outcome of this process is expected to be global learning from the examples of best practice employed in the Haiti shelter operation and improved shelter operations worldwide as the IFRC and national societies learn from best practice as well as adapt approaches to shelter programming based on lessons learned.