A roof for refugees... / by Annick Billard

A roof for refugees ... \ Housing is one of the prime concerns of refugees who find themselves on foreign soil after fleeing their own home countries where their lives are at risk he general public remains largely unaware of the enorm- ous problems faced by refu- gees until massive flights occur which attract a geat deal of atten- tion in the media. Indeed, the ex- odus of hundreds of thousands of boat people from Viet Nam in 1979, of Afghans in 1980 and of Ethiopians in 1985 has captured the public mind to a far greater extent than the regular but less loudly trumpeted movements of families, tribes, whole villages or even entire ethnic groups from one country to another. Nevertheless, such movements are taking place all over the world 12 by Annick Billard and have increased to the point where, according to the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (HeR), there are no fewer than 12 million refugees around the globe. Moreover, to these must be added people who are seeking asy- lum and whose status has not been determined, as well as the Palesti- nians, who are dealt with by another UN Body, UNWRA (the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East). The sheer numbers of these refu- gees demonstrate the size of one of the directly related problems, that of housing. Deciding where to accommodate the hundreds of thousands of people who arrive within the space of a few days in a place where no facilities exist for receiving them is one of the first items to be tackled in the face of such an insurge. The problem is aggravated by the fact that many 0f them arrive in very poor shape and have as great a need for health care and food as for shelter. Certainly, where there are refugees, housing looms large among their priority requirements. Wherever population move- ments occur, some form of shelter has to be improvised within a very short time. Such shelter may be W ORLD HEALTH, July 1987 very rudimentary, but it is essential at least to protect the people from the weather and afford them some degree of privacy when they are left with nothing at all. The deep shock suffered by those who have had to leave everything behind to save their lives must not be over- looked. Shelter has a very consider- able symbolic value to refugees, and means much more than just protection against rain, wind or heat. The fear which forced them to flee is succeeded by anxiety for the future. A roof over their heads, somewhere to live, helps them feel that they do exist and gives them fresh hope. Providing housing for refugees is therefore the first priority. An entire chapter is devoted to it in HCR's "Manual for Emergencies", which points out that "the provi- sion of shelter is a high priority, even when not essential to survival. Shelter must be available before other services can be developed properly." The manual also sets out the rules to be followed to preserve refugees' cultural identity while providing them with the best poss- ible type of accommodation com- patible with the emergency. "The location of the refugees may range from spontaneous settlement over a wide area, through organized rural settlement, to concentration in a very limited area. Circumstances can make this last possibility un- avoidable, but the establishment of refugee camps must be only a last resort. A solution that maintains and fosters the self-reliance of the refugees is always preferable." The particular emergency and the speed of events often, alas, leave no room for choice; refugee camps spring up or are dismantled, de- pending on the circumstances, in countless numbers. Nevertheless, when the emergency first occurs the refugee camp will be the most suit- Above left: Literally "boat-people," these refugees have built a temporary home in Thailand in the lee of an old fishing-boat. Right : Refugees in Sudan building their own homes. Shelter has a symbolic value for such people, and means much more than just protection from the elements. Photos WHO / UNHCR /J.·M. Micaud and WHO/ UNH CR/C. Penn able for the refugees' housing needs. There, they live in tents provided by the international com- munity or in makeshift dwellings built of branches, tarpaulins, rags, cardboard boxes suported by scrap metal or whatever comes to hand, like dismantled bicycles or old suitcases. Once it appears that the people are to be refugees for good, the camp undergoes a change and is given a new name. It may turn into a transit camp or centre, implying that it is a temporary arrangement pending the provision of more per- manent accommodation in another country. Or it may become a recep- tion centre like those often found in industrialised countries. These are places where new arrivals-even before their refugee status is recog- nised-usually spend only a few days or months and where they are offered care, language courses and so on. There are also, especially in Asia, refugee processing or holding centres where refugees from differ- W ORLD HEALTH, July 1987 13 A roof for refugees ... ent areas are brought together and where they prepare to leave again for another country. The more per- manent camps include those called closed centres. Some countries have adopted this method as an addit- ional discouragement from entering their territory since, while being given all kinds of assistance, the refugees cannot easily leave the areas allotted to them. Finally, there are settlements which are also for refugees who have come to stay, but which offer them far more opportunities. In such settlements, the refugees may resume an almost ordinary way of life. They live in traditional-type housing which they have generally built themselves, have a plot of land on which they can grow crops, and may even be able to ply some kind of trade. This system, which is becoming common throughout the world once the initial temporary tented accommodation stage is over, is one of the more satisfactory ones. If, for the sake of their own safety, the refugees cannot return to their home countries-and this, of course, is still the best sol- 14 ution-the HCR prefers integration in a country which has consented to accept them. The third possibility is resettlement in another country, which does help to relieve those countries to which the largest num- bers of people have fled. Clearly the greatest burden is felt by the poorest countries, whose own people face serious housing problems and are most vulnerable to natural disasters. They neverthe- less accept this burden, despite all their own difficulties, as a demon- stration of solidarity. At the 37th session of the HCR Executive Com- mittee last October, Mr Jean-Pierre Hocke, UN High Commissioner for Refugees, commented: "A huge majority (of the world's refugees) has found shelter in developing countries... Nevertheless, they have been received in an exem- plary manner by some of the world's least prosperous countries, which have offered them hospital- ity despite an empty table." Besides the far-reaching conse- quences for the economy caused by the settlement of large numbers of people in deprived areas, one of the Above : This frame of branches in Somalia will be covered with sacking or cardboard to create a home. Right: Stilts raise these huts above the high water mark in the Philippines. " In certain settlements, the refugees may resume an almost ordinary way of life." Photos WHO/U NHCR/L. Taylor and WHO/UN HCR/ P Herzig most alarming yet little appreciated results of housing huge groups of refugees in such countries has been the adverse effect on the envi- ronment. Take the arrival in Sudan, Somalia and Djibouti of hundreds of thousands of Ethiopians in 1985 and 1986. When the flood of people began, the HCR and other emergency organizations provided the newcomers with tents. As time passed and the refugees regained their strength, they began to build their traditional tukuls, huts made of branches which provide better protection against wind and heat than canvas. In drought-stricken countries where every year the de- W ORLD HEALTH, July 1987 sert nibbles away at the ever rarer areas of vegetation, wrenching up hundreds of thousands of bushes to build tukuls cannot but accelerate the encroachment of the desert -which itself has already caused massive population movements all over Africa. One African leader recently remarked : "We are caught up in a kind of tragic progress. One disaster begets another. How can we halt this evil juggernaut?" The same feelings have been ex- pressed in Pakistan, where what were once forests have become vir- tual deserts since the arrival of refugees from Afghanistan. Trees and bushes are used for everything : cooking, heating in winter, thatch for roofing, branches to lean against the windows of mud huts to provide shade and coolness. All the green- ery of the North-West Frontier Pro- vince, where no fewer than two- thirds of the Afghan refugees in Pakistan live, is being depleted in an apparently irreversible process. Nevertheless solutions exist. Be- sides avoiding wherever possible the setting up of highly concen- trated refugee camps, as the HCR W oRLD HEALTH, July 1987 recommends, and trying to supply materials from outside when natu- ral resources seem on the point of exhaustion, the provision of devel- opment aid to the host country as well as aid to the refugees would undoubtedly help to resuscitate foundering economies. Building an- cillary facilities for the benefit of local population and refugees alike, reviving agriculture, speeding up reafforestation, building access roads and so forth would all help to reduce the harmful effects suffered by countries which offer a welcome to huge new communities. These indeed were the pressing claims made by countries taking part in the second International Conference on Aid to Refugees in Africa, held in Geneva in July 1984. Sad to say, they remained largely fruitless owing to the famine which subsequently struck Africa. As Jean-Pierre Hocke insists : "The refugee problem has now assumed international proportions, and is of- ten inseparable from the problems of political, social, cultural and economic development in the Third World." • 1;r-he top' 20 ,, countries (as at 1 January'1986) Pakistan 2, 702,500 .Iran (lslamk Republic of) 2,300,000 Sudan 1, 164,000 United States of America 1,000,000 Somalia 700;000 Canada 353.0QO Zaire 283,000 China 279,800 Burundi 267.500 Tanzania (United Republic of) 212.900 Mexico ;France Algeria Uganda India United Kin~dom Germpny (Federal Republic of) Thailand :Zambia . Malaysia /'X 175,000 174,200 167,000 151,000 136,700 135,000 134,000 130,400 103,600 99,700 IYSf:l·1987