Housing and small-scale infrastructure refers to a variety of different activities with the same goal: To establish physical conditions for a temporary or permanent home for internally displaced persons (IDPs) and refugees.
Lack of a basic physical setting is often the primary obstacle for return of refugees and IDPs after an emergency. Housing is a primary need and human right, and the protection of this right is the primary mission of UNHCR and thereby also of DRC. Beyond survival, shelter is necessary to enhance resistance to diseases and to provide protection from the environment. It is important for both human dignity and for family and community life.
DRC defines physical rehabilitation as:
"An activity that restores and/or ensures physical infrastructure (e.g. shelter, buildings, roads, schools, health clinics and utility supply) in order to provide for basic needs like physical protection and public services to live a normal life. Additionally the objective is to initiate and sustain return, repatriation and reintegration of refugees and internally displaced persons and to give the residing population a positive incentive to stay in the community".
Physical rehabilitation varies very much according to the context and this tool is particulary based upon DRC ’s experience from Europe. Hence there are many ways to categorise physical rehabilitation, one of them being the distinction between rehabilitation benefiting individuals and families or rehabilitation benefiting the whole community. Therefore, focus can be directed at:
- Private houses and apartment buildings (private or public)
- Public buildings (e.g. schools, kindergartens, and community centres) and public services (e.g. roads, water and electricity supply)
The two categories can be described as follows:
1. Individual assistance
Individual assistance is about providing shelter for people in need but can be seen as ranging from distribution of plastic sheets to a thorough reconstruction of a house, depending on the scenario in which the programme is implemented.
| Types of shelter assistance: | ||
| Acute crisis | Displacement | Durable solutions |
| Refugee camps | Host families | Total repair |
| Handing out e.g. plastic sheeting | Collective centres | |
| Spontaneous settlements | ||
The main factor dividing the different options for physical rehabilitation is the degree of emergency.
If one has to deal with a situation in the conflict phase where people have abandoned their houses and live in open air, an emergency shelter project distributing plastic sheeting and food supplies is relevant whereas proper reconstruction projects belong to a later phase of rehabilitation.
The more volatile the situation is the more temporary solutions are applied. Within the three categories, the assistance is individually designed according to a given time frame, the number and condition of the people in need, funding perspectives, weather conditions and the degree of destruction to the buildings.
2. Community Assistance
One of the core elements in physical rehabilitation is to consider the involved community.
DRC believes that the renovation and building of public buildings such as schools, health clinics and roads will be a motivation and an attractive element in peoples’ choice of return. Focusing not only on individual housing but also on the infrastructure makes the return more sustainable. It also creates a more tolerant environment in the receiving communities. Supporting public services in a local community may be one of the most important cornerstones in the rehabilitation process.
To some extent it is possible to divide the public physical rehabilitation into social and technical infrastructure. The first accounts for rehabilitation of schools, community centres, clinics, kindergartens and so on whilst the latter concerns water and electricity supply, roads and bridges. When rehabilitating public facilities the reconstruction approach is almost always pursued.
