Recovery, housing, land and property and large-scale response

1From emergency to durable housing

A shelter strategy is conceived from day one as a pathway: emergency shelter, repair or incremental shelter, then durable housing. Each step must prepare the next: a well-designed transitional shelter becomes the core of a permanent house, and well-supervised repairs strengthen resistance to the next hazards. Avoid investments that lock families into temporary situations, such as costly structures on land without security of tenure.

For people displaced over the long term, shelter contributes to the durable solutions defined by the IASC framework: voluntary return, local integration or settlement elsewhere in the country, in safety and dignity. Shelter is then linked with livelihoods, public services, property restitution and urban planning.

2HLP at scale

At scale, housing, land and property issues become strategic: lost documents, destroyed land registries, secondary occupation, contested inheritance, forced evictions. A sound response includes:

• an HLP analysis of the context (formal and customary land tenure systems, women's rights, dispute resolution mechanisms);
• harmonised due diligence procedures and model agreements validated by the cluster and the authorities;
• legal assistance and mediation mechanisms, often with specialised partners;
• protection of tenants and informal occupants, who often make up the majority of those affected in urban areas.

The aim is not to settle every land dispute, but to avoid causing new harm and to strengthen the security of tenure of the most vulnerable.

3The area-based approach and planning

The area-based approach (or settlements approach) starts from a defined territory, a neighbourhood or a municipality, rather than from a sector or an individual household. It brings together local authorities, communities and sectors around a shared diagnosis and action plan: housing repairs, roads and drainage, water, schools, markets, risk reduction.

It is particularly suited to urban contexts and recovery phases. It requires detailed mapping, participatory governance (neighbourhood committees), alignment with urban plans and close coordination between clusters. Neighbourhood profiles and risk maps become shared planning tools.

4Leading a large-scale response

A response reaching hundreds of thousands of households requires common standards: kits and specifications, transfer values, shelter typologies, safer construction messages, targeting criteria. The Shelter cluster produces the strategy, the decision tree for options, the 4W and gap monitoring, and feeds into the humanitarian response plan.

The supply chain must be anticipated: regional prepositioning, framework agreements with qualified suppliers, quality inspection, transport and warehousing capacity. Management relies on outcome indicators (households living in adequate shelter, security of tenure, satisfaction) and not only on the number of items distributed. Advocacy brings quantified needs, gaps and obstacles (access to land, restrictions on materials) to donors and authorities.