Shelter Centre

Date: 12 Feb 2010
Source: World Health Organization

World Shelters, known for global humanitarian relief, sets sights locally
Contra Costa Times
While World Shelters' main focus is and has been on creating innovative, low-cost structures to be used as transitional shelters for humanitarian relief, ...

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Date: 29 Jul 2009
Source: World Food Programme

This blog post is taken from Michael Kleinman's change.org blog on humanitarian relief

This is a special, WTF version of the Wednesday awards - namely, reports in The Times that 1,400 civilians are dying each week at the Manik Farm displaced person camp in Sri Lanka.

Come again? 1,400 deaths per week?

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DUBAI Sunday, June 21, 2009 (IRIN) - At the end of 2008, more than 42 million people around the world had been forced to flee their homes, the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) said on 20 June to mark World Refugee Day.

In the world of refugees and internally displaced people, host communities tend to be nearly invisible. They are the backdrop to the core drama of refugee protection, part of the scenery. Or perhaps a source of cheap labor for the manual and clerical tasks that undergird camp operations.

On the occasion of World Refugee Day, however, let's attempt to put host communities on center stage where they belong.

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Source: UNHCR UNHCR corporate partner Microsoft pledges US$50,000 to the agency?s ?Gimme Shelter" campaign through Facebook platform, Causes.

Source: AlertNet

The number of people forcibly uprooted by conflict and persecution worldwide stood at 42 million at the end of 2008, according to the latest figures from the U.N. refugee agency. Here ...

World Vision Middle East/Eastern Europe/ Central Asia office Poor communities in Pakistan’s northwest are hosting up to two million people uprooted by recent violence in the region. Aid agency World Vision warns these communities – already among the poorest in the world – may join those displaced in days as their assets are sold to help those in need. “Families have provided refuge for up to 90 percent of those escaping the fighting,” said Graham Strong, World Vision’s Country Director in Pakistan.

World Vision Middle East/Eastern Europe/ Central Asia office As the number of displaced civilians in Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province continues to grow, aid agency World Vision is warning that the majority who fled their homes (85 percent) are living in host communities where basic services like water, sanitation, health and education were already limited.

DAKAR Friday, May 08, 2009 (IRIN) - The International Movement of the Red Cross is calling on people to do more to help those in need, as it launches its three-year ‘Our world, Your move’ campaign.

World Vision Middle East/Eastern Europe/ Central Asia office Over the past 24 hours, World Vision, other international aid agencies, local partners, and the Pakistani government have engaged in a coordinated effort to respond to the influx of refugees fleeing the Swat valley every day.

BANGKOK Tuesday, April 21, 2009 (IRIN) - Some 375 million people a year will probably be affected by climate change-related disasters by 2015 - up from 250 million a year as at present - says a new report by the UK charity Oxfam, which points out that this could overwhelm the world’s current humanitarian aid capacity.

Lutheran World Relief (LWR) - USA Baltimore -- Lutheran World Relief is providing urgently needed food and clean water in response to the swelling numbers of people displaced by the worsening conflict in Sri Lanka. Armed conflict in ...

Source: Reuters * International efforts to reduce world's IDPs failed * Financial crisis worsening problem * Threat of climate change may exceed conflicts By Patrick Worsnip NEW YORK, May 1 (Reuters) - The ...

World Vision Middle East/Eastern Europe/ Central Asia office Hundreds of displaced families, malnourished and exposed to bitter winter conditions in Chaghcharan in Afghanistan’s Ghor province, received desperately needed food and warm clothing from World Vision this winter, despite heavy snows, severe road conditions, and the presence of criminal gangs along transportation routes that sought to highjack food convoys, steal provisions, and hamper the provision of humanitarian aid.

A small palm-held computer is transforming life in a displacement camp in Goma town, northeast Congo. The crucial task of finding out what people need in this fast-changing environment - where surges in the local fighting can displace thousands at a time - is being computerised for the first time.

The World Food Programme is trialling so-called personal digital assistants (PDA's), to replace the laborious process of collecting the data needed to plan and predict how much food is required in the camp.

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Date: 13 Mar 2009
Source: UN Human Rights Council

We were just stepping out of our vehicle in the far reaches of Hagadera, one of three camps that make up the sprawling Dadaab camp for Somali refugees in northeastern Kenya, when it became obvious that we had stumbled upon a pocket of misery. A man waved his arms, and starting shouting, No water! No water!

As we walked into the area, a group quickly gathered and started the rapid fire explanation of their plight, with passionate interruptions and people struggling to be heard, testing the patience and talent of our guide, himself a refugee who arrived in Dadaab in 1992. As visitors from the outside world, in our case from Washington, D.C. and Refugees International, we had to hear their story.

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