standards

^ Shelter Standards

"Agreeing common standards and indicators for stockpiled hot and cold family shelters in humanitarian operations, both in order to improve the quality and consistency of response, and to engage research and development capacities of shelter manufacturers."

The manufacturing community is invited to comment upon the preliminary draft standards against the following list of criteria. The Standards can be downloaded in the grey box below. Comments are sought on:

1. the overall objectives and aims of this initiative
2. the approach of the agencies developing and agreeing these Shelter Standards
3. the structure of the Shelter Standards (i.e. logistics, physical and social requirements)
4. the approach in language used in the preliminary draft Shelter Standards
5. the qualitative and quantitative content in the specific requirements (e.g. values, details, indicators)
6. the potential value to the manufacturing community
7. improvements to, and extensions of, this initiative

The deadline for comments is the 1st of May 2008. Comments should be sent to standards@sheltercentre.org.

Download the preliminary draft Shelter Standards. Comments should then be sent to standards@sheltercentre.org.

Interested parties are reminded that no response will be made by Shelter Centre or Consortium members to bilateral approaches by designers or manufacturers concerning their individual products, designs or materials, in the interests of ensuring a fair and equitable consultation process.

^ Overview of Shelter Standards

These Standards are a preliminary draft and the intention is for humanitarian professionals and manufacturers to optimise these Standards over the course of the project. These Standards will be revised to incorporate comments made by manufacturers and suppliers, as well as the participants of the twice-yearly Shelter Meeting, a sector forum open to humanitarian organisations, organised and run by Shelter Centre.

The Shelter Standards will provide manufacturers with a manufacturing standard from which their individual designs can be derived. Though the designs may differ, and although the Standards do not constitute any obligation of Project members to procure, all designs meeting this Standard will be eligible to be deployed by Project members and other interested agencies.

Further steps agreed for the project will be postponed until comments on the preliminary draft Standards included in this booklet are received.

^ Consortium for development of the Shelter Standards

The Shelter Standards Consortium is for donor governments and implementing humanitarian organisations to collaborate in the development of standards and indicators for emergency family transitional shelter, for use in response to both conflicts and natural disasters.

The purpose of having the Consortium is to bring together key stakeholders to agreement regarding common standards and indicators for transitional family shelter following conflict and natural disasters. Participation in the Consortium does not currently constitute any commitment to purchase the shelter described as the Shelter Module. Consortium members may wish to collaborate in joint purchases to agreed specifications at a later date.

The following members of the Consortium have expressed interest in adopting the standards, and a number have attended project meetings: