In region Global and in group Global Shelter Cluster

COVID-19 and Shelter

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Guidance for Shelter Cluster Coordinators

Guidance on HRP Revision

Shelter Cluster Coordinators are likely to have been asked by their respective HC’s and OCHA country offices to contribute to the revision of your HRP sector chapter. The OCHA’s “COVID19 GHRP Revision Guidance Note” is available in the table below to help going through through the process. In the links below you can find additional support documents for clarification. Please ensure that your revision is in line with your HC/HCT’s decision on whether to update on the existing HRP document or through a COVID-19 Addendum. Please ensure you follow OCHA in-country deadline.

 

Overall shelter guidance on responding to COVID

The Global Shelter Cluster encourages shelter coordinators to:

  • Follow advice from the Health Cluster in your country and the national/local regulations:
  • Work closely with the Health Cluster, Wash Cluster and others as required, to align messaging and coordinate on priority locations for combined response as appopriate.
  • Undertake a mapping exercise to identify the areas most at risk and advocate for support: areas where people are living in particularly overcrowded conditions, with higher densities, with less space for expansion, more in contact with population at risk, with less access to health facilities or with higher proportion of vulnerable population. Wherever possible, mitigation measures to reduce overcrowding should be put in place: Collective sites in which households are sharing the same shelter should be upgraded as much as possible to achieve minimum shelter standards of personal covered living space and household partitions rather than collective. People living in individual acomodation below minimum shelter standards should be supported to improve those standards, particularly by increasing the covered living space in cases of overcrowding. Vulnerable populations should be prioritized. In places where several households are sharing latrines or cooking facilities, additional facilities should be built to reduce the number of households using the same basic facilities. Additional land should be negociated to allow for these expansions.
  • Coordinate with and support the Health Cluster in the provision of adequate and timely shelter support to displaced families, individuals and populations at higher risk of COVID-19.
  • Advocate to donors so that families and individuals in locations where COVID-19 is affecting already displaced populations can access available shelter support in an appropriate and timely way, including for isolation where required by health authorities.
  • Review your strategic plans to assess specific risks and vulnerabilities, capacity of shelter actors and shelter NFI stocks in-country and in pipeline to determine prepardness for elevated displacement, and synergies with national level prepardness and response plans.