North West South West
2023-05 Factsheet - North West South West
Highlights
3916 individuals were reached with Shelter and NFI assistance in the month of May. This drop in beneficiaries can be explained due to the need of partners to prepare the next phase of their implementation by conducting assessments to confirm shelter needs. From the 18th-20th of May, a holiday was observed by many humanitarian agencies due to the Cameroon Republic Day. These days were also observed as lockdown days which limited humanitarian actors in the implementation of their activities.
The Shelter Cluster launched its strategy review which will include updates to consider the situation of displacement in the West and Littoral Regions.
NFI
Shelter
Coverage against targets
Need analysis
During the month of May, five houses were reported damaged in Tubah Subdivision as a result of the kidnapping of women by Non-State Armed Groups. The houses were burned during the search and rescue mission. It has not been reported whether there were any occupants or vulnerable persons living in the houses at the time.
Overall Needs Assessment Data from the Shelter Cluster's Standardized Household tool has been collected into a centralized database 7 partners have so far shared their data which results in the ability to analyze information from 8944 households representing 58,623 individuals. A dashboard will be produced as more data is collected from partners during 2023. Over time, this should enable a better analysis between the shelter conditions of IDPs, returnees, and non-displaced groups. Data has been collected in Northwest, Southwest, and West Regions.
Shelter Cluster partners continue to receive poor feedback on the use of emergency shelter kits in post distribution monitoring. It is important for donors at Yaoundé level to fund partners to implement shelter programs that improve the safety and dignity of the people, while also enabling them to improve the habitability of the shelters. As stated in the Shelter Cluster's guidelines on emergency shelter, the emergency shelter kits serve a specific purpose to temporarily cover openings in damaged shelters and as a partition in open spaces such as collective centres. Nevertheless, donors have only enabled partners to provide these for all shelter situations. The majority of locations where partners are working are in urban and semi-urban contexts, so often the kit is not meeting shelter needs of the affected populations. The Shelter Cluster is advocating for conditional rental assistance and also for light repairs for houses damaged during conflict incidents.
Response
Northwest
- UNHCR's partners begun a needs assessment to measure the shelter vulnerability of households to inform programming.
- CRS continued to conduct beneficiary enrollment for its upcoming voucher for NFI programming.
- SHUMAS continued supporting vulnerable IDP students with their rental costs. They also concluded the rental assistance support they had been providing to a vulnerable woman and her family in Fundong.
Southwest
- DRC provided emergency assistance to 1907 individuals. 556 households received NFI kits and 32 households in Ikiliwindi.
- UNHCR's partners begun a needs assessment to measure the shelter vulnerability of households to inform programming. UNHCR's partners begun a needs assessment to measure the shelter vulnerability of households to inform programming.
West
- Première Urgence International supported 102 IDPs by providing them cash assistance to be able to support their renting of accommodation. Post Distribution Monitoring will be conducted in the month of June to verify the conditions of the houses rented by the IDPs.
Littoral
- Première Urgence International is assessing the needs of IDPs recently displaced to Mombo to provide support for their shelter needs.
Gaps / challenges
Greater sensitization is needed to donors about the type of shelter needs within the context of the Northwest and Southwest crisis. This will result in a better funding allocation which would better enable partners to meet the needs.
Many partners are still sometimes operating in a distribution mindset. The Shelter Cluster has continued to focus on capacity building of partners to ensure that the goal of interventions is not just the distribution of items or cash, but the achievement of better shelter conditions. Donors should also support partners with the capacity to monitor shelter interventions. This requires better resourcing and the ability to access affected populations.
