Türkiye Earthquake 2023
2023-12 Factsheet - Türkiye Earthquake 2023
Highlights
FACTSHEET OCTOBER-DECEMBER 2023
By September, there was a large shift of affected households from tents to containers. Despite the drop, DTM’s neighborhood site mapping exercise in October indicated that 88,000 households were still in tents and were likely to remain in tents through the winter unless provided with alternative hosting arrangements.
In addition, there were approximately 50,000 foldable containers distributed to host EQ-affected households in this period in rural areas and in sites hosting refugees in Adiyaman and Hatay.
To develop common strategic program priorities for households living in precarious and temporary shelters, the Shelter Sector published a winterization strategy in early October. Shelter Sector closely worked with partners on technical aspects of upgrading containers for winter and provision of heaters.
As the shelter response progressed well into recovery, increasingly aligning with the scope and coordination mechanism of the pre-earthquake 3RP, it was agreed to hand over the leadership of the Shelter Sector Türkiye from IFRC to UNHCR, effective from January 2024 onwards, aligning with the Global Shelter Cluster co-leadership commitments.
To inform the transition and the Shelter Sector’s strategic priorities for the next year, the Sector hosted a lessons learned workshop at the end of November 2023.
NFI
Shelter
Need analysis
- The October 2023 neighbourhood site mapping assessment findings (DTM) indicate that around 800,000 people are still displaced, living in formal and informal sites, out of which 350,000 people are in informal settlements.
- While there was a massive shift from tents to containers July onwards, approximately 88,000 people are still living in tents (October 2023).
- Further, 46% of informal settlements consist of foldable containers (hosting 160,000 people), which are highly precarious and temporary shelters in need of upgrade and provision/replenishment of household items (based on rapid assessments). Shelter partners and authorities have provided tarpaulins
- Around half of the neighbourhoods reported that some or a lot of households in informal settlements are living next to their damaged dwellings and using their dwellings on a daily basis. Thus, there is a need to ramp up the support to households in repairing their low-damaged dwellings.
- Shelter Sector has been coordinating emerging needs through the Shelter Sector referral pathways, mainly reported from rural remote areas for pressing winterization needs such as heaters and winter clothes.
- A recent assessment done by TSS Sector found that sheltering continues to remain the biggest need through the winter period. With the hot summer months rapidly approaching, summerization kits, including shading materials will be needed.
Response
- Recent assessments (TSS, November 2023), also show that sheltering is still the biggest need for EQ-affected households across affected provinces. The Shelter Sector is advancing its coordination with the authorities, sector members and other sectors on addressing the continued humanitarian needs of the displaced households living in temporary precarious shelters. In this period the Shelter Sector coordinated and tried to strengthen the addressal of shelter needs referrals (received from partners and TSS Sector) of households living in precarious and temporary shelters.
- From October onwards, shelter partners have been assisting needs for winterisation, including provision of tarpaulins to prevent leaking of containers, provision of essential household items and safe heating of shelters. From October to December, shelter partners have reported 57,409 households assisted with shelter and household items.
- In addition, Shelter Sector partners have been providing winterization and fire safety key messaging to households along with winterization assistance. Shelter Sector is coordinating with shelter partners, TSS Sector, and AAP Working Group on dissemination of fire safety key messages.
- Shelter Sector is hosting regular centralized winterization coordination meetings in Gaziantep and also operational coordination meetings at hub level. The hub coordination meetings have transitioned to bilingual meetings in all hubs December onwards. Alongside, Shelter Sector is ramping up its efforts to coordinate with the provincial governments on needs and proposed response strategies and technical solutions
- The Shelter Sector has transitioned under UNHCR's leadership, with the soft transition initiated in December, and the official transition in January 2024. The IFRC Shelter Sector team is extending an overlap in its staffing to complement and support the UNHCR team through the transition process.
Gaps / challenges
In this period, Shelter Sector continued to face challenges in aligning Sector strategies with the government's plans. The government shared requests for needs in provinces. Shelter Sector coordinated a limited uptake from partners on these requests, but provided more direct assistance to communities living in informal clusters or precarious shelters on sites in coordination with local authorities. Although Shelter Sector received regular referrals through TSS Sector partners and communicated it to partners, due to operational constraints and other challenges, there has been very limited uptake on addressing referrals.
