NRC Shelter-HLP Project

Preliminary Findings

And

Cautious Suggestions

The Challenge:

• Humanitarian Organisations often get stuck -- or realise too late that something is becoming unstuck --when it comes to:

• Housing, Land and Property Rights

• Land Access

• Tenure Security

Some help is at hand…

• A network of different international rights-based instruments

• A history of trainings focused on HLP

• Upcoming Resources Guide, developed by the ESC HLP Working Group

But,

• There is often not enough practical guidance for implementing according to international principles

• The rule of law doesn’t stretch very far in some places

• Intractable HLP problems do not respect project deadlines

• We are not always the answer to the problem

Some preliminary suggestions 1:

• Map all of the locally applicable tenure-security instruments

• On a range of ‘soft’ to ‘hard’, and ‘efficient’ to ‘non-efficient

• Including ‘customary’ and ‘formal’

• Decide which set of instruments you will engage with

• Why these ones?

• What are the pros and cons?

• What are the risks?

• What is the Plan B?

Some preliminary suggestions 2:

• Think: all aspects of The Right To Adequate Housing

• Think: Individual -- and Community

• Think: the relationship between HLP and engineering

Some preliminary suggestions 3:

• First, Do No Harm

• Humanitarians are not always the answer

• ‘How to take NO for an answer’

• ‘Customary law works, until something changes’

• How to help people cope with the problem, rather than solving the problem for them?

Questions or comments?