Shelter and Settlement Responses to Crises: Learning from the Past

This event brings together experiences from operational agencies in addressing urban crises and resilience to crises in urban environments. It seeks to promote the work of the Global Shelter Cluster and some of its activities which have focused on learning: the ‘Shelter Projects’ working group (which has taken forward work by cluster agencies with over 200 case studies or programmes including shelter response) and the ‘Settlement Approaches in Urban Areas’ working group. By looking at past experiences in preparedness and response, and how they addressed issues such as community, vulnerability and urban resilience, strong learnings for the future can be made for urban environments.

Beyond the compiled case studies, this group aims to share the experience of the Global Shelter Cluster in coordination. As such, it represents global consensus of operational humanitarian agencies on shelter-related issues. In 2016, cluster agencies assisted over 13 million crisis-affected households, many of whom were in urban environments.