IOM this week reached a milestone with the completion of 30,000 of
a planned 38,000 flood resistant, self-built one-room shelters for
families affected by 2010 Pakistan floods.

The shelters will house some 210,000 vulnerable people made
homeless by last year's disastrous floods in Sindh, Punjab and
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provinces.

The 2010 flooding across Pakistan destroyed an estimated 860,000
homes and to date aid agencies have constructed a total of some
61,000 transitional, one-room shelters for vulnerable affected
families.

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target="_blank" title="">IOM Pakistan: One Room Shelter
Program

The programme, which is funded by Japan, USAID's Office for
Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA), the European Commission's
Office for Humanitarian Aid and Civil Protection (ECHO) and the
Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), provides
flexible, needs-based cash support directly to flood-affected
families, and is supported by a network of 40 national and
international NGO partners.

"Beneficiaries are chosen according to vulnerability criteria,
which help us identify those who are most in need. With such a huge
number of people in need, we can't help everyone. Targeting is
crucial, as well as an explanation for why we must prioritize
certain groups," says IOM Shelter Programme Manager Steve
Hutcheson.

Beneficiaries are organized into village councils, who nominate
trusted focal points to receive and distribute the cash support.
Cash support is provided in tranches, each of which is conditional
on the entire group achieving a construction milestone, such as
completion of the foundation, walls and roof of the shelter, says
Hutcheson.

Key to the programme's success is the provision of technical
support, guidance and on-site training to implementing partners,
beneficiaries, masons and construction workers. IOM engineers
explain and demonstrate how to incorporate low or no cost disaster
risk reduction techniques into the shelter design. Illustrated
posters explaining the techniques are displayed in prominent
communal areas in villages, and benefit the entire village.

"I used these reinforcement techniques in the walls and corners
of the house. I never used bamboo in the walls before and it is not
common practice here. I also tried to rebuild the house in a safer
place," says Hafiz Jalil, a beneficiary in Ghous Bux in northern
Sindh.

IOM hopes to complete the programme for 38,000 self-built
one-room shelters for 2010 flood victims by year end. It has
already begun work on a new programme funded by UK DFID to build
7,800 more shelters for victims of the 2011 floods in Sindh and
Balochistan.

For more information please contact:

Ammarah Mubarak 

IOM Islamabad

Tel: +92.51.283.1041-3

E-mail: "mailto:pessu@iom.int">pessu@iom.int