The refugee camp in Afghanistan [Khost] is at first sight a paradox; in reality a [further] demonstration of the intrinsic instability of a whole geopolitical sector.
Refugee from Pakistan’s North Waziristan, an area currently theatre of military actions.
Refugees in the whole Khost province are more than 280,000 and in the Gulan settlement, not yet a camp, there are more than six thousand families [even though movements into the camp are still on-going, involving both people from other areas in Afghanistan and new arrivals from Pakistan].
In this context the overall scope of work is twofold: camp planning and winterization of existing tents.
These are the major ‘technical’ aims. But, as always, day by day activity is much more articulated and demanding than that.
Winterization, one of the main gals of the consultancy, is described in Wikipedia as follows:
In emergency or disaster response situations, such as managed by the UNHCR, winterization activities include the distribution of items including blankets, quilts, kerosene, heating stoves, jerry cans, as well as thermal floor mats and insulation to make tents warmer and more resistant to harsh winter conditions.
Inevitably, this raises the issue of appropriateness of equipment, and in general the problem of logistics in emergency situations: as long as climatic conditions of each specific location of the planet are nowadays well documented, how comes that the tents supplied to a mountain region of Afghanistan turned out to be unsuitable for that place?
In Gulan the answer to the inadequacy of the available tents is forcedly basic: each tent will be given a stove [and a determined quantity of fire wood], with the necessity to accommodate the stove in the safest possible way, taking into account the risks related to the use of stoves in a tent clearly not designed for that.
The proposed solution is to use a sort of internal sandbag wall, 60cm high, that refugees can build by themselves: a strategy we already used in other circumstances and now adapted to this specific situation.
This solution protects the side of tents and provides people sitting on the inside floor with an insulation from external chill, while allowing an easy maintenance of exhaust pipes. In addition, sandbags act as a thermal mass and facilitate the placing of the waterproof floor sheets.
Even though the whole operation is not an ideal solution because the tent itself is very light, and not exactly waterproof, in specific circumstances the magnitude of difficulties imposes unconventional measures.
After some tests the sandbag wall has been used extensively, and with good results.
Concerning camp planning, it was proposed a layout of the tents based on the principle of ‘clusters’ aggregation’, where each cluster puts together families that are related between each other. The tents are surrounded by a fence for privacy, and each family is provided with a double pit latrine.
This approach is quite different from the standard orthogonal grid that is normally adopted in refugee camps: a difference justified by previous experiences, where the military camp [or prison] arrangement resulted totally unfamiliar to the traditional way of living of the refugees.
In particular, the themes related to privacy and gender issues as well as the implications of family obligations are in contrast with the ‘standards’, as reported in the Hand book of procedures and inspired by an approach that is as ‘functional’ as insensitive to local habits.
RV
Camp planning and winterization systems in Afghanistan
The refugee camp in Afghanistan [Khost] is at first sight a paradox; in reality a [further] demonstration of the intrinsic instability of a whole geopolitical sector.
Refugee from Pakistan’s North Waziristan, an area currently theatre of military actions.
Refugees in the whole Khost province are more than 280,000 and in the Gulan settlement, not yet a camp, there are more than six thousand families [even though movements into the camp are still on-going, involving both people from other areas in Afghanistan and new arrivals from Pakistan].
In this context the overall scope of work is twofold: camp planning and winterization of existing tents.
These are the major ‘technical’ aims. But, as always, day by day activity is much more articulated and demanding than that.
Winterization, one of the main gals of the consultancy, is described in Wikipedia as follows:
In emergency or disaster response situations, such as managed by the UNHCR, winterization activities include the distribution of items including blankets, quilts, kerosene, heating stoves, jerry cans, as well as thermal floor mats and insulation to make tents warmer and more resistant to harsh winter conditions.
Inevitably, this raises the issue of appropriateness of equipment, and in general the problem of logistics in emergency situations: as long as climatic conditions of each specific location of the planet are nowadays well documented, how comes that the tents supplied to a mountain region of Afghanistan turned out to be unsuitable for that place?
In Gulan the answer to the inadequacy of the available tents is forcedly basic: each tent will be given a stove [and a determined quantity of fire wood], with the necessity to accommodate the stove in the safest possible way, taking into account the risks related to the use of stoves in a tent clearly not designed for that.
The proposed solution is to use a sort of internal sandbag wall, 60cm high, that refugees can build by themselves: a strategy we already used in other circumstances and now adapted to this specific situation.
This solution protects the side of tents and provides people sitting on the inside floor with an insulation from external chill, while allowing an easy maintenance of exhaust pipes. In addition, sandbags act as a thermal mass and facilitate the placing of the waterproof floor sheets.
Even though the whole operation is not an ideal solution because the tent itself is very light, and not exactly waterproof, in specific circumstances the magnitude of difficulties imposes unconventional measures.
After some tests the sandbag wall has been used extensively, and with good results.
Concerning camp planning, it was proposed a layout of the tents based on the principle of ‘clusters’ aggregation’, where each cluster puts together families that are related between each other. The tents are surrounded by a fence for privacy, and each family is provided with a double pit latrine.
This approach is quite different from the standard orthogonal grid that is normally adopted in refugee camps: a difference justified by previous experiences, where the military camp [or prison] arrangement resulted totally unfamiliar to the traditional way of living of the refugees.
In particular, the themes related to privacy and gender issues as well as the implications of family obligations are in contrast with the ‘standards’, as reported in the Hand book of procedures and inspired by an approach that is as ‘functional’ as insensitive to local habits.
RV
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