Integrate without confining. UNHCR's thorny challenge to humanitarian and architecture aid
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.26754/ojs_zarch/zarch.2024229878Keywords:
UNHCR, Refugees, Refugee camps, Camp alternative policy, Urban integration, Humanitarian architectureAbstract
Since its founding in 1950, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has led the international policy of hosting refugees and displaced persons, using refugee camps as the main physical protection strategy. Although this option has solved and does solve reception emergencies, it tends to become entrenched over time and fails to provide feasible alternatives for subsistence and political autonomy, which has led those hosted to live in dependence on humanitarian aid, undocumented status, and hopelessness, contrary to expectations. In response, in 2014 UNHCR adopted the Camp Alternative Policy, which focuses on permanently hosting refugees in consolidated settlements to improve their inclusion and quality of life. Beyond the meager results obtained so far with this new policy, a critical reflection is presented on the social and spatial implications of an approach to the catch that questions how aid and humanitarian architecture have been understood, generating unprecedented challenges in design and management. Despite its implementation difficulties, this shift in strategy makes several timely proposals which, in our professional and academic understanding, are not being given the attention they deserve.
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References
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