What makes a house resilient in humanitarian shelter and settlement programming?

<p dir="ltr">“Resilience” is a buzzword that is increasing in popularity, particularly in the humanitarian sector. The cost of humanitarian action is increasing year-on-year, and so finding ways to address the underlying causes of disasters and conflict is key to supporting efforts to meet humanitarian need with the limited funding, time, and resources the sector has access to. In line with these concerns, the rise of “resilience humanitarianism” and localisation agendas that focus on community resilience building have seen a move away from traditional response-based humanitarian action towards a longer-term approach. However, the concept of resilience is broad and can be difficult to operationalise, particularly in humanitarian contexts. For shelter actors, the provision of “resilient” housing to affected populations is a core priority. This raises the question: what characteristics should define a “resilient house” in humanitarian contexts? This paper explores the concepts of “hard” and “soft” resilience and lays out the way in which humanitarian actors could start to operationalise resilience to address the core health and wellbeing needs of those affected by humanitarian crises. It ends by examining the wider implications of placing the “resilient” characteristics of affected populations at the heart of humanitarian shelter and settlement responses and explores how this might be enacted in practice.<br></p>