A Review of the Mozambique Floods Response Shelter Working Group

This review of the Mozambique Floods Shelter Working Group (MSWG) is the third review commissioned by the Shelter Department of the International Federation of Red Cross and Crescent Societies (IFRC) Secretariat. This learning is intended to inform future field experiences in Shelter activities and Shelter Cluster Coordination. As described in the Terms of Reference (TOR- Annex 4) this review is intentionally very IFRC-centric in its focus; while its contents will contribute to the critical engagement and advocacy the IFRC maintains towards the broader Cluster process/UN system, this is not the primary goal of this review. The focus is very much on the mechanics of the Emergency Shelter Coordination function and the service this entails. This review was disproportionately focused on the interaction between the RC/RC partners and the SCCT. This was inevitable, as personality issues clouded the early stages of the deployment, and it took time for a more productive relationship to emerge. Equally, the Mozambique case study is an important one, despite being what some saw as an emergency too small to merit the full-scale Cluster rollout. Shelter Cluster participation levels along the lines of Mozambique will easily represent the majority of cases that the IFRC will face in future, and not the extreme models of the South Asia earthquake and Yogyakarta.