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Tent Community in Kashmir, 2005: To IDP or Not to IDP?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 April 2013

Stephanie Rosborough
Stephanie Rosborough*
Affiliation:
Division of International Health and Humanitarian Programs, Department of Emergency Medicine, Brigham and Women’s Hospital
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On the Cover
Information
Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness , Volume 3 , Issue 2 , June 2009 , pp. 63
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Disaster Medicine and Public Health, Inc. 2009

Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistani-administered Kashmir, was devastated by a powerful earthquake on October 8, 2005, that measured 7.6 on the Richter scale. More than 79,000 people were killed, and in excess of 3.3 million Pakistanis were made homeless by the quake.

An estimated 97% of homes in Muzaffarabad were either completely destroyed or rendered uninhabitable. People were afraid to stay inside the buildings that still stood, fearing the strong aftershocks that for weeks afterward flattened structures that had survived the initial earthquake.

The cover photo, taken 1 week after the earthquake, shows one of the many tent communities that sprouted up around Muzaffarabad. By the time foreign aid arrived, many locals had already constructed makeshift shelters like these, made from large advertisements scavenged from nearby billboards. These tent communities were usually located in the inhabitants’ own neighborhoods, often right beside their destroyed homes.

At first, these tent communities caused confusion among aid agencies. Should they be classified as “IDP (internally displaced person) camps” and given the same services? Are people who are essentially camping out in their own backyard even considered “displaced”? After all, the people in tent communities used the same markets, schools, and health centers that they had before the quake, provided they were still operational.

In the end, aid agencies coordinated to provide the tent communities with food, proper shelter, and other necessities, and to rebuild local services in time for the coming winter. Our team from the International Rescue Committee, with participants from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the Harvard School of Public Health, provided aid throughout Kashmir and the North-West Frontier province.

Get your photograph of a disaster event/response effort considered for the cover of Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness. See the Instructions for Authors at http://www.dmphp.org or the back of the issue for details.