In a joint effort with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the Swedish furniture-retailer IKEA has created self-assembly huts that it says may be life-changing for refugees around the world.
Unlike the canvas tents and barracks that are commonly set up in refugee camps, these hard plastic huts are created to protect refugees from weather extremes and harsh winds and give displaced citizens a more homey place to stay.
IKEA reportedly took on the initiative to better house refugees and natural disaster survivors in order to help UNCHR find a way to house the 10.4 million refugees worldwide. Of those refugees, 3.5 million currently live in canvas tents that are unable to protect those inside from harsh conditions. The tents don’t last much longer than six months due to sand, wind and insects.
“These people are living under extremely difficult conditions,” says CEO of the IKEA foundation, Per Heggenes, “and we want to use part of IKEA’s profits to help them make a new start.”
“We’ve been working on this for three years and it’s … a significant investment. [We] hope that this will be a product that can be manufactured commercially and offered in the market to all organizations that are dealing with emergency and disaster situations.”
Thirteen huts were first used in August at the Dollo Ado refugee camp in southeastern Ethiopia, which houses approximately 190,000 Somali refugees. The site was chosen in part because of its harsh conditions.
The huts can sleep five people comfortably inside, which is reportedly twice the size of regulation refugee tents, and are expected to last six times as long as canvas tents.
The huts are equipped with solar paneled roofing as well, so persons living inside the huts don’t need to use candles or kerosene lamps. The roof also deflects about 70 percent of solar reflection keeping the inside cool during the day and warmer at night.
Olivier Delarue from UNHCR, which currently houses more than 10 million people worldwide, said “It’s essential to test these structures in a raw environment to get an impression of their durability.” Delarue added that he hopes these new shelters will provide “physical protection, but also emotional benefits like dignity and privacy.”
Right now the 188-square-foot huts, which are designed by IKEA, cost $7,000 and are made by a Swedish organization called the Refugee Housing Unit. Because the huts are being produced on a limited basis right now, officials say the huts are expensive, but designers anticipate the huts will cost about $1,000 once they are mass-produced.
During the pilot program, the IKEA foundation is supplying the huts, but it’s unclear how much of the costs the foundation will absorb if the huts are proven effective.
Some say IKEA may continue to foot the bill for the huts since the program is part of a PR-campaign to help the retail giant refurbish its image after it was discovered the company’s founder Ingvar Kamprad was part of a pro-Fascist group in Sweden during the 1940s.
IKEA designers reported that the small homes would take about four hours to put together — by hand and without any tools — but Ismael Abdullai Abdinoor, a Somali refugee in a camp with about 37,000 people, says the homes take an entire day to build.
“It’s a lot of work,” he says, “but the new houses seem much more stable than the huts and tents that are used elsewhere in the camp.”
Abdinoor said that whenever a structure arrives, he help build the hut, and steps in if something breaks.
If proven to be successful, the huts could be used to house a growing number of refugees in developing countries. According to a report in the Huffington Post, 80 percent of the world’s refugees live in developing countries.
In 2012, the world saw the largest number of new refugees since 1999, with an average of 23,000 new refugees every day.
The UN predicts this trend will continue, especially since in Syria alone, where it’s estimated more than 5 million people will become refugees within the next 10 years.
But Prof. Alexander Betts is a professor at the University of Oxford’s Refugee Studies Centre and the director of the Humanitarian Innovation Project. He cautions people not get too excited about the huts yet since “We don’t know enough to [say] whether it is an ideal solution yet.”
Betts added “there are reasons to believe it’s exciting: The idea of moving beyond the usual tent structures … that often characterize that sort of terrain in the Horn of Africa, to provide something more durable, more sustainable.”
He also cautioned that refugee populations may become more vulnerable if the private sector gets more involved. “If one had private sector companies working [in] camps for the wrong motives, who didn’t respect human rights or protection needs, that would be extremely problematic and would seriously undermine the UNHCR’s ability to ever work with the private sector again.”
While Betts said he does not think IKEA has bad intentions, he believes the UNHCR should create regulations for how private sector companies can contribute to efforts. “It can be very exciting, it can make a contribution, but it must be done in the right way,” Betts said.