SHELTER WOES IN KYRGYZSTAN

In downtown Osh in southern Kyrgyzstan, heaps of rubble lie in the streets, just outside the charred walls of destroyed homes. The debris makes the streets so narrow in some places that trucks cannot deliver the construction materials provided by international aid organizations for a now urgent rebuilding effort. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said in a 3 September report that 1,889 compounds were damaged or destroyed in the June 2010 events. Of these 1,445 were in and around Osh, while 444 were in Jalalabad town and the surrounding area. (The Jalalabad figure has since been revised up to 454.) Of all the compounds surveyed, 90 percent were so severely damaged that they will need to be fully reconstructed. However, efforts to provide shelter for more than 10,000 people left homeless since then did not get into full gear until this month. By 24 September, 1,034 foundations had been laid, 58 new homes had roofs, and three were nearing completion. The international cluster of humanitarian agencies tackling the task, coordinated by the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), is racing against time to meet a 1 November target date for its Emergency Transitional Shelter Project.