Policy brief #3: The right to decent housing in a context of urban displacement and fragility

This is an output from a project that was part of the fifth Applied Research Fund (ARF) on mixed migration flows. The ARF is executed by NWO-WOTRO in close collaboration with the Platform. The call aims to strengthen the evidence-base for security and rule of law policies and programming, addressing the root causes, and the dynamics and consequences of mixed migration flows within and from fragile and conflict-affected settings.

People who flee their habitual residencies in search of security need to find a new shelter in displacement. Long-term and protracted armed conflicts can place a considerable burden on the urban centres that have better security conditions. This policy brief describes three types of housing arrangements that are sought after by urban Internally Displaced People (IDPs) in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). It is shown that upon arrival people seek refuge in host families, but quickly try to find a rental home soon after. On the longer term, only a small number of IDPs manage to purchase their own residential plot. Disputes about the borders of plots are common in the densely populated neighbourhoods that accommodate large number of IDPs. Such disputes are worsened by insecure tenure conditions and by contested and overlapping claims to land that can aggravate within a fragile context.