The international community calls them “Internally Displaced People (IDP).” They live in makeshift camps where their houses are made of tarps, tents, and even of clothes, wash clothes, table clothes, and towels secured with pieces of woods and lengths of yarn. Yet, the IDP called these temporary shelters “home” and they call the camp their “neighborhood” because they move there with family, friends, and in most cases, the entire neighborhood agreed to set camp into the same place so they can be close to each other.

The word is out that the international community is in the process of moving a small number of IDP camps to more secure transitional shelters. “These camps are at high risks of flash flooding, landslides, mudslides in the event of heavy storms and rains, hurricanes, or other natural disasters,” a report says.

“I want to return to my home; not to move to a new neighborhood where there would be no guarantee I would be still with my friends,” said a camp leader. The IDPs are willing to return to their home or to start rebuilding as soon as the engineers would tell them that it is safe to do so.

The transitional shelters will meet the international standards. They will be built to last between 24 and 36 months. The IDPs living in the below international standard makeshift camps accept their condition until they can move out of the camps while the building of transitional shelters is the least favorable decision that can prevent a spree of diseases, crimes, security and protection mainly for women and children.

Even in the makeshift camps, the difference between “the have and the have not” or “used to have and never had anything” is noticeable. A great number of shelters are furnitured with carpets, flat screen TVs, DVD players, Stereo, coffee makers, and mattresses while in many others, people sleep on cartons and dirty clothes.

The construction of transitional shelters to receive the high risks IDP camps will be starting soon as the engineers are assessing buildings to determine which ones are safe for people to return to live in. The engineers also launch a website that gives step-by-step instructions on how to build hardened or natural disaster resistant shelters.