Running Shelter Programmes for Displaced Families: A Coordination Guide
Emergency shelter coordination for displaced families rests on three numbers fixed before anything is ordered: 3.5 m² of covered living space per person, 45 m² of site per person, and 15–20 m² of relief storage per 100 people. Cluster roles, pipelines and prepositioning all follow from them.
What does emergency shelter coordination actually involve?
It means one set of standards, one map of who is doing what, and one supply pipeline, so that fifty agencies do not build fifty different camps. At global level that job sits with the Global Shelter Cluster, an Inter-Agency Standing Committee mechanism co-chaired by IFRC and UNHCR. IFRC convenes the cluster in disaster settings and UNHCR leads it in conflict settings, which is why the same shelter standards appear in both worlds.
South Sudan shows how this works on the ground. The South Sudan Shelter and NFI Cluster was launched in 2011, operates in all ten states and the Abyei Administrative Area, and is led by IOM with the Norwegian Refugee Council as co-lead. In 2025 it had 23 active partners: 2 UN agencies, 7 international NGOs and 14 national NGOs. Partners deliver through in-kind assistance, cash and vouchers, a combination of the two, or repairs and upgrades in IDP sites. IOM also manages the cluster's common pipeline, which holds materials in strategic locations for partners to draw on.
Coordination is not a meeting. It is a pipeline with stock in the right place before the need appears.
How big is the need, and how far does it stretch?
In South Sudan it stretches thin. The 2026 Humanitarian Needs and Response Plan puts 6.7 million people in need of shelter and non-food item assistance, with 28 per cent facing critical shelter challenges. The cluster targets 1.5 million and prioritises 882,000, about 13 per cent of those in need, against requirements of US$51 million and prioritised requirements of US$30 million. Upper Nile, Jonglei and Unity are named as the hardest hit, and the plan notes that many families live in open spaces, public buildings or informal sites.
The same plan lists 1.4 million people in need of camp coordination and camp management support, with 736,000 targeted. Read together, these figures make every shelter decision a rationing decision. A programme that over-specifies one site, or loses stock to damp and delay, is spending cover that another family needed.
What standards fix the plan for a displaced family?
Four numbers carry most of the weight, all drawn from the UNHCR Emergency Handbook entry on emergency shelter solutions and standards, last updated on 21 January 2026:
3.5 m² of covered living space per person in tropical or warm climates, excluding cooking or kitchen space.
A height of at least 2 m at the lowest point, with more preferable for ventilation.
4.5–5.5 m² of indoor living space per person where cold, wet or snowy weather lasts 3 to 5 months, with ceilings capped at 2 m to limit the volume to heat. In arid climates with both cold and hot seasons, UNHCR tells planners to use the cold-climate figure.
Family shelter before communal accommodation, for privacy, psychological comfort and emotional safety.
A family of five therefore needs 17.5 m² of covered space in a warm climate. That is the logic behind the 18 m² geodesic family tent developed by ICRC, IFRC and UNHCR, which is designed for five people and specified for a five-year shelf life in normal warehousing. The handbook adds that locally available, sustainably sourced materials come first, and that material should be imported only if adequate quantities cannot quickly be found in-country. Our view: write that order of preference into the programme document, because it decides what you stock, what you order and how much storage you need.
Sphere figures reach most planners through UNHCR, which treats the Sphere standards as the recognised quantifiable minimum. They are minimums, not targets. A site that meets exactly 3.5 m² has met the floor.
For a broader view of tents, sheeting and the structures around them, our overview of the role of temporary shelters in emergency response is the place to start.
How do you plan a site for displaced families?
Start from land, not tents. UNHCR's camp planning standards.pdf) set the standard at 45 m² per person across the whole camp. Of that, 30 m² covers roads, footpaths, sanitation, firebreaks, water storage, distribution points, markets, relief storage and the shelter plots, and 15 m² is household garden. Thirty-five m² is the acceptable range, 30–34 m² is unacceptable and 29 m² or less is critical.
The same document gives the rules that keep a site safe:
Fire: a 30 m firebreak every 300 m, and at least 2 m between structures, using twice the structure height as the working distance.
Gradient: 1 to 5 per cent, ideally 2 to 4 per cent, with proper drainage wherever there is a rainy season or flash floods.
Planning units: a family of 4–6 persons, a community of 16 families (about 80 people), a block of 16 communities (about 1,250), a sector of 4 blocks (about 5,000) and a settlement of 4 sectors (about 20,000).
WASH ratios: one communal latrine per 20 persons in the emergency phase, one tap stand per 80 persons within 200 m of the household, and 20 litres of water per person per day.
Run the arithmetic early. A 20,000-person settlement needs 900,000 m² of land, or 90 hectares, at the 45 m² standard. A 5,000-person sector needs 22.5 hectares. If the land offered is smaller, the shortfall shows up as overcrowding, not as a planning footnote.
The document also warns that what is adequate in an emergency, such as sheeting, tents and a tight camp area, cannot be regarded as adequate in protracted displacement. Coordination has to plan the second year while it is delivering the first week.
Who needs to be in the room?
Shelter does not stand alone, and the handbook says as much: when WASH facilities are provided at family level, more living space should be factored in, and shelter teams are told to coordinate closely with WASH actors. In practice four parties have to agree before a layout is final:
The shelter cluster and CCCM lead, who own the standards, the site plan and the allocation of plots.
WASH partners, who need the latrine, tap stand and drainage ratios built into the plot grid, not squeezed in afterwards.
Logistics and supply, who turn the population figure into a stock requirement, a storage footprint and a delivery schedule.
The supplier of structures, who can say honestly how fast a warehouse or a communal hall can be erected and what ground it needs.
The usual gap is the handover between the second and third of those. A site plan is signed off with a population target, and nobody converts it into square metres of dry storage until the first consignment is already on the road.
What should be in storage before the roads close?
Enough dry, ordered space to hold the stock, and it has to be in place before the rains. South Sudan has 20,000 km of roads, of which only 400 km are paved, and WFP reports that in the rainy season most roads, especially rural ones, are completely inaccessible. The response plan makes prepositioning of emergency supplies central to rapid response, alongside early warning and informed site selection.
The camp planning standards give the conversion that links a population to a building: 15–20 m² of relief storage per 100 persons. For a 5,000-person sector that is 750–1,000 m². For a 20,000-person settlement it is 3,000–4,000 m². Storage life shapes the stock plan too. The geodesic tent is specified for a five-year shelf life in store, and the IFRC and ICRC tarpaulin specification gives an expected life of at least four years in the strongest tropical conditions. Neither figure survives damp, heat and rough handling in an open yard.
This is where we work. The family tents, sheeting and kits themselves come through the cluster pipeline and agency procurement. The covered, dry space that keeps them in condition is what SLS supplies, through Hallgruppen modular and semi-permanent warehouses, rub halls, frame tents and mobile storage units, held and delivered in-country from Juba. See our warehouse and structures range, and our guide to sizing a modular warehouse for humanitarian field operations for the next step after the square-metre figure above.
UN and NGO buyers can check our authorised-distributor status and UNGM registration before an RFQ goes out.
Frequently asked questions
How much covered space does each displaced person need?
At least 3.5 m² of covered living space per person in tropical or warm climates, excluding cooking space, per the UNHCR Emergency Handbook. In cold climates lasting 3 to 5 months the minimum rises to 4.5–5.5 m² of indoor space.
How much land does a displacement camp need?
UNHCR's camp planning standards.pdf) set 45 m² per person, of which 30 m² covers services, roads, firebreaks and plots and 15 m² is household garden. A camp of 20,000 people therefore needs 90 hectares.
Who coordinates shelter in South Sudan?
The South Sudan Shelter and NFI Cluster, led by IOM with the Norwegian Refugee Council as co-lead, which had 23 active partners in 2025. IOM also runs the cluster's common pipeline of pre-positioned materials.
How much warehouse space does a camp need for relief items?
UNHCR's camp planning standards.pdf) give 15–20 m² of storage per 100 persons, or 3,000–4,000 m² for a settlement of 20,000.
How many people in South Sudan need shelter support in 2026?
The 2026 HNRP counts 6.7 million people in need of shelter and NFI assistance, and prioritises 882,000, about 13 per cent.
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Specialized Logistics Solutions is an in-country authorised distributor based in Juba, with 35 years of supply-chain experience in high-risk environments, authorised for Aquatabs and Medentech-Kersia, P&G Purifier of Water, Oxfam tanks and Butyl, Multiquip and Aussie Pumps, and Hallgruppen structures, and a UNGM-registered vendor (No. 380716). In the 2024-2025 South Sudan response we deployed more than 52 million Aquatabs and 3.28 million P&G PUR sachets, running procurement, customs, Juba warehousing and last-mile delivery ourselves. Request a quotation from SLS with your site population and we will size the storage for it.
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