Ambika Pandit, TNN | Jun 20, 2013, 06.09 AM IST

NEW DELHI: On Monday, residents of Old Usmanpur—a cluster of 500 river bed dwellings along the Yamuna Pushta—had watched the river rise and hoped that the flood would spare their homes. The settlement is no longer visible.

On a recent visit to a camp near Atmeh, just inside Syria near the Turkish border, some 21,000 people were sheltering amid hellish conditions.

Heavy rain leaked into the tents and had turned the clay soil into thick slippery mud, raw sewage flowed between the tents. The food being distributed was insufficient and of very poor quality and large numbers of people complained of medical conditions for which they were receiving no treatment.

This article is the second in a two-part series on the development of and controversy over Corail-Cesselesse camp.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Jun 19 2013 (Haiti Grassroots Watch) - Despite the unforgiving sun and its sweltering heat, Joel Monfiston is working, hammering a piece of worn plywood, watering flowers and picking the weeds out from between rocks and pebbles.

Monfiston, a 34-year-old father and husband, is one of about 10,000 people who live in what was publicised as the model settlement for the 1.3 million Haitians displaced by the January 2010 earthquake.

Highlights

• On 17 June 2013, AFAD - the Disaster and Emergency Management Agency of Government of Turkey - announced that the total number of Syrians registered and accommodated in 20 camps in 10 provinces has decreased to 199,083 including 371 Syrians receiving medical treatment in hospitals. AFAD reported that during the last 24hrs (17-18 June), 1,272 new arrival Syrians were registered and accommodated in the camps and 2,194 Syrians voluntarily returned to Syria.

For the first time in nearly a year, a UN-led aid convoy has been permitted to cross into non-government controlled parts of Myanmar’s Kachin State to deliver food and other lifesaving relief to communities displaced by conflict.

This World Refugee Day, Swedish furniture maker IKEA offers up a new design for a shelter that would offer more privacy and comfort than the ubiquitous canvas tent.

Read the full report from the Christian Science Monitor.

The idea of using history to shed light on the present has significant and growing support within the humanitarian community, but remains the exception rather than the rule.

This HPG Working Paper provides an introduction to the emergence of the international humanitarian system and the factors that have shaped its evolution. It argues that greater knowledge of the system’s past will help practitioners and policy-makers think through today’s challenges and will contribute to a more effective platform for future reforms.

This map illustrates satellite-detected shelters and other buildings at the Al Zaatari refugee camp in Mafraq Governorate, Jordan. As of 16 June 2013 a total of 27,996 shelters were detected as well as 1,657 infrastructure and support buildings within the 531.3 hectares of the camp.

Burma: emergency relief for Kachin refugees – finally, after a blockade that lasted for one year

Göttingen, 17. Juni 2013