“Making Displacement Safer: Locally-led DRR Solutions for Displaced Populations in Urban Areas (MDS)

Across the world, people are found coming to the urban cities fleeing from their homes due to natural disasters or human-made situations causing internal displacement of people. Internal displacement is a continuous phenomenon in Nepal. Though it has political and social causes, the recent study highlights natural disasters as the key driver. The Internal Displaced Persons (IDPs)  as a consequence of the displacement are found settled in different urban cities of Nepal including Kathmandu. The IDPs live under diverse risks, facing different problems ranging from basic needs of sanitation and good health to complex risks of disaster, secondary displacement, livelihood, legal identity, and human rights, posing threats to the achievement of SDGs goal no 11, the Sustainable Cities and Communities by Nepal by 2030 and posing threats to the lives of IDPs in Nepal. 

The issues and problems of  IDPs require multiple levelled interventions and social intervention is one of them. For that  Kadambari Memorial College (KMC)  worked in partnership with the National Society for Earthquake Technology( NSET), creating a multidisciplinary approach to addressing IDPs’ social issues and applying participatory Urban Living Lab (ULL) as the method of working with the communities, diligently facilitating several meetings and community dialogue, and co-creating an enabling environment for the participants. This social innovation lab co-designed three solutions which were most appropriate, feasible and impactful in solving the problems of IDPs contributing positively to different issues in individual-family (micro level) and community ( mezzo level) of their social ecology. Thereby reducing their vulnerabilities, building capacity and improving resilience, and strengthening  IDPs’ capacity to improve their situation and sustain themselves at present and in future from a case study of ULL intervention in Namuna Tole of  Kathmandu.

The project “Making Displacement Safer: Locally-led DRR Solutions for Displaced Populations in Urban Areas (MDS) was implemented in coordination with the Global Network for Disaster Reduction (GNDR) and funding support from USAID Bureau of Humanitarian Assistance (BHA)  by the National Society for Earthquake Technology ( NSET). The project duration was 5 months.