{"id":208216,"date":"2012-04-26T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-03-12T19:31:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/?p=208216"},"modified":"2019-03-12T19:31:56","modified_gmt":"2019-03-12T19:31:56","slug":"auto-insert-208216","status":"publish","type":"document","link":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/document\/auto-insert-208216\/","title":{"rendered":"Exhibition highlights UNRWA infrastructure and camp improvement program – UNRWA press release"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Space, Time, Dignity, Rights: Improving Palestine refugee camps<\/strong><\/p><\/div>\n

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26 April 2012, Berlin\/Jerusalem — Between international politics and everyday life, transition and continuity, waiting room and home. Against the backdrop of these contradictions, today, roughly one-third of the nearly five million Palestine refugees served by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) live in refugee camps in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip.<\/p><\/div>\n

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Over a period of more than 60 years, temporary tent cities have developed into complex living environments, some of which rank among the densest urban environments in the world. Congested and poverty-stricken, they reflect the extraordinary resilience and agency of the refugees who inhabit them. The exhibition, which will be shown at Deutsches Architektur Zentrum (DAZ) from 9 May to 3 June 2012, not only displays the projects of the infrastructure and camp improvement programme of UNRWA, but provides insights into a new culture of joint planning with refugees which has emerged and fundamentally influenced all those involved.<\/p><\/div>\n

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Motivated by a sense of urgency with regard to the extreme poverty, congestion, and deteriorating environment embodied by many refugee camps, UNRWA and host governments met with representatives of refugees and the donor community for the 2004 Geneva Conference in order to target worsening living conditions in camps. UNRWA used the new window of opportunity created by the Geneva Conference to set up the infrastructure and camp improvement programme (ICIP) in order to engage with these issues.<\/p><\/div>\n

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Since 2007, BMZ has supported UNRWA with the development of this programme. This involves improving, in a holistic, methodical and comprehensive manner, the refugee camps’ physical and social environment through the introduction of a participatory, community-driven planning approach. The Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH is advising UNRWA ICIP with this innovative methodology on behalf of BMZ.<\/p><\/div>\n

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The exhibition “Space, Time, Dignity, Rights” includes four installations that give insight into how participants in camp improvement projects in the West Bank, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon seek to balance their refugee identity and political rights with their day-to-day needs as residents of congested and impoverished camps. In this process, they deal with questions such as:<\/p><\/div>\n