With row upon row of tents neatly pitched on a vast area of cleared ground, the size of twenty football fields, its roads, health care centre and check point manned by the Haitian police and UN blue helmets, Corail Cesselesse looks like a recently built small town.

Located some 20 kilometres from the capital Port-au-Prince, Corail is now home to more than 1,300 families who lost everything in the 12 January earthquake.

Within days of the tragedy, large population displacements occurred, with tens of thousands of homeless people converging on free open spaces, in schools and other public and private buildings.

Soon after, spontaneous settlements mushroomed in and outside of the capital of Port-au-Prince and in many other parts of the country.

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"My house was completely destroyed and my children were terrified", says Guilaine Lapointe. We had no choice but to quickly find a place to shelter".

Guilaine and her family eventually found refuge in the courtyard of college Saint Louis de Gonzague, a private institution in the capital's Delmas 33 neighbourhood.

Public parks close to the destroyed Presidential palace were quickly taken over by the homeless and desperate crowds.

In the panic that followed the quake, survivors paid little attention to the potential dangers that their place of refuge could represent. Issues relating to site preparation were simply not taken into account, nor were immediate measures to improve the living conditions of the displaced.

"Days after the 12 January, our main goal was to avoid having blocks of concrete fall on our heads and because it wasn't raining, we were not concerned about flooding and landslide risks", says Ronald Vital who settled in Tabarre Issa camp.

Up to 50,000 displaced persons found refuge on the grounds of the Petion-ville golf club, which sprawls above Port-au-Prince. Of these, some 5,000 settled in areas declared by the Government of Haiti to be at high risk of flooding. 

With Haiti in the midst of  the rainy and season and with every likelihood that hurricanes will strike the island, many camps and settlements hosting tens of thousands of people are at grave risk of flooding. Many sites are difficult to access or are established on steep slopes or areas at risk of landslides, as is the case for the Vallée de Bourdon site, which lies beneath the main road to Petion-ville.

Coordinated efforts to encourage families to move away from high risk zones towards safer neighbouring areas continue.

As part of the global strategy, five options were identified by the Government of Haiti and the humanitarian community for people living in unsafe areas.
 
Option 1: The first, and preferred option, is for people to return to their homes, whenever deemed safe. This effort is led by the Government of Haiti, working with UN partners, which are carrying out structural assessments of houses and buildings and communicating which houses are safe, as well as answering community concerns and responding to their needs.

Option 2: People may also wish return to their home area if their houses are destroyed. This might involve building a temporary shelter on a plot of land, or moving to a "proximity site". This option involves the removal of rubble from affected areas by engineers from the Government of Haiti, the US army and a number of international organizations.

Option 3: Where they cannot go home, people may find a family to host them – perhaps relatives or friends. Numerous humanitarian actors are involved in supporting host communities.

Option 4: Where people cannot go home, or find a host family, they might be able to remain in the temporary settlement where they already are. IOM and its partners in the Camp Management, Camp Coordination Cluster (CCCM) and other clusters ensure that basic services are provided and that the settlements are healthy and safe.

Option 5: It may be that none of these first four options is available. In that case, IOM is part of a group of organizations working with the Government of Haiti to establish a series of new sites on the outskirts of Port-au-Prince. The responsibility for identifying new land and brokering agreements with landowners lies with the Government of Haiti.

Two sites have been established in the periphery of the capital, Corail Cesselesse and Tabarre Issa, which are managed by the American Refugee Committee and the NGO Concern respectively.

During the first two weeks of April, more than 500 families had been resettled in Corail and 1,300 in Corail Cesselesse with IOM's assistance.

IOM also lent its expertise to government counterparts to relocate displaced families living in the high risk areas from Vallée de Bourdon to Tabarre Issa and from Petion-ville golf club to Corail Cesselesse.

IOM's site planning teams also provide expertise in camp planning and management and in Corail Cesselesse, the Organization covered camp management needs during the second part of April.

"The relocation of families all took place on a voluntary basis. As families had several options, we had to carry out an intensive outreach effort to inform people," says IOM's Bertrand Martin.

This was particularly the case for the relocation of families to the Corail Cesselesse camp. Working with community representatives in the Petion-ville golf club camp, IOM presented all available options to families living in high risks zones. ‘Go and see' visits to Coral were also organized for community members, which allowed them to provide feedback to IOM as to how best to set up the facilities.

Information kiosks were also set up in Petion-ville with IOM and community representatives always at hand to answer questions from concerned families.

Maps and photos of the new site were also presented to affected families as was a list of all services and facilities that would be available.

"We also regularly provided flyers, posters and banners to keep the population informed and explained to them how the relocation would happen," says Martin.         

The relocation from Vallée Bourdon to Tabarrese Issa followed a similar approach after the US Army Corps of Engineers identified some 500 families who were most at risk.

IOM's Community mobilizers quickly moved in to explain to the families why they had to consider relocation to another safer site and to explain how the process would unfold.

"Engaging the families paid off as a genuine and constructive dialogue took place," says IOM's Martin. "As a result, we managed to dispel some of the misunderstandings and rumours that were abounding at the time of the relocation process."

The relocation to Corail Cesselesse took just over a fortnight with IOM team members always on the ground to meet the families as they arrived. After being registered, heads of families were provided with a registration card and the family taken to the plot of land where a family size tent had been erected by IOM shelter teams.

As the hurricane season arrives, IOM is now setting up transitional shelters. With a living space of up to 18 square metres, these will give families more protection from the elements.

"I feel much better here," says Rodrigue Paulinis, who has settled with his wife and two children in Corail. "This place feels more secure for me and my family. The only important missing thing is work. Despite this, we will stay for the time being."

IOM, which leads the Camp Coordination, Camp Management cluster, lends its support to the American Refugee Committee now in charge of managing daily operations at Corail Cesselesse.  IOM backs another 189 humanitarian partners involved in providing assistance to displaced populations living in some 1,400 sites in and around the capital Port-au-Prince.