With financial support from UNDP, UN-HABITAT has been providing broad technical and policy support to BRR. An agreement signed between BRR and UN-HABITAT in August 2005 includes a wide range of activities: advocacy for a community-based approach and land titles to secure tenure, formulating guidelines on community mapping and basic building codes, monitoring and evaluation, the dissemination of policy information to local governments and communities. For example, for advocacy 100,000 leaflets were distributed to families. The same was done with 30,000 comic books, which support monitoring entitlements to housing and land.

An important element of this partnership is the Shelter Working Group, which UN-HABITAT co-chairs with the Public Works Department. The Group provides a platform for both in country and external actors to deliberate on policy issues, better field coordination and logistics. In 2005, BRR encouraged Universitas Syiah Kuala, in co-operation with UN-HABITAT, to provide 3rd party monitoring and evaluation. The Banda Aceh based state university monitored settlement recovery in most tsunami-affected areas of Aceh. All results were made public in full and can be downloaded from www.unhabitat-indonesia.org.  UN-HABITAT also contributed evaluations of progress and of issues concerning settlement recovery. These were also published in BRR reports.

Planning in action

One year after the Indian Ocean Tsunami of December 26th, 2004, the UN agencies initiated, within the framework of UNDP's ERTR program for sustainable reconstruction, the UN-Joint Programming (UNJP) in Meuraxa, Banda Aceh, and in Teluk Dalam, South Nias. The overall purpose of UNJP was to promote a well planned and coordinated recovery at local level, by means of joint UN actions and assistance programs to communities and local authorities. In 2006, UN-HABITAT entered into partnerships with local government institutions and non-governmental organizations. In both locations, it facilitated an Urban Forum. It delegated teams of facilitators for spatial planning to the forum.

UN-HABITAT’s support on planning has been an opportunity to strengthen local capacity and governance, which will still be much needed during the years of reconstruction to come. Planning activities by UN-HABITAT have also been an instrument for the formation of operational links between reconstruction and long-term development goals. These activities provided space for a proactive conflict management. A forward-looking thinking, common visions and goals were developed.