The International Organization for Migration (IOM) and the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) have assumed joint leadership of the new Global Shelter, Land and Site Coordination Cluster, marking a major step forward in delivering faster, fairer, and more effective humanitarian assistance worldwide.
"This is about putting people at the centre of humanitarian response," said IOM Director General Amy Pope. "When shelter, land and site coordination work together, families are safer, communities are more stable, and recovery can begin sooner. It gives people not just support in a crisis, but a stronger foundation to rebuild their lives with dignity."
The new approach brings together shelter assistance, site coordination, and housing, land and property support under a single, integrated framework. It is a critical outcome of both the Humanitarian Reset - the system-wide effort to simplify humanitarian coordination, reduce duplication, and make responses faster, more accountable, and closer to the needs of people affected by crises and displacement - and IFRC's Renewal, the organization's strategic reorientation to focus on where and how it can have the most impact at the local level.
Building on their long-standing collaboration, IOM and IFRC will share responsibility for global coordination in both conflict and disaster settings. The Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) will continue to lead coordination on housing, land and property issues, ensuring continuity and strong technical leadership.
The new global platform reflects the realities of how people in crisis live, whether in camps, informal sites, host communities, and urban neighbourhoods or rural areas. It recognizes the broader impact of shelter, not just in providing safety and stability, but also as a critical enabler of other humanitarian outcomes such as health and education, and will serve as a key platform for coordination across different sectors in displacement settings.
It also considers how climate change and environmental pressures shape where and how people live, and places a strong emphasis on community engagement and locally led responses. By involving communities directly in decisions that affect their lives, it supports solutions to displacement that are led by communities themselves and built to last.
"This new cluster represents a shift in mindset to a truly place-based, people-centred approach. Its remit starts with where people actually live - their homes, neighbourhoods and communities - and organises support around that. And we shift leadership closer to those contexts, enabling national and local actors to lead coordination wherever possible, with international partners supporting rather than substituting local capacity," said Jagan Chapagain, Secretary General and CEO of the IFRC.
The impact of this closer collaboration is already visible. During the recent floods in Sri Lanka, IOM and IFRC worked side by side to support affected communities, combining emergency shelter assistance with site coordination and longer-term recovery planning, demonstrating how integrated coordination can accelerate support and improve outcomes for families.
IOM and IFRC also thank UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, as well as UN-Habitat and NRC for their close collaboration throughout the transition and for their continued partnership as this new global approach moves forward.
Notes
The Global Shelter, Land and Site Coordination Cluster integrates the functions of Shelter, Camp Coordination and Camp Management (CCCM), and Housing, Land and Property (HLP) into a single global coordination platform. IOM and IFRC jointly serve as Global Providers of Last Resort (POLR) for the SLSC Global Cluster, while NRC retains the Global POLR role for HLP.
