Core sectors
Camp coordination and camp management
The Camp Coordination and Camp Management sector is one of DRC’s five core sectors of intervention.
Camp Coordination and Camp Management (CCCM) is central to DRC’s vision and mission in ensuring that displaced persons living in camps and camp-like settings are protected from harm, can enjoy their human rights, have equitable access to services, and can participate meaningfully in taking decisions that affect their lives.
CCCM programming includes a strong focus on accountability, community participation, mobilization, and engagement.
For the purposes of Camp Management and the CCCM Cluster, camps are defined in a wide sense and include “camp-like settings” which covers planned formal and spontaneous self-settled camps, collective centers (which are often urban), reception and departure centers, or way-stations. In all of these, the essential role for CM agencies remains to ensure that humanitarian standards are met in the camp setting. In large camps, camp management typically has a permanent presence.
In unstable zones covering a large number of formal and informal communal sites, Mobile Site Management Teams (MSMT) with rapid response capacity are often preferable to implement CM activities in a flexible manner. In this sense, camp management can take different forms.
The CCCM sector includes coordination mechanisms that aim at applying standard approaches to both refugee operations (Refugee Model) and IDP operations (CCCM Cluster Model).
Camp Management at DRC
DRC’s approach to Camp Management (CM) differs from many other agencies, as we apply a multi-sector approach to camp management in emergency operations and normally do not take on CM as a standalone task.
When we take on CM, we also work to include protection activities and ensure that protection analysis informs the way we set up and manage each camp.
A Multi-Sector and Holistic Approach
Further, when engaged in camp management, DRC also strives to take on one or more so-called “service sectors” such as Shelter & NFIs, Food Distribution, or WASH. In this sense, DRC takes a multi-sector and holistic approach to camp management, working to establish the best possible protective environment, building on and expanding the affected populations’ own capacities, developing solid two-way channels of communication, and maintaining positive relations between the various communities both inside and outside of a given camp. When this approach is successfully applied, it sets the route towards recovery.