i. Institutional issues

- Listing of refugee camps at a very early stage to assist government in selecting sites to assess the possibility and strengthen the capacity for dispersed refugee settlements in local population.

Within this perspective, the following weaknesses were underlined:

- Lack of policy framework within which institutions can work;

- Lack of co-ordination between agencies partly due to weak role definition;

- Need to reduce competition among and within agencies;

- Need for (environmental) co-ordinating strategy for planning and needs assessment;

- Standardisation of responses among relief agencies to cope with different problems;

- Sensibilisation of relief agencies of the environmental risks of standard responses;

- Institutional and capacity-building for early warning systems for environmental damage at local and national level;

- Mechanisms to translate warnings into preventive measures;

- Awareness building of donors.