Fight against poverty and vulnerability in Tunisia

•The project was applied with the following activities : Light renovation works to host more homeless people and allow them to practice social distancing, quarantine and self-isolation; supply of furniture. This has increases the accommodation capacity and improve the living conditions. The project allowed works of a light rehabilitation of the women's living unit in the Homeless Center of Tunis, in particular interior and exterior painting, maintenance of the sanitary blocks, and maintenance of the garden. This intervention allowed to improve the conditions of reception of women in the center and generated other interventions financed by other donors such as the purchase of beds, equipped the two living units with air conditioning. Compared to the other centers, the center of Tunis is the center where reception conditions are very critical and needs more follow up from UN-HABITAT side in the following months. As the budget allocated to the works was very low, UN-Habitat in coordination with the Head of the center decided to prioritize and rehabilitate the women's living units and a burnt room which was not used during more than 2 years in the men's living units. This allowed also the improvement of the living conditions of women and their children and the reception conditions and increase capacities of having more homeless men. Another major activtiy was the supply of a vehicle (VAN) for the Tunis Social Support Centre dedicated to their mobile relief teams to reach more homeless people, to strengthen the action of the SAMU Social in greater Tunis and increase its capacity to reach more people homeless in the Street of Tunis. A study of the Socio-psychological support for the Homeless people was done. This has made possible an advocacy and policy support to secure the right to housing for all , amid the Covid-19 outbreak in response to forced evictions and evictions reported by the SAMU Social (Ministry of Social Affairs) and the NGO Médecins du Monde Belgique, during their social relief tours in Tunis and its suburbs. The project supported also the Government in enforcing moratoriums on all evictions and allowing deferrals of mortgage payments by devising strategies that also factor contingency plans to avoid economic challenges for landlords and banks. More information were provided in order to identify center management issues in order to promote the governance model and improve reception conditions and put in place an effective system of supervision and social guidance based on human rights. An assessment of the capacities of the homeless centers in Tunis, Sousse and Sfax in terms of reception conditions and psychological support for the homeless has been done. as well by the project. The Study carried out by a psychologist allowed to raise several failures of supervision and orientation of the homeless, in particular specific human rights challenges. The project allowed also to produce a study on social exclusion around the COVID -Outbreak and allowed the following : - Analysis of measures taken to ensure that migrant workers and domestic staff hosted by their employers continue to have access to safe accommodation during and after the pandemic. -Analysis of measures taken to provide safe accommodation to homeless people during the COVID-19 pandemic Based on this diagnosis, the consultant will propose a series of recommendations and proposals (legal, institutional and operational) to improve the care of these populations, especially during a pandemic .