Three months after the cyclone Sidr struck the Bangladeshi coast, Oxfam is issuing this note to take stock of a reasonably successful emergency response while also underlining communities' massive recovery needs - above all in terms of housing and livelihoods.

Based on dozens of interviews and focus group discussions, the note is intended to stimulate a broader debate around outstanding needs and appropriate responses for communities' longer-term recovery and rehabilitation. Having learned a lot from our own successes as well as challenges, Oxfam hopes to provide a constructive NGO perspective and recommendations for improving humanitarian responses (our own as well as others) to a major disaster like Cyclone Sidr.

With more than 1.3 million Bangladeshis still living in temporary shelter and hundreds of thousands unable to recover their incomes, Oxfam is especially calling on the government and the international community to scale up recovery and rehabilitation efforts to meet the cyclone survivors’ urgent need for housing and livelihoods.