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Victims of progress: resettling people displaced by development

Infrastructure development projects annually displace over ten million people. Dams, mines, urban renewal projects, water and sewage pipelines, roads and railways all lead to the loss of residence and livelihoods. Do the resettlement guidelines formulated by governments and donors address the serious socio-economic consequences? Are displaced people sufficiently consulted, compensated or assisted by resettlement schemes?

Research from the University of Oxford’s Refugee Studies Centre and South Africa’s Rhodes University examines the challenges and dilemmas of development-induced displacement and resettlement (DIDR). Producing evidence that inadequately informed, conceptualised, negotiated and implemented resettlement projects continue to result in impoverishment, it suggests how to improve knowledge and increase the likelihood of resettlement projects delivering more favourable outcomes.

The researchers note that knowledge of resettlement is mostly derived from the construction of dams and other public-sector projects. Displacement in urban areas and that caused by private enterprise has been relatively neglected. DIDR studies have over-focused on economics and neglected the relationships resettled communities have with the wider world.

Resettlement impoverishes and disempowers people by disrupting the control a local group has over its own social institutions. The already politically marginalised lose further resources because they lack the cultural, economic, political and social capital to make their claims and rights heard effectively.

Key reasons why resettlement projects fail to achieve their own stated goals include:

Weak, often authoritarian implementing institutions lack organisational capacity and professional social engineering skills and pay only lip service to participation.
Interpretations of policy down the bureaucratic hierarchy differ as a result of ambiguous goals trying to reconcile divergent and even contradictory goals: at ground level, local officials often have too much discretion.
The World Bank’s non-political mandate means that it may lack the capacity to confront governments that ignore its resettlement guidelines.
Bad baseline research, planning and top-down implementation encourages, or sometimes even makes inevitable, legitimate (often very disruptive and expensive) resistance from those affected and from their civil society champions.
Planners often have economically-focused value orientations which cannot address the complex tapestry of cultural and human rights and project-initiated risks inherent in DIDR schemes.
Agencies may show inflexibility and a lack of willingness to adapt to differing needs or unexpected developments.

What can be done to ensure that agencies’ resettlement guidelines, national and state resettlement policies and relevant international treaties are respected? How can the heavy costs of resistance to projects be reduced? In order to overcome the current implementation deficit obstructing the translation of well-meaning policies into action, the research teams calls for:

recognition of the diversity of constituencies within a single resettlement ‘community’
a democratic participatory approach to project planning and implementation in which information flows freely and input from the dispossessed is valued
a wider range of resettlement and compensation options to be offered to displaced people who are given training and encouragement to enter into negotiations as equal partners
adoption of the World Commission on Dams’ approach, based on recognition of rights and assessment of risks
integration of resettlement projects into ongoing regional development initiatives
greater flexibility in open-ended project design to allow input from affected parties.

Source(s):
‘Improving outcomes in development-induced displacement and resettlement (DIDR) projects’, Refugee Studies Centre Research Synthesis Report, by C. de Wet April 2002 Full document.
‘Toward local development and mitigating impoverishment in development-induced displacement and resettlement’, Working Paper Series No. 8, Refugee Studies Centre, by D. Koenig November 2002 Full document.
‘Displacement, Resistance and the Critique of Development: From the Grassroots to the Global’, Working Paper Series No. 9, Refugee Studies Centre, by A. Oliver-Smith November 2002 Full document.

Funded by: DFID (SSRU R7644 and R7305)

id21 Research Highlight: 17 January 2003

Further Information:
Paul Ryder
Refugee Studies Centre
University of Oxford
Queen Elizabeth House
21 St. Giles
Oxford OX1
UK

Tel: +44 (0) 1865 270274
Fax: +44 (0) 1865 270721
Contact the contributor: paul.ryder@qeh.ox.ac.uk

Refugee Studies Centre, Queen Elizabeth House (QEH), UK

Chris de Wet
Department of Anthropology
Rhodes University
Grahamstown 6140
South Africa

Tel: +27 46 6038231
Fax: +27 46 6223948
Contact the contributor: c.deWet@ru.ac.za

Rhodes University, South Africa

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