It may also be difficult for weak governments to ensure the protection of all returning refugees, especially in remote areas, or where the rule of law is not well established.
Huggins calls these the grey areas in post-conflict restitution.
"There are a number of conflicts in Africa where ethnic minorities who are targeted with violence tend to sell their land before they flee the fighting," he said. "There’s controversy in many areas over whether that was a forced sale, because the price of land plummets when there’s going to be conflict in an area, and people sell their land for whatever they can get…But often, afterward, those same people come back and say 'My life was threatened, I sold you this land at a discounted price as a forced sale, and I want it back.' "
"[Or], people will entrust their land to a neighbor of a different ethnic group and say 'Look after may land and use it, but when I return I want it back. But after 20 years, the friendly neighbor has been replaced by his sons, and this was based on a verbal agreement and difficult to prove. So it’s complicated to put the principles into practice in some African countries."
He said this was the case in eastern DRC, and in Rwanda and Burundi and other areas where ethnic minorities were forced to flee.
Some international NGO handbooks recommend that where tenure is not registered or contested, programs should be put in place to define and register land and to give people formal documentation that secures their right to it.
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2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25