Many internally displaced people (IDPs) find refuge in cities. However, the scale of global urban internal displacement caused by violence, conflict, disasters and development projects is unknown. Cities struggle to accommodate IDPs since their movements are largely spontaneous, and some authorities may resist helping IDPs for fear of encouraging further influxes. Meanwhile, IDPs face displacement-specific challenges to rebuild their lives in urban settings and may be displaced again in the process due to lack of housing tenure security and violence and insecurity.

The report analyses displacement in Coast region and identifies tensions over land tenure and poor land governance as key triggers, and obstacles to durable solutions. It provides examples of land issues underlying displacement caused by generalised violence, disasters and human rights violations, and establishes a close link between tenure insecurity and forced evictions. Disputes arise from competing land claims and incompatibility between formal and informal tenure systems.

n recent decades, many cities and towns around the world have seen dramatic population growth, with significant inflows from rural areas. People forcibly displaced by armed conflict, violence or natural disasters have moved to urban areas in search of greater security, better access to basic services and greater economic opportunities.

According to the government agency Acción Social, around six per cent of national territory has been abandoned, while between 3.3 and 4.9 million people have been displaced by conflict and violence in Colombia. Roughly half of the internally displaced families owned or occupied land before their displacement. Almost all of them have lost it as a result.

Armed conflict broke out in Côte d’Ivoire in 2002, which caused the country to be divided in two: the north under the control of the Forces Nouvelles rebels and the south in the hands of the government. It also caused the mass displacement of hundreds of thousands of people. In the west of the country, and in particular in the two regions of Moyen Cavally and Dix-Huit Montagnes, the crisis provoked a series of successive displacements involving population groups with competing claims over land.

Hundreds of thousands of people have been internally displaced in Zimbabwe as a result of the actions of their own government.

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In the north-western department of Chocó, near Colombia’s border with Panama, forcibly displaced people have established “Humanitarian Zones” in a bid to hang on to their land and livelihoods. (...)

Forced displacement in Colombia is primarily a way to seize agricultural land from peasants and small farmers, and only to a lesser degree the unintended consequence of fighting between warring parties. (...)

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Uttaran in partnership with Manusher Jonno Foundation and CARE has been implementing SALE (Sustainable Access to Land Equality) project funded by European union in three upazilas of Bangladesh. The development goal of this project is to strengthen access to land and property rights for all citizens, especially the poorest segments. Mainly, the project intends to promotion of effective, transparent and accountable land governance practices towards access to equitable land and property rights for the poorest community.

The Government of Bangladesh has been taking concrete measures to address the problems relating to land administration and management. At the same time, however, the Government recognizes that more needs to be done at the policy level to tackle crucial systemic anomalies. As it stands now, the complexity and magnitude of issues pertaining to land administration and management in Bangladesh cannot be overstated. The nature and volume of land disputes in the nation call for practical measures directed at improving the land administration and management system.

Uttaran is implementing a project titled, Sustainable Access to Land Equality-SALE' with support of European Union. SALE is the civil society component of overall access to land project that is lead by Department of Land Records and Surveys (DLRS) and Ministry of Land in Bangladesh. SALE partners are taking the main responsibility of the public awareness of vulnerable land owners, capacity support to make the vulnerable land owners sensitive land administration, to pilot transparent landless people selection and state land settlement to landless people.

The acquisition of land by foreigners in developing countries has emerged as a key mechanism for foreign direct investment (FDI). FDI is defined by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) as the category of international investment that reflects the objective of a resident entity in one economy to obtain a lasting interest in an enterprise resident in another economy.