Refugee Resettlement on the Horn of Africa:

The enormity of the African refugee problem underscores the importance of resettlement issues in land use planning. Efforts to resettle subsistence-oriented agricultural populations have often come into conflict with host, or in-place land uses as competition for scarce resources lead to land degradation, violence, and the failure of resettlement schemes. The success of refugee resettlement will depend to a large extent on the degree to which host and refugee land-use patterns can become integrated or reconciled. The majority of African refugee populations reside on the Horn and in the Sahel, where arid and semi-arid ecologies predominate and pastoralism is a major form of land-use. This study considers a resettlement design which integrates refugee agricultural land-use patterns with those of the host pastoralist land-use in the context of the frequent droughts which visit the area. Given the magnitude of dislocation problems on the continent, successful resettlement will play an important role in African agriculture and development.