Involuntary Displacement and Resettlement — Policy and ... - CEPA

CEPA’s work on monitoring resettlement activity of the Southern TransportDevelopment Project provides some insights on how vulnerability is dealtwith. The institutional framework for dealing with resettlement has thecapacity to address vulnerabilities that have been identified as existing priorto land acquisition, through payment of special allowances and the provisionof non-monetary support. It has less space to address the vulnerabilitiescreated by the project. The project focuses on physical displacement andthose who are categorised as ‘affected’ have typically lost houses or land, orhave been subject to construction related impacts. The institutional mandateand capacity to deal effectively with the vulnerability of those people whowere not physically ‘affected’ but who lost their livelihoods or who areaffected by the loss of common property (i.e. water sources) for example orchanges to the environment (e.g. flooding due to blockage of local irrigationworks) were much weaker when compared with the focus on ‘affectedpersons’.In the STDP, different vulnerabilities (women, the elderly, and the disabled)were identified and the tendency to homogenise vulnerability through theprovision of a single allowance was avoided by working on a case by casebasis. On the other hand, narrow categorisation (e.g. limiting the analysis ofgender issues solely to female headed households), has precluded dealingwith other groups of vulnerable people such as women engaged in homebased livelihoods. The ‘affected people’ have been able to reduce theirvulnerability by using their compensation and other support received toincrease their financial and fixed asset base, make good investments andstrengthen their networks. Vulnerability increased when people lost thestability of their income sources, when networks broke up, and there wereproblems of illness to cope with, in addition to the trauma of resettlement.Vulnerability can be discussed from different perspectives, and the abovediscussion is far from exhaustive. However, it highlights some importantissues such as:The value and the dangers of categorisation, and the need toexamine the categories in the international discourse.• The importance of considering the relationships between thedisplaced persons and their host communities. Humanitarian anddevelopment agencies need to recognise that categorisation ofIDPs or ‘affected persons’ usually excludes dealing with vulnerabilityin the host communities and could thus result in tensions.8