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

By overcoming the data collection challenges our work has led to a significantand unique improvement in the quality of data used in the relevantliterature 5 .There are four other features which make this study unique within theliterature on the conflict in Sri Lanka in particular, and within the discipline ofrefugee studies in general. Firstly, no previous study has been able toquantify the livelihood impacts of displacement on people forcefully displacedby conflict. This is due mainly to the lack of data. Secondly, only a few studiesfocus exclusively on the economic impact of CID (Amirthalingam andLakshman forthcoming, is an exception). It is alleged that economists havecontributed far less to displacement literature even though their contributionis highly sought after (Cernea 1995; Cernea 2007). Though Cernea’s concernis primarily in relation to development induced displacement (DID), this lackof economic analysis and interpretation is also felt in relation to CID. Thirdly,the richness of our data enables us to segregate the overall livelihoodimpacts into various sub-components. These sub-components are clearlyidentified as capabilities, tangible assets and intangible assets by Chambersand Conway (1992: 8). However, we believe that Korf’s (2004: 277)categorization is more suitable for our purposes. He identifies six forms oflivelihood endowments − natural, physical, human, social, political, andfinancial − available to an individual. Whenever it was possible to measurethe impact of displacement on these livelihood endowments, we have doneso. That has enabled us to compare across these various endowments, whichexercise has revealed that the various endowments react to displacementdifferently. This is something that researchers have not been able to quantifyuntil now.Fourthly and finally, this work and the approach we use provide an elegantmeans of operationalising some of the ideas proposed in the GuidingPrinciples. Here, using our empirical evidence we have been able to augmentCernea’s (1995) resettler’s income curve to the case of CID.The paper is organised as follows: Section 2 introduces a new tool to examineCID incomes. Section 3 outlines the Sri Lankan experience in internal5We believe that we got the proper balance of insider and outsider researchers with Tamillanguage skills, some exposure to firsthand displacement experience, and regional navigationalknowledge (both Sampur and Batticaloa). This research team therefore had a natural capacityto predict likely ethical issues, and security risks faced by the research participants (seeGoodhand 2000).60