Forced Evictions in the Name of Development

Most development projects, at face value, seem aimed at improving the lives of people. A new dam will generate more electricity to power industry; a new sports complex for a major event like the World Cup will bring in new revenue and evoke national pride; a new shopping mall will create new businesses and therefore more jobs.

The reality for communities living at or near a project – be it a dam, a sports complex, or a shopping mall – is often quite different. A project being developed on their land, on their homes, is often about the destruction of communities, the disruption of lives, and the impoverishment of people. These development projects result in the forced eviction of an estimated 15 million people each year. Forced evictions are involuntary, and regularly do not uphold obligations to fairly compensate, resettle and rehabilitate people and the physical and social infrastructures that once made them a community. Human rights abuses such as a lack of adequate housing, no access to water, schools or hospitals, can be the results of a forced eviction.

WITNESS and the Habitat International Coalition (HIC) are working together to incorporate video advocacy into local and global campaigns on forced evictions across HIC’s worldwide network in Brazil, Cambodia, Egypt, India and Mexico and will continue into other countries over the course of the 3-year partnership.
Read and watch more on the blog »

Previous Partnerships
WITNESS has worked previously on development-induced displacement, most notably with our partner CEMIRIDE in Kenya; the Video Advocacy Workshop with International Accountability Project where 15 activists in 9 Asian countries were trained to produce advocacy videos on development-induced displacement; with our partner LICADHO in Cambodia; and with our former partners NAKAMATA in the Philippines and Burma Issues in Burma.

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Each year an estimated 15 million people across the globe are forcibly uprooted from their homes, farmlands, fishing areas, forests to make way for dam reservoirs, irrigation projects, mines, plantations, highways, and tourist resorts. Urban slums are bulldozed to make way for luxury condominiums, sporting facilities and shopping centers.

Forced eviction tends to go hand-in-hand with the use or threat of violence. Under represented communities and those living in poverty are affected most dramatically and each project underscores the discrimination rooted in the existing financial, legal and political systems. A forced eviction exacerbates poverty, social unrest, environmental degradation and loss of cultural identity. Its affects remain long after the last home is torn down.

Communities in every corner of the globe have long struggled to keep their land and homes or, if the project is being built, to receive just compensation and rehabilitation. Too often governments proposing a project do not effectively consult communities at risk of displacement and therefore activism frequently occurs after a project receives approval and funding. In the past three decades, communities and activists have campaigned for international guidelines and safeguards on development-induced displacement. Many major development banks and more than 60 private banks lending funds to governments and corporations for large-scale projects have adopted at least minimum safeguards to prevent human rights abuses associated with forced evictions.

Despite these guidelines and safeguards, the UN in 2010 reported that forced evictions are on the rise. Routinely, implemented projects do not follow the financial institution's own safeguard policies and investors and governments often ignore obligations to avoid or at least minimize displacement. Domestic laws protecting the rights of persons forcibly evicted vary greatly from country to country and, in practice, there is often little recourse domestically for communities challenging a forced eviction.