Development-induced displacement causes new poverty and injustice on a massive scale--among the very people whom development is supposed to uplift.
Overview
 At current rates, approximately 15 million people every year are
forcibly displaced from their homes, communities and lands to make way
for large development projects such as coal mines, mega-dams, agro-fuel
plantations and transportation infrastructure. The numbers are even
larger when we account for all the people who are indirectly displaced:
they are forced to move when these projects destroy the forests, fresh
water, and other natural resources or income sources they need to sustain their
livelihoods. This development-induced displacement and involuntary resettlement is by far the largest cause of forced migration in the world today--uprooting more people than conflict or environmental disaster.
Concerns
Development-induced displacement often comes hand in
hand with egregious corruption, the use or threat of violence to force
people from their homes, undemocratic imposition of projects, and
systemic failure to uphold obligations to fairly compensate, resettle
and rehabilitate displaced peoples. Despite the existence of a growing body of international policies and standards on rights-respecting approaches to displacement and resettlement, these policies are almost never upheld, and displacement continues to happen to an excessive degree. The result is that resettlement and rehabilitation schemes are underfunded or never implemented, and millions of people are left with their lives destroyed and no adequate shelter or livelihood.
Scholars, activists and practitioners widely agree: this displacement
leads to the impoverishment of those who are forced to move, creating new poverty in project-affected areas...more >>
Our Approach
 At IAP, we believe that a development model based upon excessive and brutal displacement is profoundly unsustainable. Furthermore, we see the phenomena of excessive displacement and failure to resettle and rehabilitate the people whose homes and lives are destroyed as a systematic pattern of externalizing the full costs of projects onto those people who can least afford to bear them. Development policy-makers and financiers must be forced to recognize the full impacts and costs of displacement and resettlement. Only then will they begin to ensure that projects are designed to minimize displacement and that affected people are not only fully rehabilitated, but also meaningfully benefited in ways that support their own visions and priorities for local development.
 At IAP, in solidarity with a global network of organizations and communities, we work toward a world in which human connection to land, vibrant communities, healthy ecosystems, and democratic decision-making are not bulldozed as 'obstacles' to development, but rather are defended as the foundation for just and sustainable life on Earth. We do this in multiple ways:
Through our work on Project Advocacy and Global Policy, we stop projects that will cause particularly excessive and unjust displacement, and we change the rules of international development finance by targeted advocacy to create rights-respecting, responsible policies on displacement and resettlement.
Through our Research and Popular Education, we support grassroots communities on the front-lines of unjust displacement to understand and assert their rights, to lead efforts to demand accountability for development injustices, and to envision and enact alternatives.
Through creative use of Arts & Media, IAP enables our grassroots partners to powerfully portray the impacts of destructive development and displacement, to demonstrate the beauty of what they are fighting to defend, and to inspire action toward a radically redefined concept of development.
Learn more...
Organizations:
Reports and Journals:
| 
