The twenty-first century sees an unprecedented number of people on the move. Internal displacement has risen sharply over the past five years, with the number of internally displaced persons (IDPs) growing by 51 per cent in that time. By the end of 2023, 75.9 million people were living in internal displacement, having been forced out of their homes to other parts of their country due to conflict, violence, natural disasters, human rights violations and abuses and the negative impact of macro socio- economic trends.
Housing, Land and Property (HLP) rights issues have a direct impact on displaced populations as well as the immediate operational work of humanitarian and recovery actors. If not addressed appropriately, HLP issues can directly prevent the achievement of durable solutions, and they may undermine stabilization and recovery, and the realisation of broader development goals.
First presented in the occasion of the Twelfth World Urban Forum held in Cairo, Egypt, the ‘Policy Directions: Housing, Land and Property Solutions to Resolve and Prevent Displacement‘ was developed by UN-Habitat and the Global Land Tool Network with the financial support of the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency and the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development of Germany as a contribution to the UN Secretary General’s Action Agenda on Internal Displacement.
The document analyses internal displacement and other forms of internal and cross-border population movements from the land and HLP perspective; provides a set of land and HLP solutions to resolve and prevent displacement, articulated in three categories: humanitarian protection, recovery and resilience; and describes enabling factors necessary to address and prevent displacement.
The document draws from 24 case studies across 14 countries, showcasing durable solutions in contexts impacted by displacement. These include, among others, city profiles for area-based integrated strategies for protracted displacement in Syria; land administration reforms for peace and development in Libya; urban rental accommodation and cash support for refugees and asylum seekers in Greece; addressing land and HLP-related root causes of conflict and displacement in Somalia; frameworks for restitution, compensation, disputes’ resolution in Iraq and Kosovo; gender-sensitive housing initiatives for displaced women in Mozambique; and flood modeling for climate-resilient settlements in Pakistan.
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