Uncharted Territory: Land, Conflict and Humanitarian Action

Land is often a critical issue in conflict-related emergencies, and can play a key role in post-conflict recovery. The end of a prolonged armed conflict will frequently see a large proportion of the population claiming or reclaiming access to land and land-based resources, with important implications for return, recovery and reintegration processes. Yet despite the importance of land in these contexts, humanitarian actors have tended to regard land issues as too complex and politically sensitive, and as such the province of organisations more concerned with development, peace-building and human rights. Where humanitarian actors have sought to engage, their efforts have tended to focus on returning land and property to displaced people, with little consideration of the wider implications of their activities and their effects on vulnerable populations.