Robinson: Accelerated housing provision without regard for property rights may lead to conflicts

In humanitarian crises, attempts to speed up the provision of housing without taking property rights into account can lead to new conflicts and repeated population displacement.

Report informs that Jim Robinson, co-coordinator of the Global Housing, Land and Property Area of Responsibility (Global HLP AoR) under the Global Protection Cluster, said this during WUF13 in Baku.

According to him, humanitarian organizations constantly face the need to strike a balance between providing urgent assistance to affected people and verifying existing housing and land rights.

He stressed that ignoring property and land issues can lead to conflicts between landlords, host communities and displaced people, as well as threats of eviction and exploitation of vulnerable groups.

According to Robinson, in many crisis situations, official land registries and registration systems either do not function or have been destroyed, so humanitarian organizations have to look for alternative ways to confirm people's rights to housing and land.

"One cannot proceed from the logic that if a person has no official document, then they have no right to be on that territory," he said.

He also spoke about the use of a conditional "traffic light" system in assessing the risks of humanitarian interventions.

"The green level means that rights can be confirmed and intervention is possible, yellow means the need for caution due to an unclear situation, and red means a high risk of conflicts and potential harm," the expert explained.

According to him, humanitarian organizations must also take into account forms of discrimination that existed before the crisis, including women's limited access to housing and property inheritance.

"The main question is what we can do right now to increase people's protection and guarantee them at least temporary security of tenure," Robinson added.