Post conflict and post disaster reconstruction and the right to adequate housing 2011, para. 25
Paragraph- Paragraph text
- A useful example of the dangers of failing to deal with land tenure security challenges in a timely manner can be found in the case of post-conflict East Timor. It is estimated that during the violence that followed the 1999 referendum, 67,500 out of an estimated 170,000 houses (40 per cent of all housing stock) were rendered uninhabitable ; while approximately 70 per cent of all physical infrastructure was destroyed or rendered inoperable. Administrative documents, including land title records, were also destroyed or taken to Indonesia. Approximately 300,000 people fled or were forced into Indonesian West Timor; while an estimated 450,000 were internally displaced, out of a total population of 900,000. Houses left empty by the refugees were occupied by others, often because their own homes had been destroyed. Over the following months and years, returning refugees frequently found their homes occupied and had to pay the secondary occupants compensation for "guarding" or improving their homes so that they would leave. In many cases the secondary occupants refused to vacate, forcing the returnees to seek shelter elsewhere. This left an extraordinarily complex land and housing rights legacy for the transitional administration and future government to unravel and resolve. To add to the complexity, the post-referendum events took place against a historical backdrop of waves of dispossession and displacement and externally imposed land systems through Portuguese colonization, Japanese invasion and Indonesian takeover.
- Legal status
- Non-negotiated soft law
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on adequate housing as a component of the right to an adequate standard of living
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Means of adoption
- N.A.
- Topic(s)
- Humanitarian
- Person(s) affected
- Persons on the move
- Year
- 2011
- Paragraph type
- Other
- Reference
- SR Housing, Report to the HRC (2011), A/HRC/16/42, para. 25.
- Paragraph number
- 25
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