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Gender Checklist: resettlement

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Resettlement Planning

An essential aspect of resettlement planning is the collection of socioeconomic data about affected persons. This information is crucial for identifying them; establishing the nature and extent of impact, vulnerability, and risk; and ensuring that the needs and concerns of women are addressed in resettlement and rehabilitation.

Addressing Gender in Data Collection

Key Issue

• The collection of gender-disaggregated data is the first step in developing a gender-inclusive resettlement plan.

Key Questions

• Have women been included in the socioeconomic survey?
• Has information been collected on women’s land and property status?
• Does the survey include questions on household division of labor, women’s livelihood sources, and women’s contribution to family income?

Key Strategies

Collect gender–disaggregated data for each household regarding

• ownership and use of resources;
• decision making regarding finance and resource use;
• women’s formal and informal income-earning activities;
• extent of women’s dependence on livestock, home garden, and forest use; and
• women’s skills.

It is important to collect data on female-headed households, and on elderly and single women. Consideration should be given to using female investigators. If not possible, then investigators should be gender sensitive and trained to collect data from women.

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Defining Entitlement and Eligibility

Land and property rights can be both formal and governed by customary law. Formal rights to land and property are marked by sharp gender asymmetries in most parts of the world. Similarly, customary law and informal institutions can and have been known to be discriminatory.

At the same time, women may have rights to property, water, and land through informal institutional arrangements. Property rights are often conceived to be immovable and formal. Rights can also be informal, mobile, and transitory, particularly with respect to water, for which supplies often vary across time and space.

Hence, eligibility criteria cannot be restricted to ownership of legal titles over land and property, because women are likely to be excluded; they may not have ownership of property and land even though they may be principal users of the resources.

Key Issues

• Provision must be made to ensure that women get legal rights to land and property allocated as part of the resettlement package.
• Women may have informal rights to property, water, and land through informal institutional arrangements. Creation of new formal institutions may undermine rights that are enshrined in customary arrangements.
• Customary law and informal institutions can and have been known to be discriminatory to women.

Key Questions

• What is the status of women in the society?
• Do women have legal title to land and property?
• What ownership, access, and control do women have over resources and property?
• Will women’s sources of livelihood be affected?
• What are the legal instruments that apply?
• Do women have customary or informal rights to land, property, and other resources?

Key Strategies

• Examine existing land and property laws to identify any provisions or entitlements for women.
• Review laws that apply to natural resources, such as
• use laws—related to water, mining, and other uses;
• conservation law—for protection of forests, wildlife, biodiversity, etc.;
• acquisition laws—dealing with land both for rural and urban areas; and
• regeneration laws—relating to environment protection, pollution, and
• regeneration of lands and forests.
• Examine laws and policies that deal with
• housing and construction;
• ownership, transfer, and inheritance of property; and
• resettlement and rehabilitation.

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International Instruments

When dealing with forced evictions/involuntary dislocation, development-related displacement, and rights to land and housing, it is important to check whether the concerned government is signatory to any relevant international instruments, because they can be used to influence the resettlement policy and plan.

Establishing a Gender-Sensitive Institutional Framework for Resettlement

The ways that institutions, both formal and informal, operate in a society reflect prevailing gender relations. The creation and imposition of new formal institutions can undermine and corrode rights that are often enshrined in customary arrangements.

Key Issues

• Newly created formal institutions could potentially erode the minimal rights that women enjoy within existing informal institutions.
• Institutional arrangements should (a) not aggravate existing gender disparities, (b) create flexible alternatives to deal with gender inequality, and (c) initiate processes that work toward enhancing women’s choices.

Key Strategies

• Assess formal and informal institutional arrangements. Invoke and reinforce those based on gender equity and change or modify those that aggravate gender disparities.

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Developing Resettlement and Compensation Options

It is important that affected persons be offered multiple options for compensation and livelihood restoration. Replacement land, “topping up” or additional cash grants to purchase land, employment creation, and often a mix of options have been used in many projects.

Key Issues

• Compensation payments are generally part of legal domain and women may not be formally eligible to receive them. Compensation payments to household heads are not always equitably distributed within households. Intrahousehold inequalities need to be noted.
• Experience has shown that men and women use compensation money differently and that compensation paid to male household heads is not necessarily solely used for rehabilitation and restoration of livelihoods. Instances of injudicious use of compensation payments by males, such as for personal consumption or to gain prestige and status within the community, are not unknown. Options for direct payment of compensation to women should be seriously explored.

Key Questions

• What is the relevant law for compensation?
• How does it define “persons eligible for compensation”?
• Does the law entitle women to compensation assistance?
• What are the compensation and resettlement options selected by women?

Key Strategies

• If the law explicitly leaves out women in its “eligibility criteria,” develop assistance packages for women outside legal entitlements as part of the resettlement and compensation package.
• Include women in consultations on compensation options.
• Explore the option of making payments or giving land titles in the name of both spouses.
• Consider providing separate compensation to women for loss of income, even from informal sector activities and loss of assets like ponds, forests, rivers, etc.
• Develop separate options for livelihood restoration programs for women.

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