The limits of housing and property restitution and IDP/refugee return

• Main Author: Smit, Anneke
• Published: University of Reading 2008
• Subjects: 323.46086914
• Online Access: http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.501336

The thesis examines protections afforded by the emerging right in international law of refugees or internally displaced persons to retum to their homes of origin following conflict. The establishment of discrete, quasi-judicial housing and property restitution mechanisms (for example in Kosovo and Bosnia-Herzegovina) promising "restitution in kind" has become the preferred approach of the international community. Their attractiveness is that they promise both legal redress and a practical outcome - the retum of refugees and IDPs to their homes. However, as the thesis discusses, the desires of refugees and IDPs often shift over a long displacement, to the point that return often no longer equates with going "home". Meanwhile ties begin to form with the host community. The thesis assesses the effectiveness of restitution mechanisms as concerns the decision-making of refugees and displaced persons, and concludes that they will be useful if undertaken quickly and in coordination with a larger project to encourage return. In protracted refugee situations, by contrast, restitution is unlikely to lead to widespread retum. A wider array of remedies (including increased use of compensation in place of restitution in kind) and approaches to the protection of housing and property rights for displaced persons should be available. Further, rather than detracting from the rights-based approach, such solutions are solidly rooted in the larger property rights discourse and may in fact strengthen protections of the rights to housing and property for returnees. Based in qualitative and quantitative empirical research, the last chapter presents a case study of protracted displacement and the possibilities for housing and property rights approaches which support a range of durable solutions in the Republic of Georgia and South Ossetia.