Resettlement writing
Notes on the practical gap between what the safeguard standards require and what a project can actually evidence when the completion audit arrives. Written against IFC PS-5 and World Bank ESS-5, with sources.
By Olule Solomon · Lead Consultant, ValueSpace
- 9 min
What is a Resettlement Action Plan? A practitioner's guide
What a RAP is, when a lender requires one, what it must contain, and why most are judged on evidence rather than intent.
- 10 min
IFC Performance Standard 5 explained: eligibility, entitlements and evidence
PS-5's three eligibility categories, what each is owed, and the requirements projects most often fail to evidence.
- 9 min
World Bank ESS-5 vs IFC PS-5: what actually differs
The two standards most RAPs are written against, compared on scope, eligibility, valuation and what each lender reviews.
- 8 min
Full replacement cost: the valuation rule projects get wrong most often
What replacement cost means under PS-5 and ESS-5, why depreciation cannot be deducted, and how to evidence the basis.
- 8 min
The cut-off date: setting it, disclosing it, and defending it later
Eligibility in a RAP turns on one date. How to fix it, how to disclose it so it holds, and what happens when it slips.
- 9 min
Designing a grievance redress mechanism that a lender will accept
Why resettlement generates the most complaints of any safeguard issue, and what separates a working GRM from a logbook.
- 9 min
Livelihood restoration: the part of a RAP that outlives the payment
Compensation is a transaction; livelihood restoration is an outcome. How LRPs are designed, monitored and closed out.
- 9 min
The PAP census and socioeconomic survey: getting the baseline right
The census fixes eligibility and the baseline everything else is measured against. What it must capture, and who gets missed.
- 9 min
The RAP completion audit: evidencing compliance you cannot reconstruct
What a completion audit tests, why reconstruction after the fact fails, and the records that have to exist from day one.
- 9 min
Costing a RAP: why resettlement budgets are wrong before they are approved
What a resettlement budget must contain, the line items projects systematically omit, and why contingency is not padding.
- 10 min
Reconciling compensation payments: the evidence gap nobody budgets for
Paying compensation and proving you paid it are different problems. How disbursement files are reconciled back to entitlements.
- 9 min
Choosing a resettlement site: the decision that determines everything after it
Replacement housing fails on site selection more than on construction. What to assess, who to involve, and what disqualifies a site.
- 9 min
Gender in resettlement: how compensation reaches households but not women
Household-level enumeration and single-payee compensation systematically strip women's independent claims. What to do instead.
- 8 min
ESIA and RAP sequencing: why the order these are done in decides the cost
The RAP depends on ESIA outputs it is usually procured in parallel with. What that costs, and how to sequence it properly.
- 10 min
Uganda land acquisition law and IFC PS-5: reconciling the two
Where Ugandan compulsory acquisition law meets the lender standards, where it falls short, and how a RAP bridges the gap.
- 9 min
Resettlement on linear projects: transmission lines, roads and pipelines
Linear projects displace thousands economically and few physically. Why that inverts almost every assumption in a standard RAP.
- 8 min
Graves, shrines and chance finds: cultural heritage in a resettlement
Relocating graves is the part of a RAP that cannot be rushed or costed by formula. What PS-8 requires alongside PS-5.
- 9 min
Monitoring a resettlement: indicators that measure outcomes, not activity
Most resettlement monitoring counts what was delivered. Completion audit asks what changed. Building indicators for the second.
- 10 min
How to build an entitlement matrix that survives review
The table at the centre of every RAP. Loss categories, eligibility by tenure, valuation basis — and the rows reviewers find missing.
- 9 min
RPF or RAP? Choosing the right resettlement instrument
A policy framework governs displacement you cannot yet locate; a RAP governs displacement you can. Getting the choice wrong costs a year.
- 8 min
Abbreviated RAP vs full RAP: which one does your project need?
Scale thresholds are the usual test and the wrong one on their own. What actually determines whether an abbreviated plan is defensible.
- 9 min
The stakeholder engagement plan behind a resettlement
Consultation is judged on its record, not its intention. What an SEP must commit to, and what the file has to show afterwards.
- 10 min
Crop and tree compensation rates: where the numbers come from
District rate schedules are convenient and frequently below replacement cost. How to use them without failing the standard.
- 10 min
Enumerating customary and communal land in a RAP
Land held by a family, a clan or a community has holders, not an owner. How to record the claim so compensation can actually be paid.
- 8 min
Disclosing a RAP: what has to be published, where, and in what language
Disclosure is a dated, evidenced act, not a PDF on a website. What the standards require and what auditors ask to see.
- 9 min
Sequencing RAP implementation: payment, possession and handover
Compensation before displacement is a rule with a specific order behind it. Where schedules break, and what breaks with them.
- 9 min
Identifying vulnerable households — and what to do after you have
Most RAPs define vulnerability and then never use the flag again. Making it operational from census through to closure.
- 9 min
Paying compensation to unbanked households without losing the audit trail
Cash payments are fast and unevidenced; bank transfers are evidenced and exclude people. How projects run both without gaps.
- 10 min
Asset inventory and parcel mapping: the field work everything rests on
Every entitlement traces back to a measurement taken once, in a field, by someone under time pressure. How to make it hold up.
- 10 min
Choosing a data system for a RAP: what to test before you commit
Spreadsheets fail resettlement at a predictable point. What a RAP database has to do, and the questions that expose one that cannot.
- 10 min
Writing terms of reference for a RAP consultancy
Most weaknesses in a RAP were procured, not drafted. The clauses that decide whether the plan you receive is implementable.
- 10 min
What a lender reviewer checks in a RAP, in the order they check it
Review is largely a search for internal contradictions. The sequence a reviewer follows, and the mismatches that stop them.
- 9 min
Economic displacement of informal traders, kiosks and roadside businesses
Losing a stall is losing a location, not a structure. Why disturbance allowances under-compensate the most exposed businesses.
- 9 min
Temporary land take: camps, borrow pits, access roads and reinstatement
Temporary occupation is treated as a contractor matter and generates permanent losses. What to require and who pays for it.
- 10 min
Eligibility without land title: squatters, tenants and encroachers
National law compensates interests; the standards compensate people. How to enumerate and pay those with no recognisable claim.
- 9 min
Replacement housing: setting a standard the household will actually keep
Adequate housing is a specification and a negotiation. Where designs go wrong, and why resale is the indicator that matters.
- 9 min
Land acquisition for solar and wind: a different displacement problem
Renewables take large areas with few structures, often by lease rather than purchase. Why that changes the whole instrument.
- 9 min
Closing a RAP: the completion report and what it has to prove
Closure is not the last payment. What the completion report must establish, and the records that decide whether it can.
- 9 min
Land acquisition for road projects: frontage, widening and the informal edge
Road widening displaces few households and hundreds of businesses. What that inverts in a standard RAP, and where the caseload lands.
- 10 min
Reservoir resettlement: the hardest case in the field
Inundation displaces whole communities at once, permanently, with a fixed impoundment date. Why hydropower RAPs fail differently.
- 9 min
Water supply and pipeline projects: small takes, large numbers
Transmission mains, treatment works and reservoirs each displace differently. Scoping a RAP across three impact types at once.
- 9 min
Irrigation schemes: displacement inside the beneficiary population
An irrigation project takes land from the people it is meant to benefit. Why that makes eligibility and consent unusually contested.
- 9 min
Railway projects: corridors, stations and the settlements along the line
Rail combines a linear corridor with dense station-area displacement and long-standing occupation of the existing reserve.
- 9 min
Airport expansion: acquisition, noise contours and restricted land
Runway extension takes land outright and sterilises far more through height and noise restrictions that are rarely compensated.
- 10 min
Mining resettlement: pit expansion, artisanal miners and a moving footprint
A mine acquires land in stages over decades. Why one RAP is never enough and artisanal miners are the hardest eligibility question.
- 9 min
Oil and gas pipelines: easements, reinstatement and thirty years of restriction
A pipeline takes an easement rather than the land, and the restriction outlives everyone who negotiated it.
- 9 min
Industrial parks and special economic zones: block acquisition at scale
An SEZ takes a contiguous block from every household in it. Total loss for a defined population, and a promise of jobs to come.
- 9 min
Drainage and flood control: clearing channels people live in
Flood works displace households from land that is hazardous, unregistered and often occupied for decades. Safety is not an eligibility test.
- 9 min
Landfills and waste facilities: siting, buffer zones and waste pickers
A waste facility displaces through its buffer as much as its footprint, and the people who live on the existing dump have no title at all.
- 8 min
Telecom towers and fibre routes: small footprints, thousands of them
Fibre trenching and tower sites take almost nothing each and, at national scale, affect more landholders than a highway.
- 10 min
Kenya land acquisition and IFC PS-5: reconciling the two
Compulsory acquisition in Kenya runs through a national process with its own steps and timelines. Where it meets PS-5 and where it stops short.
- 10 min
Tanzania land acquisition and IFC PS-5: the gaps a RAP has to bridge
Village land, general land and the valuation process. Where Tanzanian practice and the lender standards diverge in substance.
- 9 min
Rwanda expropriation in the public interest and the lender standards
Rwanda's expropriation process is comparatively fast and well documented. The remaining gaps are about who counts and what is restored.
- 10 min
Nigeria: the Land Use Act, statutory rights and what a RAP has to add
Where all land is vested in the state and compensation attaches to improvements, the gap to replacement cost is structural.
- 10 min
Ghana: stool and family land, state acquisition and the RAP overlay
Most land is held by stools, skins and families rather than the state. Who is entitled, who signs, and where compensation actually lands.
- 11 min
Compulsory acquisition across East Africa: what differs and what does not
Five jurisdictions, one recurring pattern — a lawful process that compensates recognised interests and stops well short of restoration.
- 9 min
Partial takings: severance, injurious affection and the land left behind
Taking part of a holding can destroy the value of the rest. Two heads of claim most schedules never mention.
- 9 min
Wayleaves and easements: paying for a restriction rather than a taking
The landholder keeps the land and loses what they may do with it. How that is valued, and why one-off payments recur as grievances.
- 9 min
The valuation report: approval, statutory process and the delay it creates
Between an assessed value and an authorised payment sits a statutory approval chain. Where it stalls and what shortens it.
- 9 min
Compensating registered businesses: accounts, goodwill and relocation
A formal business brings records, employees and a lease. That makes assessment easier and the negotiation considerably harder.
- 9 min
Revising compensation rates mid-programme without creating two classes of PAP
Rates change during implementation. Whoever was paid under the old ones will find out, and the fix has to be decided in advance.
- 8 min
Interest on delayed compensation: the entitlement nobody claims
Most acquisition statutes provide for interest on late payment. Almost no displaced household knows it, and few projects volunteer it.
- 8 min
Tax, levies and deductions: what should never come off a compensation payment
Compensation restores a loss; it is not income. Deductions at the payment point are common, informal and usually wrong.
- 9 min
Valuation disputes: objection, appeal and the case for settling early
A contested valuation has three possible routes and one predictable outcome. Which disputes to settle, and which have to go the distance.
- 9 min
When the registered owner has died: succession in a compensation programme
Deceased claimants are a large share of every long payment tail. Starting the succession work at census is the only thing that shortens it.
- 8 min
Absentee owners and claimants you cannot find
Some entitled people are not there at enumeration and not there at payment. What a defensible search looks like before funds are retained.
- 9 min
Verifying identity when half the register has no ID
Paying the right person is a compliance requirement and an exclusion risk. Building an identity standard before payments start.
- 9 min
Ghost claimants and compensation fraud: the controls that actually work
Where large payments meet weak identity records, diversion follows. Detection is cheap if the register was built for it.
- 9 min
Data protection in a resettlement register: obligations nobody assigned
A PAP register is thousands of people's identity, location, income and payment data. Most projects treat it as a spreadsheet.
- 9 min
Speculative building after the cut-off date, and how to hold the line
Announcing a project invites construction on the corridor. Detection has to be systematic, and enforcement has to be fair.
- 9 min
Quality assurance on census data: catching errors while you can still fix them
Enumeration errors are cheap to correct in week three and impossible in year two. The checks that belong in the field protocol.
- 10 min
Pastoralists: displacement of people who were never in one place
A census fixes people to parcels. Mobile pastoral systems have neither, and lose corridors and water points that no matrix records.
- 9 min
Fishing livelihoods: displacement without any land being taken
Dams, ports and intakes end fishing livelihoods while acquiring no land from the fishers. Eligibility has to be argued from first principles.
- 9 min
Forest-dependent households: compensating what was gathered, not owned
Fuel, poles, medicine, wild foods and the months they cover. Losing forest access is an income loss with no title behind it.
- 8 min
Disability in resettlement: access, process and replacement housing
A process built on travelling to offices, reading notices and rebuilding a house excludes disabled people at every step.
- 9 min
Tenants and landlords: dividing compensation for one building
The owner loses an asset and the tenant loses a home or a business. Paying only the first is the most common eligibility failure there is.
- 9 min
Safeguarding in a resettlement: where the risk of harm actually sits
Large payments, labour influx, transitional housing and a process run mostly by men. Four risk points, and what mitigates each.
- 8 min
Adult sons, young families and the households a census does not see
Enumeration by household misses adult dependants with their own families and their own claim on the land being acquired.
- 10 min
Agricultural livelihood restoration that gets past the training workshop
Extension, inputs and demonstration plots are activities. Restoration is an income level. What has to connect the two.
- 9 min
Skills training and enterprise support: the weakest part of most LRPs
Vocational training is the default livelihood intervention and the least evidenced. What to require before funding another round of it.
- 9 min
Money management support around a compensation payment
A single large transfer to a household that has never held one is a known risk. What support helps, and what is just paternalism.
- 9 min
Host communities: negotiating the arrival of several hundred new neighbours
Resettlement puts pressure on land, water, schools and clinics that belong to people the project never counted as affected.
- 9 min
Handing a resettlement site to local government without stranding it
Water systems, roads and drains built by a project become somebody else's operating cost. Usually nobody agreed to that in writing.
- 9 min
Titles at a resettlement site: whose name, how long it takes, what it changes
Secure tenure is an obligation, and formalisation is not neutral. Who is named on the document decides who keeps the house.
- 9 min
The line between lawful possession and forced eviction
Taking possession is a legal act with conditions attached. Where those conditions fail, the project has carried out an eviction.
- 9 min
Putting resettlement obligations where the contractor will actually see them
Most land-related harm during construction is caused by a contractor bound by a contract that never mentioned the RAP.
- 9 min
Independent monitoring: what an external monitor is for, and when to appoint one
Internal monitoring reports activity to the people running it. External monitoring exists to say the thing nobody internally can.
- 10 min
Auditing land acquired years ago: legacy issues and corrective action
Land taken before a lender arrived is still the project's problem. How a legacy audit is scoped and what remedy is realistic.
- 7 min
How long does a Resettlement Action Plan take?
Nine to eighteen months for preparation on a typical project, and years for implementation. What sets each stage, and what makes it slip.
- 7 min
How much does it cost to prepare a RAP?
Preparation is a consultancy fee driven by parcel count and terrain; compensation is a separate and far larger budget. What drives each.
- 6 min
Who pays for resettlement compensation?
The project pays, through the borrower or the developer. Why the source of funds matters to how quickly you are paid.
- 7 min
What happens if you refuse the compensation offered?
Refusal is not the end of the process, and it does not forfeit your entitlement. What actually follows, and what it costs you.
- 7 min
What happens if you were not counted before the cut-off date?
Missing the census and arriving after the cut-off are different situations with very different outcomes. How to tell which you are in.
- 7 min
Can the government take your land without paying you?
It can take it. Taking it without compensation is a different question, and the answer under both national law and lender standards is no.
- 8 min
How is compensation for land calculated?
Land, structures, crops and trees are each valued on a different basis. What goes into the figure, and the parts most often left out.
- 7 min
How long does compensation take to be paid?
Months where the file is clean, years where it is not. What sits between a valuation and money arriving, and which delays are avoidable.
- 8 min
What can you do if the compensation offered is too low?
Four routes, in ascending cost. Most disputes are about counts rather than rates, and those are settled fastest in the field.
- 7 min
Do tenants get compensation when a project takes the building?
Yes — under lender standards, and often not under national law. What a tenant is owed and how to make sure you are recorded.
- 7 min
What documents do you need to receive compensation?
Identification, proof of the claim and proof you are the right person. What to do when you hold none of them.
- 6 min
What is a project-affected person (PAP)?
Anyone who loses land, assets, income or access because of a project — whether or not they own anything, and whether or not they move.
- 7 min
Can compensation be paid to a husband and wife together?
It can, and on most projects it is not. Why single-payee compensation strips women's claims, and what to ask for instead.
- 6 min
Can you still harvest your crops after the cut-off date?
The cut-off stops new claims; it does not take your standing crop. What you are owed for a harvest you cannot take.
- 6 min
What is the difference between a RAP and an ESIA?
The ESIA identifies impacts across the whole project. The RAP deals with one of them — displacement — for named people.
- 7 min
Who prepares a Resettlement Action Plan?
A consultancy team writes it, the borrower owns it, the lender reviews it — and the people who implement it are usually none of the above.
- 7 min
Who approves a RAP, and what are they checking?
Usually a national authority and a lender, in that order, against different criteria. What each one is actually looking for.
- 7 min
What happens after a RAP is approved?
Approval is the halfway point, not the end. The order of what follows decides whether the plan survives contact with the site.
- 7 min
Can construction start before compensation has been paid?
No — and this is the rule projects break most often, under schedule pressure, with an undertaking to pay later.
- 7 min
How do you file a grievance against a project, and what happens next?
Every lender-financed project must have a mechanism, it must be free, and using it must not cost you your right to go to court.
- 7 min
What is livelihood restoration, and how is it different from compensation?
Compensation is a payment for what you lost. Livelihood restoration is an obligation to get your income back to where it was.
- 6 min
Do you have to move as soon as you are paid?
No. You are entitled to notice, to a place to go, and in most cases to time to take the harvest with you.
- 7 min
Can a private company take your land, or only the government?
Companies negotiate; states compel. Where a company can call on the state's power, the negotiation is not what it appears to be.
- 7 min
How is a house valued for compensation?
By what it costs to build the same house today, with no deduction for age — which is not how a valuer would price it for sale.
- 7 min
Are trees and crops compensated separately from the land?
Yes, and for perennials the tree is often worth more than the ground it stands on. How the figure should be built.
- 7 min
Can you choose where you are resettled?
You get a say and rarely a veto. Where the choice is real, it is usually between cash and a site — and the site is chosen before you are asked.
- 7 min
What happens if two people claim the same piece of land?
The project cannot decide ownership. What it can do is record both claims, pay neither prematurely, and not use the dispute to avoid paying.
- 7 min
Does a RAP cover businesses, or only homes and farms?
Businesses are covered, employees are covered, and both are the categories most often left out of the entitlement matrix.
- 7 min
How do you know whether your project needs a RAP?
One test decides it: does the project take land, assets or access from anyone. Scale then decides which instrument, not whether.
- 8 min
What rights do you have when a project takes your land?
Eight of them, most of which projects will not volunteer. Knowing they exist is what makes them usable.
- 8 min
Kampala–Entebbe Expressway: whose land is it, and does the road care?
A royal family's title claim halted 80% of compensation on a related UNRA corridor. 1,435 of 4,535 PAPs on the Entebbe road were still unpaid years later.
- 8 min
Bujagali: the completion audit nobody did, and the 24 years that followed
CAO found IFC never required the completion audit PS-5 mandates on the Bujagali transmission line. The case closed in 2025, unresolved.
- 8 min
Karuma: the rock in the ground is not a separate asset
Uganda’s Court of Appeal cut a UGX 9.3bn award to UGX 203m — and held that possession before payment is a constitutional breach in its own right.
- 7 min
Kabaale refinery: a compensation claim that has outlived the project that caused it
Filed in 2014 for the Kabaale oil refinery PAPs, still unheard a decade on. What an eleven-year delay does to a valuation.
- 7 min
Kenya SGR: the case the government won, and why the record is the reason
A five-judge bench dismissed the SGR land-acquisition petition in 2016 — because the respondents could produce the notices and the claimant could not date the trespass.
- 8 min
Lake Turkana Wind Power: a court cancelled the title after the turbines were built
Kenya's Environment and Land Court found 150,000 acres of community land was set apart unlawfully — six years after financial close.
- 7 min
Lamu Port: 4,700 fishers, no land taken, and a court that called it property
Kenya's High Court held traditional fishing rights attract constitutional protection and awarded KSh 1.76bn. Payment landed six years later.
- 8 min
Mombasa–Mariakani: two cut-off dates, eighteen months apart, on one road
A design change added interchanges after the original 2014 cut-off — so the RAP carries a second cut-off from December 2015, for anyone caught by the change.
- 8 min
Nairobi Expressway: KSh 1.93bn, and a parcel number one digit short
A petition alleges compensation was paid against an obsolete land reference — for a plot the claimant says the road never touched.
- 8 min
Reading a real RAP: what Dar es Salaam BRT Phase 4 actually says
A disclosed 2024 RAP with 131 PAPs, two cut-off dates and four statutory allowances — including one worked at a rate it does not state.
- 9 min
Tanzania SGR: the RAP that wrote down its own gap with the standard
A disclosed AfDB-financed RAP names, in a table, exactly which PAPs Tanzanian law leaves uncompensated and why — rare candour worth reading directly.
- 8 min
Rusumo Falls: the cut-off date they made the community sign
A cross-border RAP fixed its cut-off at each village’s self-validation meeting and had the date signed by residents, chiefs and committees.
- 7 min
EACOP and Tilenga: nine years for their case, four days for the State’s
A Ugandan court granted possession of 42 households’ land four days after filing, on 2019 valuations, while their own 2014 claim waited.
- 8 min
North Mara: when the dispute is quantum, the valuation file is the whole case
Barrick says the Tanzanian cases are about how much was agreed, not whether people were moved. That framing puts the valuation record on trial.
- 8 min
Ruzizi III: one project, two countries, and a sevenfold gap in physical displacement
2,387 households affected across Rwanda and DRC — but 50 physically displaced in DRC against 7 in Rwanda. The same dam, two very different footprints.
- 9 min
The commitment register: how projects lose track of what they promised
Why safeguard obligations scatter across four documents, what an MMCR does about it, and why the scoring rule has to be agreed before the first period.
- 8 min
The grievance plan and the grievance log are different documents
Why a project that can produce a grievance log often cannot produce the plan behind it, and what a multi-tier mechanism has to specify to be auditable.
- 8 min
Cultural heritage management: chance finds are the part that fails
Why CHMPs are strong on known sites and weak on discovery, and what a chance-find procedure has to specify before the excavator reaches the ground.
- 9 min
Labour force management: the plan usually covers the wrong workers
Why LFMPs describe direct employees while the labour risk sits with subcontracted and community labour, and the three records a lender's audit checks first.
- 9 min
Community safety is not a subset of worker safety
Why the people most at risk from a civil works project are usually not its workers, and what an OHS and security plan has to measure to notice.
- 9 min
Ecological restoration you can evidence, and the baseline that makes it possible
Why clearance runs ahead of authorisation, why gazetted-area screening misses critical habitat, and why aftercare outlives the construction contract.
- 8 min
National content met, community content missed
How a project reports seventy per cent local employment while the affected parishes get nothing, and the disaggregation that exposes it.
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