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.
Preparing a Resettlement Action Plan usually takes nine to eighteen months from mobilisation to an approved plan. Implementation takes considerably longer — payment and relocation run one to three years, and livelihood restoration and monitoring continue for several years after that. A project that budgets six months for the whole exercise has budgeted for the census alone.
Where the preparation time goes
- Scoping and footprint confirmation — 1 to 3 months. The census cannot start until the alignment is fixed, and this is where most early delay sits.[1]
- Census and asset inventory — 2 to 5 months. Driven by the number of parcels and the terrain, not by corridor length. A fragmented smallholder area takes far longer per kilometre than extensive grazing land.
- Valuation — 1 to 3 months, plus whatever the statutory approval chain adds, which is frequently longer than the valuation itself.
- Drafting, consultation and disclosure — 2 to 4 months, including a disclosure period before the plan is finalised.
- Review and approval — 1 to 4 months, and longer where a national authority and a lender review in sequence rather than in parallel.[4]
What makes it take longer
Four things account for most overruns, and three of them are decided before the RAP team mobilises.
A footprint that moves. Every design change after enumeration means re-surveying, re-valuing and re-consulting the affected area. This is the single largest cause of delay and it is a procurement decision: if the terms of reference schedule the census before the design is frozen, the re-work is already priced in.[2]
Seasonality. Crop enumeration has to happen when crops are standing. Miss the window and either the survey waits or the record is built from recall.
Consultation done properly. Reaching women, tenants and absentee owners requires separate sessions at times they can attend. It is not compressible without excluding people, which is a compliance problem rather than a schedule saving.
The documentation tail. Deceased registered owners, contested boundaries and claimants without identification take months each to resolve — and they only surface at payment unless they were flagged at census.[3]
The part people underestimate
Approval is roughly the halfway point. Payment, possession, relocation, livelihood restoration, monitoring and completion audit all follow, and the obligations continue years after the contractor has demobilised. A RAP is not a document with a delivery date; it is a programme with a closure condition.
Can it be shortened?
Realistically, in three places: fix the footprint before enumeration starts, begin succession and documentation work on flagged records the day they are created rather than at payment, and agree the valuation methodology with the approving authority before assessment rather than defending it afterwards. Together these remove more calendar time than any amount of pressure applied to the field team.
Sources
- [1]Performance Standard 5: Land Acquisition and Involuntary Resettlement — International Finance Corporation, 2012.
- [2]Guidance Note 5: Land Acquisition and Involuntary Resettlement — International Finance Corporation, 2012.
- [3]Good Practice Handbook: Land Acquisition and Involuntary Resettlement — International Finance Corporation, 2023.
- [4]ESF Guidance Note 5: Land Acquisition, Restrictions on Land Use and Involuntary Resettlement — World Bank, 2018.
Olule Solomon
Lead Consultant, ValueSpace
Olule Solomon is Lead Consultant at ValueSpace, where he works on land acquisition and resettlement systems for donor-financed infrastructure in East Africa. He writes about the practical gap between what the safeguard standards require and what a project can actually evidence at completion audit.
Related reading
- Sequencing RAP implementation: payment, possession and handoverCompensation before displacement is a rule with a specific order behind it. Where schedules break, and what breaks with them.
- ESIA and RAP sequencing: why the order these are done in decides the costThe RAP depends on ESIA outputs it is usually procured in parallel with. What that costs, and how to sequence it properly.
- Writing terms of reference for a RAP consultancyMost weaknesses in a RAP were procured, not drafted. The clauses that decide whether the plan you receive is implementable.
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