What rights do you have when a project takes your land?

More than most projects will volunteer. If a project is financed by a development bank, or by a commercial bank applying the Equator Principles, the following apply regardless of whether you hold title — and the fact that a project has not mentioned them does not mean they are unavailable.

Eight things you are entitled to

1. To be counted. Enumerated in your own name, whether you own the land, rent it, farm it under an arrangement with a relative, or occupy it informally.[1]
2. To know the rules. The cut-off date, the entitlement framework and the rates should be disclosed publicly, in your language, before individual offers are made.
3. To see your own file. Your recorded assets and your calculated entitlement, in writing, with time to query them before you sign anything.
4. Compensation at replacement cost — enough to obtain the equivalent again, without deduction for the age of your house.[2]
5. Payment before displacement. Not an undertaking to pay later.
6. To complain, free of charge, and to receive an answer within a stated period — without losing your right to go to court.[3]
7. To have your livelihood restored, not merely to be paid for an asset — measured against what you earned before.
8. To be consulted on options that affect you, in a setting you can actually attend and speak in.

Rights people most often do not know they have

Tenants and informal occupants are entitled to compensation for what they built and to resettlement assistance. Lack of title removes the claim to the land, not to everything else.

You can be paid for crops you planted on someone else's land. The person who invested in the crop is entitled to it.

The land you keep counts. If a taking severs your holding or cuts off access, the loss in value to the remainder is compensable.

You can approach the lender directly. Independent accountability mechanisms accept complaints from affected communities, free, in local languages, and resettlement is consistently one of the largest categories they receive.[4]

How to use them practically

• Be present at enumeration and keep the signed inventory copy.
• Ask which lender finances the project, and which standards apply.
• Put everything important in writing and keep a reference number.
• Photograph your assets, dated, before anything is cleared.
• Act collectively where an issue affects many households — a rate below replacement cost is everyone's problem, and one complaint on behalf of forty people is far harder to settle quietly than forty separate ones.