Host communities: the population that bears resettlement impacts without being displaced
Abstract
Physical resettlement moves a displaced population into an area already occupied, and the receiving community experiences real impacts — pressure on land, water and services, changes in local labour and product markets, and social friction — while falling outside the definition of project affected persons that drives entitlement. This paper examines the mechanisms of host community impact, the equity problem created when resettlers arrive with compensation into communities that receive none, and the conditions under which host arrangements succeed or fail.
1. Impact without entitlement
Resettlement does not eliminate impacts; it relocates them. A receiving community absorbs an additional population that requires land, water, schooling, health services and grazing, generally without any expansion of the resources available.
The definitional problem is that host community members are not displaced and therefore are not project affected persons in the sense that drives the entitlement matrix. They experience impacts and hold no entitlement, which is both an equity issue and, in practice, a source of the friction that determines whether the resettlement site works.
2. The compensation asymmetry
The asymmetry is stark and immediately visible on the ground. Resettlers arrive having received compensation, sometimes with new housing built to a standard exceeding local norms, and with continuing project attention through livelihood programmes. Their new neighbours receive none of this and absorb the additional pressure on shared resources.
Resentment on these facts is not unreasonable, and it manifests in ways that damage the resettlement itself: disputes over land allocated to resettlers, exclusion from local institutions, and in serious cases conflict that makes the site untenable. A resettlement site that fails socially fails entirely, whatever its infrastructure.
3. Land is the recurring flashpoint
Land allocated to resettlers must come from somewhere. Where it is genuinely unused, allocation may pass without incident. Where it is common land — grazing, woodland, fallow within a rotation — allocation transfers a resource the host community was using, without that use having been recorded or compensated.
This is the same invisibility problem that affects common property in the displacing area, arriving a second time at the receiving end. Land that appears unoccupied on a map is frequently in use under arrangements that leave no documentary trace.
4. What makes host arrangements work
Practice with better outcomes shares three features. Host communities are consulted before site selection is fixed rather than informed after, which both improves the choice and establishes that their position matters. Benefits are extended to hosts, typically through shared infrastructure — a water point, a school, a clinic serving both populations — which addresses the asymmetry directly and creates a shared interest in the site succeeding. And existing use of the allocated land is investigated with the same seriousness applied in the displacing area, rather than inferred from the absence of buildings.
Each requires budget for a population the entitlement matrix does not cover, which is why host provisions are among the first casualties of a constrained resettlement budget, and why they are so often absent from projects that later report social conflict at the resettlement site as an unforeseen difficulty.
References
- [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]Handbook Module 5: Livelihood Restoration and Improvement. International Finance Corporation, 2023.