Category: Refugees

Once indigenous lands and territories are expropriated through any of the other violations explored on this site, displacement follows on scales ranging from a few individuals or households to entire communities. This is producing growing populations of both internally displaced persons (IDPs) and refugees, whose search for new land on which to pursue their livelihoods rarely find welcome. The cascading effects of eviction and displacement, which necessarily results in the displaced having to seek refuge on the land of others, is more conflict and more displacement. Host communities may themselves be subject to similar threats of land appropriation, breeding suspicion and amplifying the divide between host and guest, resident and immigrant. This is exacerbated where indigenous peoples are concerned since they typically meet with disrespect, disdain and a devaluing of their cultures, livelihoods and humanity by majority populations.