displaced persons have the right to have restored to them any housing, land and/or property of which they were arbitrarily or unlawfully deprived.”82 Land dispossession linked to the crisis has devastating consequences on livelihoods and food security, as people are unable to access land where they grew food and cash crops. Given the longstanding tension over land in western Côte d’Ivoire and land’s significance for livelihoods, land conflicts created by the crisis bring the potential for inter-communal violence should the government fail to take measures to ensure restitution. Several crossborder attacks from Liberia in March 2013 appear directly related to land conflict. In response to Human Rights Watch’s findings that the current victims of land dispossession in western Côte d’Ivoire come overwhelmingly from the Guéré ethnic group, which largely supported Gbagbo, the Ivorian government said any such ethnic element to land dispossession was not the result of government policy or the “indifference of the current authorities.”83 It stated further: The government would like to point out that, in any event, land conflicts in the West are not the result of any policy of colonizing land to the detriment of the “native” ethnic group. Moreover, certain illegal or illicit land occupations by other ethnic communities should not be seen as “collective punishment.”84 Human Rights Watch did not find evidence suggesting that land dispossession in western Côte d’Ivoire was a result of a state-organized policy or that local authorities were discriminating against Guérés in resolving land conflicts. As discussed in Section III, the Ivorian government’s breach of its human rights obligations comes primarily from the lack of support it has provided to ensure land restitution for victims, not from overseeing the confiscation of Guéré land. However, the Ivorian government would be remiss if it were to deny or pretend away the ethnic and political nature of the land dispossession. The reality is that the victims of land dispossession in the region of western Côte d’Ivoire examined by Human Rights Watch 82 Pinheiro Principles, principle 2. 83 Letter from Gnénéma Mamadou Coulibaly, minister of justice, human rights, and public liberties, to Human Rights Watch, September 13, 2013, p. 5. 84 Ibid., p. 6. “THAT LAND IS MY FAMILY’S WEALTH” 30