complicated by the fact that parties often carried out the original land transaction orally or on informal papers that were never filed with local authorities and were then destroyed during the crisis when armed forces burned homes. A Guéré man in Guinkin said that, decades before the crisis, his uncle ceded to a Burkinabé family a hectare of land and a plot to build their home. When the Guéré returned from being displaced by the crisis, he found that the Burkinabé had planted rubber trees on several additional hectares that the Burkinabé had never received or made claim to. The Guéré told Human Rights Watch: “I can’t stop him from working the land my uncle ceded to him, but he can’t take the rest of my family’s forest. I asked him why he had planted there, and he said he thought everyone [in my family] had died during the crisis.”107 The man said he was trying to resolve the dispute through customary leaders and with the help of a humanitarian organization, but would file a complaint with the court system if they did not quickly succeed in removing the Burkinabé from the additional land.108 A Guéré in Petit-Guiglo described another such case: When I came back from Liberia in late 2012, I saw that Burkinabés who work for me had taken over land I never sold to them. There were five Burkinabés on my land before the crisis, on five hectares total…. There are now seven Burkinabés, and they are working on 12 total hectares. Before, the other seven hectares was virgin forest, I never sold it. I went to them and said who gave this to you, why are you on this land. And one said, “[Name omitted], you weren’t here.” I’m not fine with them taking this land. This is for my children, for future generations. About a month ago I brought a complaint to the sub-prefect, who said he would come to Petit-Guiglo, but he hasn’t yet…. This really angers me, but I don’t want a fight, that’s why I haven’t chased them off the land. For now, I am waiting for the sub-prefect to come. If I push them off the land, tomorrow they’ll say that the population of Petit-Guiglo doesn’t accept 107 Human Rights Watch interview with alleged victim of land dispossession by an illegal extension from previously owned land, Guinkin, February 7, 2013. 108 Ibid. “THAT LAND IS MY FAMILY’S WEALTH” 40