was now trying to come up with around 80,000 CFA ($160) to pay the local office of the agriculture ministry to lay down boundary markings—“otherwise someone else will come behind you and illegally sell it all over again.”276 She expressed: “There are never any sanctions, the true landowner suffers and pays and pays, while the illegal seller acts with ill-will and faces no consequences. That’s why people keep doing it. If there were sanctions, this problem would be over.”277 People demanded at a minimum that sellers acting in bad faith receive fines that would remove the benefit from their theft and fraud. Others, however, felt strongly that authorities should go further, imprisoning those who profit from wreaking havoc in western Côte d’Ivoire. One of several Guérés in Pohan-Badouebly dealing with a land conflict based on an alleged illegal sale by a youth from neighboring Blédy exclaimed: The land problems are a catastrophe, and it’s because of the illegal sales. We have gone to the local government officials again and again and said, “You have to put these people in prison.” Up until now, they haven’t done it. How does a youth of 18, 20 years old sell a [square] kilometer [100 hectares] of forest? We have to stop this. Two or three times of putting in jail those who sell land they know they have no claim to, and this will all stop. If not, if this continues, it risks provoking another war.278 In its response to Human Rights Watch, the Ivorian government said that it had “strong reservations” about the research’s findings that local government officials prefer to avoid implicating law enforcement or judicial authorities, even in cases of fraudulent sales. The government continued: While it may be true that the sensitivity of land issues may lead certain local officials to privilege mediation for land disputes and to place their resolution in the hands of the entire communities, the judiciary, which is the mechanism for regulating social conflicts in a state built on rule of law, 276 Human Rights Watch interview with Guéré woman, victim of an illegal sale prior to the crisis, Guiglo, February 7, 2013. 277 Ibid. 278 Human Rights Watch interview with a Guéré victim of land dispossession by illegal sale, Pohan-Badouebly, February 11, 2013. 89 HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH | OCTOBER 2013