gendarmerie to enforce their summons.201 Residents of western Côte d’Ivoire said that, prior to the post-election crisis, people from native and non-native communities generally honored a summons, based on an accepted social contract for resolving disputes and in recognition of village chiefs’ authority. In the rare cases when a nonnative refused to appear prior to the crisis, customary authorities reported at times sending youth natives to bring the person before them; this is a poor and never used option now, according to village chiefs and residents, given remaining inter-communal tensions and the proliferation of arms.202 Village chiefs are thus limited to social pressure in enforcing a summons; while such pressure works in many cases, key parties to other cases of land disputes linked to the crisis routinely defy these summonses. Moreover, village chiefs interviewed by Human Rights Watch appeared reluctant to issue a ruling until all relevant parties appeared and provided their evidence. The result is that a bad-faith party can effectively stall endlessly, continuing to work on—or, in the case of an illegal seller, order non-natives to continue to work on—a contested parcel of land while refusing to respond to a summons. This deprives a person claiming restitution their right under the Pinheiro Principles to a timely resolution. Land disputes have long existed in Côte d’Ivoire, and the customary grievance mechanism has historically proven effective in addressing many of them. As noted in a 2009 report on land conflict in western Côte d’Ivoire, “The major characteristic of the customary ruling is to seek a compromise between the parties in order that each party derives an advantage from the ruling.”203 Before the politico-military crises, conflicts often meant disputes over the outer limits of people’s boundaries or over the use of bas-fonds (“lowlands”), land generally used for planting rice or other food crops instead of cash crops.204 In areas where people have illegally sold or seized dozens of hectares of virgin forest while landowners were displaced by the crisis, the magnitude and charged nature of the land problems surpasses the type of cases customary authorities dealt with previously. 201 Ibid. 202 For example, Human Rights Watch interviews with residents of Diahouin, February 12, 2013. 203 IDMC and NRC, “Whose land is this?” October 2009, p. 24. 204 Human Rights Watch interviews with village chiefs, western Côte d’Ivoire, February and June 2013. 69 HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH | OCTOBER 2013