being occupied illegally by “non-native” populations. Based on interviews with victims, customary leaders, and sub-prefects in western Côte d’Ivoire, we believe the cases we documented represent only a small portion of the total cases of land dispossession that occurred while people were displaced by the conflict. The problems appear particularly acute in the department of Bloléquin. In general, the victims of land dispossession come from ethnic groups that typically supported former president Gbagbo during the elections, notably the Guérés; and the people occupying the land are often immigrants. We have noticed the discourse of the Ivorian Popular Front (FPI), which has suggested that the land of pro-Gbagbo ethnic groups has been taken over by force by armed Burkinabés, supported by the Republican Forces. The majority of cases that we documented do not fit this description. Instead, the typical case of conflict-related land dispossession that we documented was an illegal sale of a displaced person’s land by another person from the same ethnic group. We documented scores of cases in which a Guéré displaced by the conflict returned to find that another Guéré – often from another village, but at times from his own family – had illegally sold his land to a Burkinabé who arrived in the village right after the post-election crisis. Many of these cases involved clear theft and fraud by the seller, who had no claim to the land, and bad faith on the part of the buyer, who purchased the land under circumstances that should have led a reasonable person to question the seller’s ownership rights. Buyers often purchased from youth and did so clandestinely, not involving customary authorities or even local leaders from the immigrant community. While these cases of fraudulent land sales do not fit the FPI description of illegal occupation by force, they are no less problematic for the true landowner: he does not have access to his land, more than two years after the crisis. In a minority of cases, we did document more hostile takeovers. In some cases, “non-natives” who were previously sold or ceded several hectares used the owner’s displacement to illegally seize several additional hectares that the owner had never sold or ceded. In four other cases, all near the protected forest of Goin-Débé, we documented seizures in which the occupants claimed to be former fighters with the pro-Ouattara forces and said that their takeover of dozens of hectares of virgin forest was a “reward” for having fought. All of these cases occurred near Goin-Débé but were on privately-owned land, not in the protected forest; our work did not focus on the protected forests, since this is government-owned land. In general, those we spoke to said that the Republican Forces were playing a neutral role in land disputes. People even from typically pro-Gbagbo ethnic groups said that soldiers in the area did not implicate themselves in land disputes, and when “non-natives” approached soldiers expecting them to favor typically pro-Ouattara groups, soldiers instead said to go to the sub-prefect with any land problems – a neutral and appropriate response. People in western Côte d’Ivoire spoke in general of a decrease in human rights abuses by the Republican Forces, except for the problem of racketeering. Many people, including Guérés, said that the security situation has improved over the last year as human rights abuses “THAT LAND IS MY FAMILY’S WEALTH” 98