Many Guérés are adamant that non-natives must leave all land not acquired from the rightful landowner. Non-natives, for their part, often purchased hectares for several hundred dollars each and have made significant investments when planting cash crops; they will not easily abandon such investment. When both parties are intractable, it may not be realistic to place the burden on customary authorities who have no enforcement power and are guided by consensus. These cases likely require deeper examination, including into whether sellers and buyers acted in good or bad faith. These problems do not affect customary authorities alone; local government officials also have serious problems in finding sustainable solutions and enforcing decisions related to land dispossession linked to the crisis (see below). However, they appear particularly acute—and, in many ways, unresolvable—at the customary level, as those authorities have no enforcement power beyond consensus. Customary authorities may want to consider relinquishing a case when one or both parties refuse to engage sincerely in the resolution process, otherwise they risk depriving the complainant of effective restitution—as the cutting of forests and planting of crops generally continues. There is an urgency to resolve these claims, as occupants are permanently changing the land in the meantime. The Pinheiro Principles are clear: the illegal deprivation of property during displacement demands restitution, ideally in the ability to return to the land itself.205 Politics, Corruption, and Competing Claims to Authority Some customary leaders’ authority and impartiality is widely respected among both native and non-native populations, facilitating their ability to resolve land disputes. In other villages, however, politics, corruption, and competing claims to authority undermine people’s trust in customary leaders. Several Guéré village chiefs were killed during the conflict; others, often fearing reprisals, remained displaced for extended periods. In several villages, this helped lead to a contest over authority that still existed during the research for this report. Human Rights Watch visited two villages where residents indicated that there were two Guérés claiming to be the village chief, each supported by a faction. A local human rights activist cited at least three different villages in western Côte d’Ivoire, including one of the two identified by 205 Pinheiro Principles, principle 2. “THAT LAND IS MY FAMILY’S WEALTH” 70