Summary What’s happening angers us a lot, as the land is our inheritance. If the authorities don’t act quickly, things will get dangerous. For right now, we’re avoiding making war against the [illegal sellers and buyers]. But if we lose our inheritance, what are we going to eat, how will we stay in the village? Things could quickly fall apart…. If we continue to see the illegal occupation of land in our region … it could become another war. —Alleged victim of land dispossession while displaced by conflict, June 2013 Land and ethnocentric politics have proven an explosive cocktail over the last 15 years in Côte d’Ivoire, particularly in the country’s volatile west. As the economy recessed and productive land grew scarce as a result of rising populations, Ivorian politicians exploited the resulting tensions between ethnic groups “native” to the west and “non-native” migrants who had come from neighboring countries and other regions of Côte d’Ivoire to work the region’s cocoa and coffee fields. When armed conflicts erupted from 2002-2003 and again from 2010-2011, deep inter-communal tensions linked to land were one factor in why western Côte d’Ivoire played host to many of the worst atrocities. The government of President Alassane Ouattara has said that resolving land conflict is a major priority. The actions it takes could determine whether western Côte d’Ivoire moves toward reconciliation or is stuck in a cycle of violence and instability. By the end of the 2010-2011 conflict, around 200,000 people had fled to neighboring Liberia; hundreds of thousands more were displaced internally. While displacement occurred throughout the country, western Côte d’Ivoire experienced the greatest population movements. The Guéré ethnic group native to much of the region fled en masse from their villages as pro-Ouattara forces advanced toward Abidjan, where they would arrest former President Gbagbo on April 11, 2011, five months after he refused to accept electoral defeat to Ouattara. Guérés have tended to be some of the strongest political supporters of Gbagbo, and western-based pro-Gbagbo militia groups that committed egregious crimes against perceived Ouattara supporters during the post-election crisis included many Guérés. Both Guéré militiamen and civilians fled in fear of reprisals—fears that were often substantiated. Some Guérés were displaced for several months during and 1 HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH | OCTOBER 2013