after the crisis. Others remained displaced for more than a year, with some 58,000 registered refugees still in Liberia as of August 2013. After returning home from displacement, many allege that their land has been overrun by non-native populations, particularly immigrants from Burkina Faso. One story is commonly told by Guéré refugees in Liberia and pro-Gbagbo militants in Abidjan. They say that “non-natives”—meaning West African immigrants and Ivorians from ethnic groups native to other regions of Côte d’Ivoire—seized vast amounts of land that belongs to Guéré “natives” displaced by the crisis. They say that non-natives—implicating Burkinabé migrants, above all—are armed and ready to commit violence to protect their occupation of this land, and that these groups are supported by the Ivorian military. Another story is commonly told by the non-native populations in western Côte d’Ivoire, including Burkinabés. They say that the Guérés are lazy and dishonest and have repeatedly tried to seize back land that non-natives acquired legitimately. They say the Guérés have spent years terrorizing non-natives, particularly West African immigrants, trying to chase them away from the land. As with many stories in a country that remains deeply divided on political and ethnic lines, the reality exists far from either extreme, though both sides present elements of the truth. Hundreds of Guérés have returned from being displaced to find someone occupying a parcel of land the Guéré landowner never sold or ceded. Many of those still in Liberia will face the same fate upon returning. Yet in the vast majority of cases documented by Human Rights Watch, land dispossession resulted from illegal sales of Guéré land by other Guérés, not a hostile takeover by armed Burkinabés. When Guérés were displaced during the conflict, Guérés from neighboring villages or even the same family pretended they were the real owners and sold the land, most often to Burkinabé migrants. Although this reality is far less sinister than the oft-recited depiction of widespread, violent takeover of natives’ land, it is generally no less problematic for—and no less a violation of the rights of—the true landowners. The United Nations Principles on Housing and Property Restitution for Refugees and Displaced Persons, better known as the Pinheiro Principles, focus on the rights of returning refugees and displaced persons. The Pinheiro Principles state that “[a]ll refugees and displaced persons have the right to have restored to them any housing, land and/or property of which they were arbitrarily or unlawfully deprived.” The African Union Convention for the Protection and Assistance of Internally Displaced “THAT LAND IS MY FAMILY’S WEALTH” 2