CHAPTER 8 CASE STUDIES ON EVICTION AND RESETTLEMENT PRACTICE The case studies in this chapter offer some first-hand accounts of government practice during the course of evictions and resettlement. As part of the review of government practice a range of communities were visited as a fact-finding exercise to determine actual compliance with both the legislative regime and the international standards. The communities visited were all from IPD’s network of affiliate organisations. Communities were selected to provide as broad a range of experiences as possible in the eviction and resettlement process. Accordingly, four separate informal settlements were visited within the NCR where community members had not yet been resettled or had returned from resettlement sites back into the city. Conditions of these sites also differed. Some were located on private land, some on government-owned lands. Some were also in areas categorised as ‘danger areas’ by the UDHA and thus subject to the Government’s current mass resettlement initiative. In addition, six resettlement sites outside the NCR were visited to ascertain the experience of those communities subject to distant resettlement. When determining the extent of government eviction and resettlement programmes, reference is made in the case studies to numbers of ‘families’ or ‘households’. This is a cultural phenomenon in the Philippines, where the family unit is the principal entity recognised within the construct of Philippine society. Accordingly, government, civil society and the communities themselves will refer to the number of families affected by a particular policy or programme, rather than the number of affected individuals. These family or household numbers are an imprecise indicator when determining the precise extent of those affected by eviction and resettlement programmes. In informal settler communities, a number of generations of the same family will typically live in the one residence, which can comprise 25 individuals or more. However, numbers fluctuate considerably depending on the particular household concerned. Nonetheless household numbers are the common indicator in the Philippines and have accordingly been adopted in the case studies. Detailed interview questions were prepared for case study participants. The interview questions were designed to determine compliance with international standards and therefore based on the compliance indicators established by these standards and the UDHA. At each fact-finding visit, group interviews were held with community leaders and these questions were asked in an open forum. Participants elaborated on their experiences during the eviction and resettlement process, or their experiences with government agencies in related processes, such as consultations prior to eviction. Questions were presented in Tagalog and all conversations recorded and later transcribed and translated into English. Community leaders also provided tours of local facilities to identify some matters raised during the interview process, at which photographs were taken, some of which appear below. All information has been summarised and presented into English for the purpose of inclusion in the review. 67