Guiding Principles on Resettlement - a new global baseline

In a new report to the UN Human Rights Council, the Special Rapporteur on adequate housing, Balakrishnan Rajagopal, has introduced the Guiding Principles on Resettlement to address a long-neglected gap: what it takes to deliver resettlement of communities that restores rights, homes, and livelihoods following displacement by development projects, disasters, climate impacts and conflict.

For many years, forced eviction has been seen as the final stage of a tragedy. However, for millions displaced each year, eviction marks the beginning of a secondary, often less visible human rights crisis: the failure of resettlement.

The new Principles draw on dispersed standards from human rights law and development bank safeguards, outlining what ‘rights-compliant resettlement’ should look like before, during, and after relocation. But what do these Principles mean for the private sector?

At their core is a simple proposition: prevent involuntary resettlement wherever possible, treat it as a last resort, and where it cannot be avoided, ensure processes and outcomes that respect rights and dignity. This means clear duties and accountability for States, and clearer responsibilities for businesses and international organisations involved in the realities of resettlement policies and actions on the ground.

A Right to Resettlement

The Guiding Principles on Resettlement frame decision-making around the rights to remain, to return, and, where relocation is genuinely unavoidable, a ‘right to resettlement’.  That is best understood not as the creation of a wholly new treaty right, but as a clearer articulation of what existing protections already imply: if people are displaced, they are entitled to a resettlement process and outcome consistent with the rights to adequate housing, livelihoods, participation, culture, and fair sharing of benefits when land or resources create value.  

Unlike development bank safeguards, these Principles apply to all resettlement situations. They cover not just bank-funded projects but also disaster response, climate adaptation, and rebuilding after conflict, helping to bridge gaps between developers, financiers, contractors, and government rules.

From Safeguards to a Rights-Based Baseline

The Principles challenge the use of ‘public interest’ as a blanket justification for speculative gain or land transfers that primarily benefit private actors. Instead, they establish a baseline for credible justification and an alternatives assessment. They make clear that all resettlement costs, including compensation and full reparation, livelihood restoration, transitional support, and long-term monitoring, should be budgeted upfront and borne by those responsible for, or benefiting from the resettlement. When land or resources generate gains, the Principles reinforce expectations of fair and equitable benefit-sharing, grounded in human rights norms but unevenly codified in domestic law. 

The Principles also advocate for transparency, meaningful participation, accessible grievance mechanisms, and monitoring and evaluation extending well beyond handover, often at least ten years.

Power, Incentives, and Delivery Failures

None of this will, on its own, “fix” resettlement. Failures are usually driven by power imbalances and perverse incentives; weak institutions; exclusion of marginalised groups; corruption; and unrealistic budgets and timelines that treat resettlement as an administrative hurdle rather than a life-altering social process.

When resettlement fails, it is rarely because of a missing clause or standard. It is because affected people could not influence decisions, enforce commitments, or access remedy, while those driving the project faced little downside for cutting corners or budgets.

Consultants, contractors, auditors, and project staff form part of this chain of impact.  Responsibilities also apply where decisions are taken using artificial intelligence tools, with the associated risks of bias, discrimination and the reproduction of historical inequalities. Reducing harm should not be considered an adequate endpoint for companies if their advice, support, or investments facilitate projects that clearly harm people.

The Principles clarify responsibilities across the chain of actors, give communities and oversight bodies an authoritative international standard - an operational baseline - that can help leverage accountability through courts, complaints mechanisms, lenders and contracts.

This issue is particularly urgent in the context of the just transition, where land-intensive energy and mineral projects are rapidly expanding. A credible transition cannot rely on a model that treats displacement as collateral damage. A recent civil society proposal argues that development-forced displacement is structurally embedded in current approaches. It calls for an alternative model centred on the rights of affected communities. The new Principles can contribute to such efforts. 

What implementation can look like

The Guiding Principles are a soft-law instrument: not a treaty and not independently binding. Their influence depends on how they are used to shape policies and implementation strategies, similar to instruments such as the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, which, following their unanimous endorsement by the Human Rights Council, became the established foundation of corporate human rights expectations and subsequently informed regulations. Initial reactions to the Guiding Principles on Resettlement have been broadly supportive, but also underlined that success will be judged by whether they actually shape law, finance, operational decision-making and accountability in practice.

Implementation-oriented frameworks should complement the Principles. For example, the Fair and Equitable Land Access (FELA) approach establishes rigorous alternatives assessments and clearer “go/no-go” criteria in project settings, including enforceable financing and contracting requirements supported by accountability and remedy mechanisms. Read together, these tools can facilitate a shift from procedural compliance to whether resettlement works in practice.

What could uptake of the Principles look like in practice? The following points suggest initial pathways forward:

• States should apply the Principles when reviewing land acquisition, disaster response, and eviction laws with international human rights standards. They should also strengthen judicial oversight, and ensure that resettlement commitments are enforceable and adequately funded.
• Development banks and DFIs should benchmark safeguards and supervision against the Principles, close gaps (including full cost coverage, long-term monitoring and remedy), and make compliance a condition of finance and ongoing oversight.
• Private investors and commercial lenders can operationalise the Principles through screening and stewardship, and by making resettlement requirements measurable and enforceable in financing terms (e.g., covenants, monitoring triggers, and consequences for non-compliance), consistent with the Principles’ emphasis on cost coverage, transparency, monitoring and accountability.
• Companies should integrate the Principles into board-approved policy commitments, project governance, and contracts, ensuring that resettlement costs, timeframes, and outcomes are treated as core responsibilities rather than externalities (e.g., by linking contractor performance, payment milestones, project approvals and impact measurement to delivery of the resettlement plan and remedy).
• International organisations and UN agencies should incorporate the Principles into operational guidance, reconstruction planning, procurement, and partner standards, particularly when large-scale relocation is considered as an adaptation or disaster-response measure.

There is also a role here for existing business and human rights organisations and systems. Uptake does not require a new UN mandate holder. The more practical route is through existing special procedures and mechanisms, above all the Special Rapporteur on adequate housing, as well as the UN Working Group on Business and Human Rights and other relevant Special Procedures of the Human Rights Council, including those on internally displaced persons, climate change and Indigenous Peoples. This is also a moment for organisations working to advance the business and human rights agenda like IHRB to work with businesses, rights-holders and policymakers to translate the Principles into workable expectations for all stakeholders.

A shared reference point - if we use it

In the time ahead, displacement driven by climate impacts, infrastructure expansion, and resource demand is expected to increase. The critical question is whether institutions financing and implementing these projects treat resettlement as a technical exercise, or as a rights-sensitive process with genuine accountability.

If the Guiding Principles on Resettlement become the common benchmark for policy, finance, contracting and oversight, they can help shift expectations from procedural compliance to results that people can actually live with.

The Guiding Principles on Resettlement are available here: https://www.ohchr.org/en/documents/legal-standards-and-guidelines/guiding-principles-resettlement-2026

Ben Rutledge supported the UN Special Rapporteur on Adequate Housing in preparing reports on resettlement presented to the UN General Assembly and Human Rights Council. He is an independent business and human rights specialist and currently serves as Senior Advisor at the Responsible Contracting Project.