ABSTRACT
"Ethnic cleansing"—the forcible dislocation of a large number of people belonging to particular ethnic groups—is an outlawed practice. Individuals who are accused of ethnic cleansing are subjected to indictment by international criminal tribunals, and even domestic courts are increasingly used in the West to prosecute those who commit mass violence abroad. Yet most large forced dislocations of people do not occur in conditions of armed conflict or genocide but in routine, everyday evictions to make way for development projects. Indeed, this "development cleansing" may well constitute ethnic cleansing in disguise, as the people dislocated so often turn out to be from minority ethnic and racial communities. International human rights monitors remain oblivious to the violence of development. The millions of people forcibly dislocated from their lands are usually from among the poorest and most vulnerable sections of populations. Upon dislocation, these communities are pushed into further poverty and violence.
