Forced Displacement and Property Rights: What International Law Requires When States Demolish Homes

Why This Story Matters Beyond the Headlines

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs has reported the largest single-demolition displacement event in East Jerusalem since it began tracking such figures in 2009, with 69 Palestinians losing their homes following the demolition of a residential building in At Tur. For general counsel and international law practitioners, the event is a prompt to revisit a body of law that is specific, binding in character, and increasingly relevant to corporate due diligence frameworks worldwide. Forced displacement of civilians by state action sits at the intersection of international humanitarian law, human rights law, and, for businesses operating in conflict-affected areas, the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights.

The International Legal Framework Governing State Demolitions

The core prohibition on the destruction of civilian property by an occupying power appears in Article 53 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which forbids the destruction of real or personal property except where rendered absolutely necessary by military operations. Customary international humanitarian law, as codified by the International Committee of the Red Cross, reinforces this rule and extends it beyond formal armed conflict to situations of occupation. The UN Human Rights Committee has separately confirmed that arbitrary interference with the home is prohibited under Article 17 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, a treaty binding on nearly every state in the world.

What distinguishes legally permissible enforcement action from a violation is a three-part proportionality and necessity test: the measure must pursue a legitimate aim, be necessary to achieve that aim, and the harm caused must not be excessive relative to the benefit. Demolitions carried out as collective punishment, or on the basis of discriminatory planning regimes, do not pass this test under either humanitarian or human rights law.

Occupation Law and Property Destruction: The Specific Rules

When a territory is under belligerent occupation, the Hague Regulations of 1907 and the Fourth Geneva Convention together create a regime that is more restrictive than peacetime human rights law. An occupying power administers territory it does not own, and residents retain property rights that are not extinguished by occupation. Demolition orders based on building permit denials are particularly contested in international legal opinion: where the planning system itself is structured in a way that makes permits practically unavailable to one ethnic or national group, permit-based demolitions may constitute a form of indirect discriminatory displacement prohibited under the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination.

The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court lists extensive destruction of property not justified by military necessity as a war crime when committed in an international armed conflict. The ICC's jurisdiction over the situation in Palestine has been formally established since 2021, meaning individual criminal accountability for such conduct is no longer purely theoretical.

Displacement, Due Diligence, and Corporate Legal Risk

Forced displacement of civilians is now a recognised category of adverse human rights impact under the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. Any company with operations, supply chains, or investment exposures in conflict-affected or occupied territories is expected, under the UNGPs, to identify displacement risk as part of its human rights due diligence process. The EU Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive, which entered into force in 2024 and is being transposed across EU member states, makes this expectation a legal obligation for in-scope companies, with civil liability consequences for failures.

Practically, this means that contracts and agreements touching on real property, construction, logistics, or infrastructure in contested territories should include representations about lawful title, absence of displacement-related taint, and compliance with applicable international standards. Adira's contract analysis tools flag clauses that may expose counterparties to human rights liability, including provisions that assume clean title in areas where displacement risk is documented.

What Displaced Persons Are Owed Under International Law

The UN Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement, known as the Deng Principles, set out the rights of internally displaced persons. These include the right to return to one's home, the right to restitution of property, and, where restitution is not possible, the right to compensation. The UN General Assembly has repeatedly affirmed the right of return and the right to compensation for Palestinian displaced persons specifically, most recently by large majorities. These resolutions are not binding in the same way that treaty law is, but they reflect the near-universal consensus of the international community and inform how courts and arbitral tribunals interpret applicable standards.

Property restitution claims arising from displacement have been litigated before the European Court of Human Rights, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, and various domestic courts. The jurisprudence consistently holds that states are obliged to provide an effective remedy, which at minimum requires an accessible legal process and realistic prospects of either return or compensation.

Contract Implications Across Jurisdictions

For practitioners advising clients with cross-border exposure, the legal risk landscape is as follows. In EU jurisdictions, the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive creates a disclosure and remediation obligation. In the United Kingdom, the Modern Slavery Act and the developing failure-to-prevent framework under the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act are relevant. In the United States, the Alien Tort Statute remains available for egregious human rights violations by corporations, though its extraterritorial reach has been narrowed by courts. Canadian courts have shown increasing willingness to hear tort claims against domestic companies for overseas human rights abuses.

Contract drafters should ensure that force majeure clauses do not inadvertently shelter parties from liability for losses arising from unlawful displacement activity. Representations and warranties in real estate, infrastructure, and development agreements should address the provenance of title and the absence of displacement-related encumbrances. Where a counterparty is a state entity operating in an occupied territory, legal counsel should assess whether sovereign immunity arguments are available and how they interact with jus cogens norms, including the prohibition on forced displacement.