Domicide

Currently, no word exists for the action of destroying peoples’ homes and/or expelling them from their homeland. We suggest the neologism “domicide,” the deliberate destruction of home that causes suffering to its inhabitants.

The work of Porteous and Smith (2001, 64) is central here to understanding what is coined "domicide", the deliberate destruction of home, which in its "extreme" form involves "major, planned operations that occur rather sporadically in time but often affect large areas and change the lives of considerable numbers of people".

Inspired by Katherine Boo (2012, p. 251) who contends that "better arguments, maybe even better policies, get formulated only when we know more about ordinary lives", I draw on the displacees’ testimonials collected from formal and informal settings and examine their intense, layered and complex experiences of losing homes and communities, or domicide.

Domicide, a concept increasingly accepted in academia, is not a distinct crime against humanity under international law, and the UN special rapporteur on the right to housing tabled a report to the UN in October last year arguing that “a very important protection gap” needed to be filled.