Lyn Sumotea watched as a bulldozer flattened her neighbourhood on the outskirts of Vanuatu's capital city.
It was a moment residents living near Port Vila's landmark Korman Stadium had feared since the Supreme Court ordered their eviction.
Ms Sumotea clearly remembers the day authorities arrived to enforce the order.
"My heart was in pain. We ran away with our kids. As a mother I have never seen anything like this," she said.
"The bulldozer destroyed all the houses. None were left standing.
"I was scared."
Ms Sumotea was one of hundreds of people evicted from their homes at the Korman Stadium settlement last year.
It was the latest in a series of mass evictions that have uprooted communities in Vanuatu, including its main island, Efate.
"And there's a [long] list of communities that are yet to be evicted," Vanuatu human rights advocate Anne Pakoa said.
Government officials and experts who are grappling with their plight point to several causes.
People are moving from Vanuatu's outer islands to its capital Port Vila, but the city is short on space, so they’re settling on its fringes.
They make agreements with traditional landowners to live there, but some of these arrangements fall apart.
And when they do, the eviction orders come.
It's an issue people in Vanuatu feel strongly about.
And the government is looking for solutions, including creating new settlements where people can buy a secure place to live.
Losing home
By October last year, police and the Vanuatu Mobile Force had cleared any remaining residents from the settlement near Korman Stadium.
Evictees say when they first moved there, they made agreements with a member of the traditional landowning family, and had paid that person to live on the land.
But there was already an existing lease, and the Supreme Court ordered the area be returned to the leaseholder, Bellevue Estates.
Its manager, David Russet, said it doesn't know yet how it will use the land.
Once the eviction order came, many residents left their homes for new settlements.
"I am a father, but I cried during that time," Sakias Seri said.
"I was worried about my [belongings] and other people. I tried helping them and managed to support three families as they moved out."
Australian National University expert in Vanuatu's land laws, Siobhan McDonnell, said the upheaval means leaving behind homes that have taken years to build.
"Sometimes that population has been there for 10, 20, 30 years," she said.
"There's a generation that's grown up in that area."
Much of the housing built by the community are brick, and surrounded by gardens.
"These are not semi-permanent settlements," Dr McDonnell said.
Many women evicted from their homes also lose vegetable gardens that provide an income through cash crops.
"That's their shop. That's a business. And so when they leave, they leave with nothing," Ms Pakoa said.
Evictions can also disrupt schooling for children, she added.
And for some evictees leaving their homes, other challenges await.
A vicious cycle
Chief Fred Nalau had lived in the Korman Stadium settlement since 2015, before he and his community left in July last year.
"When we received the eviction order, as a chief I couldn't sleep. Every morning, people would come by my house to ask for updates about what was happening," he said.
After an MP invited them to resettle on his family's land outside Port Vila, the chief and his community cleared bushes and built new houses, and about 170 people moved there.
While community members are grateful for a place to live, and say they're happy in their new homes, the area lacks easy access to water.
It's a challenge for Ms Sumotea, who looks after her two young children alone while her husband is working at sea.
"We have to travel long distances to get the water," she said.
"[My eldest child] is not strong enough yet to help carry the water, so it's just me."
Elsewhere, some evictees of the Korman Stadium settlement face the possibility of moving again.
Chief Jack Marang, whose community resettled on another MP's land outside Port Vila, said they were uncertain about the future because they didn't have a formal lease agreement with the landowner.
"I believe we will be moved out of here some day," he said.
Jennifer Day, an expert on forced evictions and urbanisation at the University of Melbourne, said it could be hard for evictees to escape the uncertainty.
"Families will find themselves in this cycle where they're getting moved again and again," she said.
Why is this happening?
Across Vanuatu, members of the public have watched as evictions have unfolded on television news.
And many are asking how they could happen in their country, where the vast majority of land is owned by traditional or customary owners.
Experts say it's partly caused by migration from Vanuatu's outer islands to Port Vila, where people are seeking better access to jobs, education and healthcare, or escaping the impact of natural disasters on their home villages.
People reach agreements with the customary owners to live there, which are often formalised by traditional ceremonies and can involve cash payments.
But the agreements are not registered with Vanuatu's land authorities — a process that is expensive and can be complex.
"There's a tapestry of arrangements across those areas, but none of them really grant people long-term permission in law to live in those areas," Dr McDonnell said.
Those customary agreements are often longstanding, but can break when a chief or landowner dies.
Sometimes residents make agreements with a person claiming to be the landowner, and later learn another person owns the land.
In some cases, customary landowners accept payment from residents, but later make legally-enforceable lease agreements with others for the same land, Dr McDonnell said.
And the people holding those leases can evict the residents living on that land.
'What happened to us is a lesson'
Experts warn that more mass evictions are coming.
Ms Pakoa said the government should talk to communities about preparing to move, before authorities clear their settlements.
"We really need to start developing pathways for counselling and pathways for guidance and support," she said.
Evictees told the ABC they want the nation's leaders to do more about the issue.
And some say Vanuatu's traditionally-owned land shouldn't be leased to non-indigenous investors.
"Landowners must stop selling land, and leave it to the indigenous people of Vanuatu to look after," Ms Sumotea said.
Vanuatu's government says it's working on solutions that will improve access to land and affordable housing.
Among them is a plan for the government to purchase more land and build infrastructure, letting people buy and settle there.
But the government is yet to confirm where they will buy land.
It has also launched an awareness campaign warning people about the risk of eviction if they make agreements that aren't registered with land authorities.
Vanuatu's government has laid out other ways to protect evictees in a 2018 policy on managing disasters — including with safeguards requiring they receive adequate notice and suitable housing during an eviction.
The International Organization for Migration said it's helping the Vanuatu government develop a plan to implement the policy.
After years of political instability, Lands Minister Rick Tchamako Mahe also hopes recent reforms to stabilise Vanuatu's politics will let the government focus on addressing evictions.
"The Ministry of Lands and [relevant] agencies require reform and institutional capacities to be able to cope with the current trend of informal settlements and … evictions," he said.
"We definitely need to reform our land laws and to come up with policies that will suit the Vanuatu context."
Evictees from Korman Stadium settlement hope the government learns from their experience.
Sakias Seri urged government officials to review and reform Vanuatu's laws to stop any more evictions.
"We seem to be heading towards loss instead of progress," he said.
"I encourage everyone to really think about what they are doing.
"What happened to us is a lesson. The government has to come out to see what's happening in the lives of the people."
Additional reporting by Stevenson Liu
