EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: •This joint submission by the Coalition of Indigenous Peoples in Myanmar/Burma focuses on
the collective rights of indigenous peoples, particularly the thematic areas of land,
territories, and natural resources, development, and language and cultural rights, with
militarization, self-determination, and free, prior
and informed consent (FPIC) as cross-cutting issues. •Section A describes the context of indigenous peoples in Myanmar/Burma. It highlights the

India Act XIII, 1898 4th November, 1898...."...5. The President of the Union may, for administrative including revenue purposes,-
(q) divide Upper Burma into divisions and each of these divisions into districts, and vary the
limits of those divisions and districts, and
(b) divide each of those districts into sub-divisions, each of those sub-divisions into townships
and each of those townships into circles, and vary the limits of these sub-divisions, townships
and circles.

Opinion and analysis on business and human rights issues in Myanmar...For the last two days I have been at the Workshop on the National Land Use Policy Formulation held at the Myanmar International Convention Centre in Nay Pyi Taw. Under discussion was the 6th, and likely final, draft of the National Land Use Policy. (Available here: http://www.fdmoecaf.gov.mm/documents)

... Without local support, the long-term existence of PAs is not assured (Wells and McShane 2004). Local people are unlikely to support PAs if they have negative perceptions

The people of Myanmar do not hold absolute property rights – a fact which has remained true, though meant different things, through the pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial eras.

INDIA Act IV, 1893 9th March, 1893....."...Whenever in any suit for partition in which, if instituted prior to the commencement of this
Act, a decree for partition might have been made, it appears to the Court that, by reason of the
nature of the property to which the suit relates, or of the number of the shareholders therein or of
any other special circumstance, a division of the property cannot reasonably or conveniently be
made, and that a sale of the property and distribution of the proceeds would be more beneficial

မြနမ် ာနိငု ်င၏ံ
ရေရှညတ် ညတ် သံ့ ည့ ်
မြေယာအပု ခ် ျုပေ် ရးနှင့ ်
စီမခံ န့ခ် ွဲမစှု နစ်ဆသီ ိ့…ု .
မြေယာကဏ္ဍ၏ လိအု ပခ် ျကမ် ျားအပေါ် စစီ စအ် ကဲဖြတမ် ဆှု ိငု ရ် ာ
အကြောငး် အရာအလိကု ် မဝူ ါဒရေးရာမတှ စ် မု ျား

The Union of Myanmar -
The State Law and Order Restoration Council -
Notification No. 44/91 -
7th Waxing Day of Tazaungmon, 1353 M.E. -
(13th November, 1991)

Customary Tenure and Land Alienation in Myanmar:
"Customary communal tenure is characteristic of many local upland communities in S.E. Asia. These
communities have strong ancestral relationships to their land, which has never been held under
individual rights, but considered common property of the village. Communal tenure has been the
norm and land has never been a commodity. This is an age-old characteristic of many societies
globally. Prior to the publication in 1861 of Ancient Law by the English jurist Henry Sumner Maine,

...[O]n 19th June, 2012, the President of the Union guided on the
following land reform matters to draw and implement the national
development long term and short term plans:
(a) To manage, calculate, use and carry out systematically the
Sustainable Development of natural resources such as land, water,
forest, mines to enable to use them future generations;
(b)To manage and carry out systematically the land use policy and land
use management not to cause land problems such as land use, land
fluctuation and land trespass;

...In the last six to eight months there’s been a lot of commotion made about land disputes in Burma. Legally speaking, what’s setting the precedent for this to happen now?

Well the whole phenomenon needs to be looked at in terms of the history of the country when it comes to land ever since independence, whereby a system of law, which essentially gave all power to the state when it came to the control, use and allocation of land, was used and very often abused by those who were members of the state or closely associated with the state to acquire land for personal benefit.

A joint preliminary assessment by
TNI Myanmar Project and TNI Agrarian Justice Programme.....Summary:
"October 18, 2014 saw the official unveiling by the government of
the Republic of the Union of Myanmar