Burma is situated in Southeastern Asia, bordering Bangladesh, India, China, Laos and Thailand. The majority of its population lives in rural areas and depends on land as a primary means of livelihood. Because all land in Burma ultimately belongs to the state, citizens and organizations depend upon use-rights, but do not own land. Burma’s laws grant women equal rights in some respects and also recognize certain customary laws that provide women equal rights in relation to land.

ABSTRACTED FROM THE INTRODUCTION: There is little evidence... that ordinary Cambodians are benefiting from the mass confiscation of their land. On the contrary, those who are displaced are explicitly excluded from any benefits, and instead find themselves facing loss of income, poor health, lack of education and other dire consequences that are directly opposed to the government’s public commitment to development, expressed through targets such as the “Millennium Development Goals” (MDG).

The research team set out to answer three research questions: 1) What are rubber investment’s key features with regard to the investment process, investor identity, location, activities and scale? 2) How was the “upland” landscape originally zoned and mapped as part of the LFA process, and later re-zoned and mapped by local authorities and foreign investors? 3) What are the impacts of rubber investment in upland areas on the land use and livelihoods of the villagers involved?

ABSTRACTED FROM THE MISSION STATEMENT: The primary purpose of his mission was for the Special Representative to update himself on the human rights situation in Cambodia for his report to the 61st session of the Commission on Human Rights. He paid particular attention to the management of land and natural resources, the continuing problem of impunity, and to corruption which impacts negatively on the realisation of a range of human rights and distorts the allocation of economic resources so as to further exacerbate existing inequalities.

ABSTRACTED FROM THE EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: The Moving Out of Poverty Study (MOPS) is a first of its kind in Cambodia, one of 18 studies commissioned by the World Bank to examine poverty dynamics and trends. Conducted in 2004/05, the study revisited nine rural villages in which CDRI had conducted research in 2001, using quantitative and qualitative methods to investigate the extent to which these villages and individual households had been able to move out of poverty and improve prosperity, or had experienced downward mobility and decline.

The dramatic increase in migration and settlement in several areas where indigenous people live is leading to a multitude of problems for the original inhabitants. Lowland immigrants are taking advantage of the vulnerable situation of indigenous people, and the absence of regulations, to lay claim to the people’s traditional lands. Illegal land transactions are taking place at an alarming rate without thought of the problems that would result from widespread landlessness among indigenous peoples or the impact this is likely to have on the remaining forested areas.

Slow agricultural development has restrained economic growth and poverty alleviation in Cambodia. The country’s volatile history has left a legacy of weak tenure security and large areas of underutilized land. This study estimates the impact of access to land on poverty in a logistic regression framework using household survey data. Increased access to land is shown to significantly lower the risk of household poverty. Tenure security, land improvements and irrigation strengthens this effect.

Although Cambodia has made significant progress in improving human well-being, poverty in rural areas persists. This Human Development Report for Cambodia assesses the state of rural livelihoods and their relationship with natural resources. It describes the status of human development at the regional and provincial levels, and distinguishes high performance areas from those which require more attention.

The purpose of this study is threefold: (1) to describe the legal and institutional framework governing land in Cambodia, as well as the current status of land ownership and use; (2) to estimate the impact of access to land on human development and the potential benefits from land reforms; and (3) to discuss implications for land polices and challenges for implementing land reforms.

ABSTRACTED FROM THE SUMMARY: The impact of land titles on social and economic development and poverty reduction in the rural sector can be optimized by targeting land-titling efforts in areas where government agencies, NGOs, and private investors are actively engaged. The benefits for disadvantaged households can also be increased by policies that specifically link land-titling efforts to pro-poor development objectives.

This paper is part of a collection of five policy briefs was commissioned by the World Bank for the 2009 World Development Report Reshaping Economic Geography. Through relocation policies, the Government of Lao PDR seeks to transform what it considers to be a traditional, rural economy into a modernised market-oriented system by eradicating shifting cultivation, changing the way that land is allocated and by reaching communities.

Over 943,069 hectares of land in rural Cambodia have been granted to private companies as economic land concessions, for the development of agro-industrial plantations. Thirty-six of these 59 concessions have been granted in favour of foreign business interests or prominent political and business figures. These statistics exclude smaller economic land concessions granted at the provincial level, for which information on numbers and ownership has not been disclosed.