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)

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

နိုဝင်ဘာလ ၂၀၁၄
မြန်မာနိုင်ငံ၏ အမျိုးသားမြေအသုံးချမှုမူဝါဒမူကြမ်းနှင့်ပတ်သက်၍ Global Witness ၏
အဆိုပြုလွှာအနှစ်ချုပ်
ဒီမိုကရေစီနိုင်ငံအဖြစ် ပြုပြင်ပြောင်းလဲမှုများပြုလုပ်ရာတွင်မြန်မာနိုင်ငံအစိုးရသည်
အမျိုးသားမြေအသုံးချမှုမူဝါဒမူကြမ်းကို ၂၀၁၄ ခုနှစ် အောက်တိုဘာလတွင်ထုတ်ပြန်ခဲ့ပြီး
ပြည်သူလူထုနှင့် တိုင်ပင်ဆွေးနွေးရန်နောက်ဆက်တွဲမြေယာဥပဒေတစ်ခုအတွက် အစီအစဉ်များကိုလည်းထုတ်ပြန်ခဲ့ပါသည်။

Housing, land and property rights are fundamental human rights and a global advocacy priority for
the Norwegian Refugee Council. The restitution of housing, land and property rights after conflicts
and periods of non-democratic governance are fundamental aspects of transitional justice which
are essential for the achievement of durable solutions to forced displacement, and to broader
concerns of peace, reconciliation and economic prosperity. The NRC Country Office in Myanmar

Summary: "As part of its transition to democratic reform, in October 2014, the Government of Myanmar released a draft national land policy and plans for a subsequent Land Law, for public consultation. The importance of this cannot be understated and Global Witness welcomes both the potential for a strong codified framework for land, and the opportunity for public participation. It is crucial, however, that consultation is meaningful and genuinely participatory, and the resulting feedback is incorporated into the policy and Land Law in a process that is fully transparent.

Landesa works to secure land rights for the world’s poorest
people—the 3.4 billion chiefly rural people who live on less than two dollars
a day. Landesa partners with developing country governments to design
and implement laws, policies, and programs concerning land that provide
opportunity, further sustainable economic growth, and promote social
justice...

Scroll down and click on FORCED RELOCATION, LAND CONFISCATION, STRATEGIC DISPLACEMENT or whichever Issue category you think may relate to internal displacement.