Land & Conflicts

Preserving Burmese traditions in Thailand...

Burmese paintings find their home in a Chiang Mai gallery...

"It’s a sad reflection on the Rangoon regime’s restrictive policies on artistic expression that one of Southeast Asia’s finest collections of contemporary Burmese art isn’t to be found in Burma, but in Chiang Mai, northern Thailand.

Between October 2004 and January 2005 SPDC troops launched forays into the hills of Nyaunglebin District in an attempt to flush villagers down into the plains and a life under SPDC control. Viciously timed to coincide with the rice harvest, the campaign focused on burning crops and landmining the fields to starve out the villagers.

The Land Rights Research and Resources Institute held its second National level Public Forum on land on 12-13 May 2005. The two day forum was partly one of the planned activities in the Institute’s three year Strategic plan and a special event to commemorate the Institute’s tenth Anniversary.

Background – renewed impetus for systematic demarcation – policy, legislative and operational frameworks. Systematic demarcation and poverty reduction – theoretical and conceptual frameworks, methodology.

Includes land rights in gender equity; issues in gaining access to land property – acquiring land rights from the state and through inheritance and the market, legal pluralism, population displacement; three postconflict studies (Rwanda, Guatemala, Afghanistan); conclusions and recommendations – legislation and policy, programme implementation, overcoming patriarchal norms, the cost of speaking

Examines the jurisdiction of the Lands Tribunal, its operations, composition, funding and secretariat. Urges the Government to finalise its draft Land Policy and revise the 1995 Lands Act. Recommends that the Lands Tribunal be decentralised to be accessible to poor women and men, that it publicise its work more and that its capacity and resources be increased.

Mit Zwangsarbeit, ethnischen Umsiedlungen und ausländischen Investitions-Dollars sichert die Militärjunta ihre Machtstrukturen in Myanmar. Forced labour, internal displacement, foreign investments, power structures.

This summary of the Report of the Ndungu Commission on Illegal and Irregular Allocation of Public Land provides an insight into a critical recent episode in the struggles over land and graft in Kenya.

Africa’s Great Lakes Region has in recent years experienced
political strife, armed conflict and population displacements
with severe humanitarian consequences. While these events
have clearly revolved around political struggles for the control
of the state, recent research has pointed to the significance

Contains background to the Acts; the Land Act – concentration of powers in the Ministry, the provisions for a market in land, women’s rights to land, conflict resolution; the Village Land Act – definition and registration of village land, registration and adjudication of customary rights, women’s rights, conflict resolution, the enabling legislation; if not this, then what?; what next?

This paper argues that Ghanaian litigants in land disputes favour authoritative state legal-institutions over out-of-court settlements.