Keeping Land Local - Reclaiming Governance from the Market

This report covers much of SE Asia, with specific references to Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Philippines, Myanmar....."...In Myanmar, the ceasefire negotiations and move
toward democracy have opened the door to a
virtual gold rush for foreign investors, posing new
threats to the country’s rural populations in the
guise of economic development. On March 30,
2012, the Parliament approved the Farmland Law
and Vacant, Fallow and Virgin Lands Management Law, which are designed to encourage large-scale
agricultural investment and retain the government’s
power to revoke the use rights of local communities
to farmlands and confiscate lands.3 The laws
fail to recognize the tenure rights of farmers and
local customary laws governing land. Particularly
disadvantaged are ethnic nationalities that practice
swidden or shifting cultivation and complex systems
of land use and management. Most local communities
do not have legal registration papers to prove land
ownership, and forced evictions of local populations
for foreign investment, as well as arrests of those who
resist these incursions, are on the rise...