Community Land Protection Facilitators Guide
This step-by-step guide aims to help community-based organizations and advocates working to help communities protect their customary claims and rights to land and natural resources. It provides tools to:
● Prepare communities for negotiations with investors
● Strengthen community governance of land and natural resources
● Monitor, evaluate and assess the implementation of projects.
Our Customary Lands - Community-Based Sustainable Natural Resource Management in Burma
Executive summary:
"In January 2016 the government adopted a National Land Use Policy, which included the recognition
of customary land management practices. While this is a welcome first step in the necessary
integration of Burma’s customary land management systems with the national-level system,
there is an urgent need for constitutional reform and devolution of land management powers
prior to any such integration.
This report by the Ethnic Community Development Forum (ECDF) presents how Burma’s diverse
Ethnic Minority Groups / Indigenous People [Myanmar]
Myanmar is one of the most culturally diverse countries in the region, and ethnicity is a
complex, contested and politically sensitive issue where ethnic groups have long believed
that the Government manipulates ethnic categories for political purposes.
Myanmar’s
ethnic minorities make up an estimated 30-40% of the population, and ethnic states
occupy some 57% of the total land area along most of the country’s international
borders.
National Land Use Policy (2016) - Excerpts on National Land Law Formulation
This document highlights, in English and Burmese, some key chapters of the National Land Use Policy: Objectives...Grants and Leases of Land at the Disposal of Government...Procedures related to Land Acquisition, Relocation, Compensation, Rehabilitation and Restitution...Land Use Rights of the Ethnic Nationalities...Equal Rights of Men and Women...Harmonization of Laws and Enacting New Law...Monitoring and Evaluation...Research and Development.
BURMA: Draft land law denies basic rights to farmers
A Statement by the Asian Human Rights Commission...
State-induced violence and poverty in Burma
...The objective of this research paper is to describe specific ways in which the State
Peace and Development Council (SPDC) deprives the people of Burma of their land
and livelihood. Confiscation of land, labour, crops and capital; destruction of person
and property; forced labour; looting and expropriation of food and possessions;
forced sale of crops to the military; extortion of money through official and
unofficial taxes and levies; forced relocation and other abuses by the State...
Housing, Land, and Property Rights in Burma
...The main objective of this research is to examine housing, land, and property rights in the context of Burma’s societal transition towards a democratic polity and economy. Much has been written and discussed about property rights in their various manifestations, private, public, collective, and common in terms of “rights”. When property rights are widely and fairly distributed, they are inseparable from the rights of people to a means of living.
Land Rights Matter! Anchors to Reduce Land Grabbing, Dispossession and Displacemen
A Comparative Study of Land Rights Systems in Southeast
Asia and the Potential of National and International Legal
Frameworks and Guidelines....."Land rights systems in Southeast Asia are in constant
flux; they respond to various socioeconomic and political pressures and to changes in statutory and customary
law. Over the last decade, Southeast Asia has become
one of the hotspots of the global land grab phenomenon,
accounting for about 30 percent of transnational land
grabs globally. Land grabs by domestic urban elites,
The right to land at crossroads in Myanmar
Conclusion:
"Myanmar is at a historic crossroads where rapid land polarisation means that a major rethink is needed of how land and associated resources are regulated and for what purposes. The good news is that there is a lot of thinking about and rethinking of land policy happening both inside and outside the corridors of state; many people are putting serious time and energy into thinking about what should be done, and at least for the time being, the political space exists for previously excluded voices to weigh in and be heard.
International Conference on Global Land Grabbing (6-8 April 2011)
Organised by the Land Deals Politics Initiative (LDPI) in collaboration with the Journal of Peasant Studies and hosted by the Future Agricultures Consortium at the Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex...Rich site with full texts of more than 170 papers and presentations from the Conference
Analysis of Customary Communal Tenure in the Myanmar Uplands (Powerpoint presentation)
Customary communal tenure is characteristic of many local shifting cultivation 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...