Amid the realities of major political turbulence, there was growing recognition in 2016 that the land rights of Indigenous Peoples and local communities are key to ensuring peace and prosperity, economic development, sound investment, and climate change mitigation and adaptation. Despite equivocation by governments, a critical mass of influential investors and companies now recognize the market rationale for respecting community land rights.

Indigenous Peoples and local communities hold a large share of the world’s land area under customary systems. However, there is a tremendous gap between what is held by communities in practice and what is formally recognised by governments.

In many Asian, African, and South American nations, indigenous people are being driven from their homes: Government authorities are leasing hundreds of thousands of hectares of land belonging to indigenous people who only in the rarest of cases possess deeds to the land that are recognised by the authorities. Although in many cases their ancestors have lived on the land for centuries, these rights were never recorded in the land registries. The way of life and the livelihood of many indigenous peoples are severely threatened by their land being sold off.

This short thematic study challenges the assumption that the legal framework to recognize and protect indigenous peoples’ (IP) customary lands is adequate and that the challenge lies in its implementation. With support from MRLG, a core group of IP NGOs of the Cambodia Indigenous Peoples Alliance (CIPA) held a series of seminars to scrutinize this legal framework, identify gaps and make recommendations for a revision of the supporting legal framework. The thematic study documents this joint reflection.

This short thematic study challenges the assumption that the legal framework to recognize and protect indigenous peoples’ (IP) customary lands is adequate and that the challenge lies in its implementation. With support from MRLG, a core group of IP NGOs of the Cambodia Indigenous Peoples Alliance (CIPA) held a series of seminars to scrutinize this legal framework, identify gaps and make recommendations for a revision of the supporting legal framework. The thematic study documents this joint reflection.

This Law is enacted for the purposes of protecting the fundamental rights of indigenous peoples, promoting their subsistence and development and building inter-ethnic relations based on co-existence and prosperity.

This dialogue provided a way for the land community to collaboratively explore challenges and opportunities related to the recognition of indigenous, ethnic minority and customary tenure rights in the Mekong region in order to:

"Article 1. The purposes of this Sub-Decree are to determine principles, procedures, and mechanisms for the registration of land of indigenous communities as collective title.

Article 2. The objectives of this Sub-Decree are to provide indigenous communities with legal rights over land tenure, to ensure land tenure security, and to protect collective ownership by preserving the identity, culture, good custom and tradition of each indigenous community."

Law of Communal Property Regime of the Indigenous Peoples and Ethinic Communities

An Act to provide for the establishment of tribal land boards; to vest tribal land in such boards; to define the powers and duties of such boards; and to provide for matters incidental thereto

The purpose of this assignment was to establish whether there is appetite to hold a public debate on how to realise better land‐based investments in Tanzania. It also aimed at identifying what would be the discussion issues and most appropriate mechanism to allow different actors from different levels to articulate their perspectives on land‐based investments in Tanzania. This has been triggered by the sensitivity surrounding the topic.

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