Summary: "In 2008, Myanmar’s military rulers ratified a new constitution that ensured their continued monopoly of the country’s natural resources. Section 37 (a) states:
“the Union is the ultimate owner ofall lands and all natural resources above and below the ground, above and beneath the water and in the atmosphere”

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...

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Includes Cluster Munition Monitor Report, 2013

Since the Scotland-based HALO Trust started work in Afghanistan in 1988 and Norwegian People’s Aid (NPA) cleared its first mine in Cambodia in 1992, the two NGOs have cleared and destroyed several million landmines and explosive weapons from conflict zones around the world. Their total haul in Myanmar? Zero.

“It is very frustrating,” says Henry Leach, HALO Trust representative in Yangon. “We are the biggest operator in the world but have not cleared a single mine in Myanmar in three years of being here.”

On remote Madae Island on Myanmar’s western coast, the Chinese state-owned China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC), is constructing a huge seaport, oil terminal and oil and gas pipeline to China for shipping more than 80% of China’s imported oil from the Middle East and Africa without people’s consent, and without implementation of EIA, SIA and FPIC. The construction of these projects has resulted in human rights abuses, massive land confiscation, environmental destruction and destruction of the islanders’ livelihoods and farmlands.

Key developments since May 2005: Both the military junta and non-state armed groups have continued to use antipersonnel mines extensively. The Myanmar Army has obtained, and is using an increasing number of antipersonnel mines of the United States M-14 design; manufacture and source of these non-detectable mines—whether foreign or domestic—is unknown. In November 2005, Military Heavy Industries reportedly began recruiting technicians for the production of the next generation of mines and other munitions.

The government has promised to secure ethnic rights and the rights of original landowners in setting a new national land use policy...A national forum to discuss a draft national land use policy, which will create a framework for a new national land law, was held on June 29 and 30 in Nay Pyi Taw. Discussion was dominated by the question of the rights of ethnic community organisations and other rights groups.

Landmines are weapons that kill and maim indiscriminately, whether it be civilians, soldiers, elderly, women, children or animals
and cause injury and death long after the official end of a war. Contrary to trends in the rest of the world, rather than reduce or
abolish the use of landmines, the SPDC has actually increased production of anti-personnel landmines and at least in the case of
the Burma-Bangladesh border, is actively maintaining minefields. In Asia, Burma is currently second only to Afghanistan in the

...Some of the current wave of refugees have stepped on landmines during their attempts to leave Myanmar. International news agencies and human rights organizations have stated that they have witness testimony of new use of landmines by Myanmar’s Armed Forces along the NRS-Bangladesh border, and this has reportedly led to the issue being raised with Myanmar by Bangladesh authorities.,,

UPDATE 19 SEPTEMBER 2017

"The ICBL/Landmine Monitor has verified that recent mine victims were from newly laid mines.

Submission of evidence by Lawyers Network and Justice Trust to the Letpadaung Investigation Commission...(Submitted 28 January, 2013, re-submitted with exhibits 5 February, 2013)...EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:

Mawchi is a township in Northwest Karenni that was once a successful mining town. It was often referred to as 'little England' because of the life style on display there and its accompanying standards of living. Private British business interests developed the mines in Mawchi between the world wars, but the local economy began to decline, with the rest of Burma, with Ne Win’s Burmese Way to Socialism. The economy of Mawchi, and the standard of living for people in the Township, has continued to decline across successive military governments.