Since ceasefire agreements were signed between the Burmese military government and ethnic political groups in the Burma–China borderlands in the early 1990s, violent waves of counterinsurgency development have replaced warfare to target politically-suspect, resource-rich, ethnic populated borderlands. The Burmese regime allocates land concessions in ceasefire zones as an explicit postwar military strategy to govern land and populations to produce regulated, legible, militarized territory.

An exclusive focus on external forces risks the production of an overgeneralized account of a ubiquitous neoliberalism, which insufficiently accounts for the profusion of local variations that currently comprise the neoliberal project as a series of articulations with existing political economic circumstances. Although the international financial institutions initially promoted neoliberal economics in the global South, powerful elites were happy to oblige.

Land reform, land politics and resettlement in Laos have changed people’s land access and livelihoods. But these reforms have also transformed political subjectivity and landed property into matters for government to a degree hitherto unknown in Laos. The control over people, land and space has consolidated sovereignty in ways that make government an ineluctable part of people’s relation to land. This transforms agrarian relations. Three cases demonstrate how rural small holders’ access to land depends on the ways in which property and political subjects have been produced.

After three days of deliberations on the findings of a decade of research and initiatives across Africa, conference participants presented this series of recommendations affirming women’s rights to ownership, access, and control of land. Specific recommendations are directed towards actions to be taken by governments, intergovernmental organizations, and civil society organizations that focus on customary law; women’s economic empowerment, food security and the environment; political conflicts; and in relation to poor women and urban land.

Land distribution is highly skewed in Africa, where women’s ownership of land is a small percentage of that owned by men. Women frequently lack the resources to acquire land in their own right and are further disadvantaged by discriminatory inheritance laws, customary practices and market structures. This report summarizes presentations at the symposium on women’s rights and access to land.

Land Tenure Working Paper 20. This paper presents an analysis of communal tenure and its role for natural resource management system, in different contexts of selected Asian countries. The current market driven pressures on natural resources create both challenges and opportunities for communities and governments to use and strengthen communal tenure in order to promote sustainable management of some natural resources.

This paper explores a 15-country household data base to evaluate the impact of three key assets (land, education and infrastructure) on rural poverty. Using both a descriptive analysis and a quadratic probit model, with the probability of being poor as a function of these three assets, the paper concludes that household access to education and infrastructure are positively associated with higher incomes, while the impact of land holdings varies across countries. Also, this paper shows the importance of the complementarities among assets in their poverty alleviating potential.

Les femmes participent de manière considérable à l’économie rurale dans toutes les régions en développement. Si les rôles qu’elles assument sont différents selon les régions, on observe toutefois partout qu’elles ont un accès plus restreint que les hommes aux ressources et aux débouchés qui leur permettraient d’être plus productives.

In this last issue of the newsletter for 2011, we introduce a new study on corruption in the land sector. The study was carried out by FAO and the Berlinbased Transparency International and it illustrates that the land sector is one of the main public sector areas where corruption exists. In climate change news, the world’s attention is focused on Durban, South Africa where the parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change – including FAO - are meeting this month.

Este mes nos es grato invitarles a participar en una consulta electrónica sobre las Directrices Voluntarias sobre la Gobernanza Responsable en la Tenencia de la Tierra y Otros Recursos Naturales. Tras un prolongado proceso de consultas regionales, y antes de acometer la redacción del borrador cero, se están solicitando ahora materiales adicionales para la elaboración de estas directrices.

Las mujeres aportan contribuciones significativas a la economía rural en todas las regiones de los países en desarrollo. Sus roles difieren según las regiones, aunque siempre tienen un menor acceso que los hombres a los recursos y oportunidades que necesitan para ser más productivas. Si se incrementara el acceso de las mujeres a la tierra, la ganadería, la educación, los servicios financieros, la extensión, la tecnología y el empleo rural, aumentaría su productividad así como la producción agrícola, la seguridad alimentaria, el crecimiento económico y el bienestar social.

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and its partners will hold consultations on various issues relating to the voluntary guidelines on responsible governance of tenure of land and other natural resources. The voluntary guidelines aim to provide practical guidance for State governance bodies, civil society and the private sector. The voluntary guidelines will provide a basis, which interested parties can use when developing their strategies and activities.