With a focus on the Lower Mekong countries, this study considers the intersecting issues of land access, livelihoods, management of risk and poverty for men and women smallholder farmers, the land poor and the landless, and how these issues might be addressed in policy and practice. While there has recently been insightful analysis concerning land access, livelihoods, and global land insecurity, we know much less regarding specific mechanisms that keep rural agricultural smallholders and the landless or land poor struggling and it is these issues that we address within this report

Since holding elections in 2010, Myanmar has transitioned from a direct military dictatorship to a formally democratic system and has embarked on a period of rapid economic reform. After two decades of military rule, the pace of change has startled almost everyone and led to a great deal of cautious optimism. To make sense of the transition and assess the case for optimism, this article explores the political economy of Myanmar’s dual transition from state socialism to capitalism and from dictatorship to democracy.

ABSTRACTED FROM CHAPTER INTRODUCTION: In Cambodia, the notion of concession (sambathian) traces back to the French colonial period when concessions were introduced to allow for large scale management and exploitation of forest and fisheries resources and the development of agricultural land under plantations. Since their inception, concessions have been much more than a tool for natural resources management; they also function as a central instrument in power and governance systems. In this chapter we focus on forestry and land concessions.

In 1992 the Asian Development Bank coordinated a meeting between government representatives from China, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam to discuss regional economic integration. From that meeting the Greater Mekong Subregion was formed to promote peace and prosperity within the Mekong countries. Yet, despite more than more than USD 14 billion being spent on facilitating trade, development and infrastructural ties between these nations, poverty remains widespread.

ABSTRACTED FROM EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: 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 military or government actors are also common in many Southeast Asian countries.

In June 2012, Cambodia’s prime minister issued an order on land titling that deployed student volunteers to survey and map the country’s territory. Examination of this initiative at the theoretical intersections of mapping, mimicry and govemmentality demonstrates the violent exclusions inherent in cadastral projects that restrict measuring and titling to only “productive” properties. In a field of speculation and local power the initiative dramatically refashioned the land to mimic in advance the expectations of the Map.

Agrarian resistance often occurs as a result of expropriation and dispossession of poor farmers’ land and other properties. This paper examines how cost-benefit rational choice determined the government of Cambodia’s response to poor farmers’ resistance to large-scale land acquisition for an agro-industrial investment. Theoretically, whatever mechanism a government chooses to respond to resistance, the aim is to retain more benefits, especially political legitimacy.

According to the United Nations Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement (1996), “Internally displaced persons (IDPs) are persons or a group of persons who have been forced or obliged to flee or to leave their homes of habitual residence, in particular as a result of or in order to avoid effects of armed conflict, situation of generalised violence, violations of human rights or natural or human-made disasters, and who have not crossed an internationally recognised State border”. There are more IDPs in the world than refugees.

The Constitution of Kenya provides that every citizen has the right to property. The provision ensures that an individual or group of people that acquire land have the protection to own this property if acquired lawfully. Individuals living in informal settlements then have a right to have property when acquired through proper means. Even though there are processes in progress to address the issue of securing tenure rights in informal settlements by the government.

China's presence in Africa has gained growing attention at an international level in the last two

decades, especially since the 2007 food crisis, however China's presence in Africa is far from new.

China can not been perceived as a new international actor, still its reemergence as a world's leading

economic power needs to be reconsidered. China's presence in Africa has been generating a

growing misunderstanding at a different level that Debora Brautigam clearly describes in her paper

China's presence in Africa has gained growing attention at an international level in the last two

decades, especially since the 2007 food crisis, however China's presence in Africa is far from new.

China can not been perceived as a new international actor, still its reemergence as a world's leading

economic power needs to be reconsidered. China's presence in Africa has been generating a

growing misunderstanding at a different level that Debora Brautigam clearly describes in her paper

There is today a growing awareness of the importance of providing rural populations with more secure tenure to land and other natural resources, not least in Africa where approximately 90 percent of all land is still unregistered. At the same time there has been a rethinking of approaches for securing local tenure rights in practice. Experience has shown that the conventional approach, i.e., individual freehold titling, has often not worked well in areas where communal forms of customary tenure predominate, which is still the case in most parts of rural sub-Saharan Africa.