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

While Burma’s ethnic states are blessed with a wealth of natural resources and biodiversity, they
have been cursed by the unsustainable extraction and sale of those resources, which has fuelled
armed conflict. Instituting a system of devolved federal management of natural resources can
play a key role in resolving conflict and building a lasting peace in Burma.
Despite some ceasefires on paper, Burma remains in a state of conflict. Ongoing offensives in
Kachin and Shan states alone have left hundreds of thousands homeless. Fundamental calls for

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.

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,

Abstracts accessible. Full texts by (expensive) subscription. Some texts free..."The Journal of Peasant Studies is one of the leading journals in the field of rural development. It was founded on the initiative of Terence J. Byres and its first editors were Byres, Charles Curwen and Teodor Shanin. It provokes and promotes critical thinking about social structures, institutions, actors and processes of change in and in relation to the rural world.

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

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...

High-quality speakers and panels. From 2009. Some of the meetings have recorded webcasts available online.

MYLAFF - a forum for sharing information about land, rural livelihoods, forests, fisheries, agribusiness investment and natural resource management in Myanmar...
The main URL given here is the public entry to MYLAFF. For access to more documents, users have to sign up to MYLAFF...
*Members of the forum include government officials, staff of donor agencies and NGOs, project experts, academics and business people...

The State Law and Order Restoration Council Law No. 8/92 -
The 9th Waning Day of Tazaungmon, 1354 M.E. -
3 November 1992

The State Law and Order Restoration Council Law No. 1/96 -
The 6th Waxing Day of Tabodwe, 1357 M.E.-
25 January 1996

Appetite for land" (pdf, 225 KB) Large-Scale Foreign Investment in Land
Available in German (pdf, 265 KB) and French (pdf, 270 KB)