ABSTRACTED FROM THE OPENING PARAGRAPHS: This article focuses not on the effects of corruption in Laos, on the Lao economy or the lives of individuals, but rather on what sustains it and makes it difficult to control, much less eradicate. In particular, it examines the political culture of corruption that has developed in the Lao PDR since its inauguration in 1975.

Economic and legal reforms have triggered waves of conflict over property rights and access to urban land in Vietnam. In this article I develop four epistemic case studies to explore the main precepts and practices that courts must negotiate to extend their authority over land disputes. Courts face a dilemma: Do they apply state laws that disregard community regulatory practices and risk losing social relevance, or apply community notions of situational justice that undermine rule formalism?

Transforming conflict is a key component of sustainable forest management. Transformative conflict mediation is an approach to transforming conflict that aims not only to resolve the conflict but also to foster long-term relationships and cooperation. This study explores how application of mediation contributed to conflict transformation.

In Myanmar, movements for gender justice strive to foster personal and collective security, vibrant livelihoods, and political engagement during a period of rapid and uncertain transition. This article draws from the experience of the Gender Equality Network (GEN), a coalition of over 100 organisations in Myanmar. It examines three cases in which GEN sought to document existing forms of resilience and expand these mechanisms through national-level advocacy. The first describes current attempts to publicise, and eventually eliminate, violence against women (VAW).

Over the past 10 years, transnational land grabs for rubber tree plantations have proliferated across Laos. Plantation concessions are being established on village lands that are represented as ‘degraded’ and legally classified as ‘state forests’, expropriated by government officials in the name of poverty alleviation with promises that plantations will provide new wage labour opportunities for those dispossessed.

As a global phenomenon, land grabbing has significant economic, environmental, and social impacts, often resulting in serious conflict between the local community and outsiders. The aim of the study is to get a deeper understanding of the extent to which land grabbing and resulting land-use conflicts affect the move towards sustainable forest management (SFM) in Cambodia. Two case studies were conducted involving community forests (CFs), with data collected through literature review, key informant interviews, focus group discussions, and field observations.

In the early 1990s, the Lao government launched a nationwide Land Use Planning and Land Allocation programme in a bid to foster socio-economic development while protecting the environment. However, the programme has long been perceived as having negative impacts on rural livelihoods. A central criticism was that limited local participation results in unsustainable land use plans; consequently, the government introduced significant changes into the process to enhance participation.

Namati offers this brief in the hope that Myanmar’s national reforms and the implementation of the country’s new National Land Use Policy can grow from the lived experience of ordinary Myanmar citizens. Namati and our partners assist farmers in Myanmar to claim their land rights through a community paralegal approach. Community paralegals are trained in relevant laws, community education, negotiation, and mediation skills to work with farmers to resolve a variety of land rights issues.

The Asia-Pacific region is a hotspot for forest landscape conflicts which are played out between local communities and outsiders such as government agencies and private companies. Increased competition for limited natural resources, rapid sociopolitical change, and expanding markets for forest products and land have heightened tensions and intensified conflicts over resource-use priorities. There are numerous methods for addressing conflict, including negotiation, arbitration, adjudication and mediation.

This essay explores the changing landscape of food sovereignty politics in the shadow of the so-called ‘land grab’. While the food sovereignty movement emerged within a global agrarian crisis conjuncture triggered by northern dumping of foodstuffs, institutionalized in WTO trade rules, the twenty-first-century food, energy and financial crises intensify this crisis for the world’s rural poor (inflating prices of staple foods and agri-inputs) deepening the process of dispossession.

In 2012, the Government of Myanmar passed the Farmland Law and the Vacant, Fallow, Virgin Land Law, with an aim to increase investment in land through the formalization of a land market. Land titling is often considered “the natural end point of land rights formalization.” A major obstacle to achieving this in Myanmar is its legacy of multiple regimes which has created “stacked laws.” This term refers to a situation in which a country has multiple layers of laws that exist simultaneously, leading to conflicts and contradictions in the legal system.

INTRODUCTION: Myanmar stands at a historic crossroads: one where the optimism of a "critical juncture" that is "more promising than at any time in recent memory" meets apprehension over what could happen if a "host of social crises that have long blighted our country" go unaddressed. After more than sixty years of civil war and ‘social crises’, land grabbing figures are high. New legislation is designed to move land out of the hands of rural working people and into the hands of ‘modern farmers’ and foreign and domestic big business actors.