... Karenni people celebrated three kinds of pole festivals in a year. The first one is called Tya-Ee-Lu-Boe-Plya. During this festival, the people went to their paddy fields, vegetable farms, picked the premature fruits and brought it to the Ee-Lu-pole. They put the premature fruits on altar, thank god and then pray for good fruits and good harvest. The second one called Tya-Ee-Lu-Phu-Seh. In this festival they pray god to bless the teenagers with good conducts, and good healths. The third one is Tya-Ee-Lu-Du. The festival concerned to everyone.

A short analysis of the new draft Communal Land Rights Bill and of the tenure problems in the former homelands. Argues that the bill would greatly strengthen the powers of unelected traditional leaders at the expense of ordinary rural dwellers.

Includes objectives, programme, welcome message, official opening, hopes and fears, introduction to LandNet, presentations, group work on land rights, redistribution, decentralisation, and the role of civil society, key issues, closing. The workshop endeavoured to publicise the findings of grassroots consultations on land carried out by LandNet members in order that these be incorporated into the forthcoming National Land Policy and the PRSP. Among the issues raised were insecurity and inequitable distribution and the ways in which land disputes are currently handled.

A summary of a larger study commissioned by DFID Ghana. Covers findings of the study and suggestions for moving forward. The conclusions include that tenure insecurity is more widespread than generally recognised, its sources are complex, current strategies are inadequate, promising conditions exist, reform rather than improvement is needed, a community based approach is the way forward. The National Land Policy is not pro-poor, nor are classic titling approaches serving the poor.

For a long time the issue of land and related problems has been debated mostly by academicians, politicians and professionals. Although the problem has remained more or less one of the most talked of in Kenya, the public has very often been left out of the debate. Again mostly the debate has been dominated more by complaining about either the lack of policy or the bad land policies and laws and the failure by successive governments to correct those problems.

The one million Burmese migrant workers in Thailand are one of the largest migrant populations in Asia. Migrant workers from Burma come from a variety of geographical locations and ethnic groups and work in several different industries and service sectors in Thailand. There are both push and pull factors at work when people make the decision to migrate to Thailand. The pull factors include the close geographical location of Thailand to Burma as well as the demand in Thailand for cheap labor.

The Thai government's latest resolution to control the growing migrant worker population lacks
resolve.

The Thai government is promising a "total solution" to the country's migrant worker population. But if
history is any guide, the new resolution looks just like the latest rendition of previously flawed policies. For
years Burmese migrants have fueled border industries with cheap labor, but with a recession looming the
Thai government is once again trying to tackle a problem that has caused previous administrations to
stumble.

Housing occupies an important position in the Kenyan psyche along with the concept of home ownership. The residential developments and investments attract both institutional, corporate organisations as well as private individuals. There are indications that the residential market in Nairobi is very active and that most of the valuation firms in Nairobi cany out market-based valuation of residential properties.

Trade liberalisation processes impact differently on men and women due to the fact that men and women have different roles in production. Despite the fact that women are actively involved in international trade, WTO agreements are gender blind and as such have adverse impacts on women. The General Agreement in Trade and Service (GATS), for instance, provides for a level playing field in service provision between big foreign owned companies and small locally owned companies.

The concept of use and benefit from natural resources for local communities in Mozambique occupies a central position in the formal government vision for rural development and has been given prominence in the policies that govern access to land use rights and forest and wildlife resources. There are constitutional guarantees that recognise rights to land that have been acquired through occupation or inheritance through customary systems of allocation, and enabling legislation that permits the registration of these hitherto ‘informal’ rights.

It is widely believed that land tenure insecurity under a customary tenure system leads to a socially inefficient resource allocation. This article demonstrates that the practice of granting secure individual ownership to tree planters spurs earlier tree planting, which is inefficient from the private point of view but could be efficient from the viewpoint of the global environment. Regression analysis, based on primary data collected in Sumatra, indicates that an expected increase in tenure security in fact led to early tree planting.

Contains introduction, progress and impacts since Addis Ababa, vision of LandNet West Africa, principles of operation, expected impacts, activities at sub-regional level.