Almost two-thirds of farming families from ethnic Ta’ang communities in Burma’s northern Shan State have lost land to the country’s powerful military, according to a new report.

The Ta’ang Students and Youth Organization, or TSYO, says 63 percent of farming families from the Ta’ang community in the area have had land confiscated by the military. The Ta’ang are also known as Palaung.

[From IRIN - Humanitarian news and analysis] JUBA, 12 December 2011 (IRIN) - Land deals done in newly-independent South Sudan “threaten to undermine the land rights of rural communities, increase food insecurity, entrench poverty, and skew development patterns” in the resource-rich but poor nation, a new report says.

Given the growing interest in African farmland and its associated impact on livelihoods of rural communities, the Land Rights Research and Resources Institute (HAKIARDHI) through the support of Oxfam’s Pan-Africa Economic Justice Desk in Tanzania undertook this exploratory study on the current state of the so-called ‘New Land Grab’ in Africa.

Secure property rights are a critical component of economic development and social stability. Inappropriate property rights policies and institutional structures that are not synchronized with economic, political, and environmental realities can undermine growth, erode natural resource bases, and catalyze violent conflict.

The report is based primarily on a desk study of donor documents and it is divided in country-specific chapters.

Kyrgyzstan was one of the first countries from the former Soviet Union (FSU) to privatize agricultural land and remains the only country of the five Central Asian countries that has distributed land to the former collective and state farm members and dismantled the majority of these large farms. 

An article on women's land rights by Mu Sochua - Cambodian MP and former Minister for Women's Affairs - on the Cambodia Daily (January 10th 2012)

The Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) is an intergovernmental body and functional commission of the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) mandated to promote gender equality and the advancement of women. The fifty-sixth session of the CSW, which takes place at the UN Headquarters in New York from 27 February to 9 March 2012, will focus on the theme “The empowerment of rural women and their role in poverty and hunger eradication, development and current challenges”.

A short discussion on the need for maintaining moblity if the benefits of pastoral systems are to be optimised. The paper also talks about necessary governance systems: ultimately, a nested hierarchal set of institutions and land tenure is required.

A comparative analysis of the development of the different land tenure systems in Kenya and Tanzania, and the merits and challenges of both.

This is an examination of the interface between land and environmental conservation in Kenya. Part II examines the different regimes of land tenure and their implications for environmental conservation. It also reviews the powers of the state to regulate land use. Part III reviews the legislative framework for environmental conservation in Kenya. Part IV reviews the case law on land and the environment. Part V concludes.

The report considers the causes, processes and impacts of rangeland fragmentation on pastoralists in Ethiopia, Kenya and Uganda. Causes and processes include privatisation of resources, commercial investment, invasion of land by non-native plants, commercialisation including growth in individual enclosures, and conservation/National Parks. The impacts include increasing wealth divides and a growing inability to overcome and vulnerability to drought.