In 2008, three sugar companies were awarded nearly 20,000 hectares of Economic Land Concessions (ELCs) in Oddar Meanchey province. The new research finds that associated land grabbing totaling more than 17,000 hectares has affected more than 2,000 families. Of these, 214 families were forcibly evicted. Meanwhile, at least 3,000 hectares of the misappropriated land has been used for logging rather than sugar plantations, according to the report, ‘Cambodia: The Bitter Taste of Sugar’, commissioned by ActionAid and Oxfam GB.

ABSTRACTED FROM OPENING PARAGRAPHS: Land confiscation is one of the leading causes of protest and unrest in Burma, having led to the forced displacement of hundreds of thousands of people in recent years. It also undermines Burma’s fragile peace processes. The 2008 constitution and subsequent laws are used to legitimize arbitrary land confiscation, deny access to justice, and perpetuate an environment of impunity.

As trade and investment flows rapidly increase across Southeast Asia, several countries have experienced a surge in large land deals for plantation agriculture. Against this backdrop, civil society organisations have been using a wider range of legal tools to promote public accountability in investment processes. These include scrutinising the negotiation of international treaties, challenging national legal frameworks, raising local awareness about rights, and testing approaches for local consultation and redress.

PUBLISHER'S DESCRIPTION: An exclusive new analysis reveals that the Government of Myanmar has allocated at least 5.2 million acres and plans to allocate another 11 million acres of Southeast Asia’s last remaining biodiversity-rich high-value forests to make way for large-scale, private agribusiness projects that often never materialize. Many of these forest areas overlap with historical land claims made by Myanmar’s ethnic minority groups who will now permanently lose their land, further enflaming decades-old armed conflicts with the national government.

Vietnam’s 1993 Land Law created a land market by granting households land-use rights which could be exchanged, leased, inherited, sold or mortgaged. This study uses quantitative and qualitative methods to analyze whether increased land titling led to discernible improvements in the economic security of households, and whether land titles in women’s names had markedly different effects as compared to titles held by men.

ABSTRACTED FROM THE 'APPROACH' SECTION: The national inventory of land purchases and leases in Lao PDR is unique in providing comprehensive in-depth analysis of the extent and impacts of large scale land acquisitions across the country. It represents a major contribution to achieving greater transparency in what has previously been a very opaque field of business, and could serve as a model for other countries. Its major asset is the systematic and spatially-referenced compilation of data on the location, extent and implementation status of land-based investments.

ABSTRACTED FROM THE INTRODUCTION: This working paper is an examination of current land formalization processes against the backdrop of Cambodian history and the political economy of land and agrarian change. I... critique the land property right formalisation processes at play under the current land reforms. I present their rationales, mechanisms and influences on Cambodian peasants. I then detail the dynamics of land differentiation in the central rice plain and reveal how it has initiated a large migration to the peripheral uplands.

Cambodia is engaged in profound societal and economic changes usually referred to as “agrarian transition”.

Cambodia Development Review is published four times a year in simultaneous English- and Khmer-language editions by the Publisher: CDRI Cambodia Development Resource Institute in Phnom Penh. Cambodia Development Review provides a forum for the discussion of development issues affecting Cambodia. Economy Watch offers an independent assessment of Cambodia’s economic performance.

ABSTRACT ORIGIN UNKNOWN: This report provides a recent update on land policies in the ethnic regions of Burma following the 2010 national elections and the beginning of the ceasefire with the Karen National Union in 2012. The authors argue that, while military conflict and associated abuses have declined, the Burmese government’s commitment to foreign investment and export-led economic growth is making traditional land tenure even less secure than before.

This paper discusses Cambodia’s legal framework relating to Economic Land Concessions (ELCs) and looks at the implementation gaps. It argues that despite Cambodian’s legal framework governing land and ELCs being well-developed, its social benefits, such as protecting the rights of the poor and vulnerable and contributing to transparency and accountability, are almost non-existent.

This report 'Aggregated outcomes of the community consultation supporting the improvement of the draft amended Land Law' presents the main findings from the community consultation process and recommendations of amendments of the draft Land Law. It aims to share the needs of the people, especially disadvantaged groups such as small scale farmers, marginalized poor and ethnic minority women and men.