Villagers in Karen areas of southeast Myanmar continue to face widespread land confiscation at the hands of a multiplicity of actors. Much of this can be attributed to the rapid expansion of domestic and international commercial interest and investment in southeast Myanmar since the January 2012 preliminary ceasefire between the Karen National Union (KNU) and the Myanmar government. KHRG first documented this in a 2013 report entitled ‘Losing Ground’, which documented cases of land confiscation between January 2011 and November 2012.

The spread and deepening of economic globalisation has highlighted the ever closer connections between the international legal arrangements for the governance of the global economy on the one hand, and claims to land and natural resources on the other. In a globalised world, land governance is shaped by international as well as national regulation. As pressures on valuable lands intensify and land relations become more trans-national, increasing recourse to international investment treaties is redesigning spaces for land claims at local and national levels.

Describes a long-standing grazing dispute in northern Namibia that provides critical lessons on the challenges that people living in communal areas face to secure their land rights. Several large livestock owners illegally enclosed community rangelands to secure grazing for their own commercial cattle herds. The communities used legislation to defend their land rights: they mobilised relevant government and traditional authorities to intervene, resulting in a court order for the removal of most of the illegal cattle owners.

Investigates the processes and impact of commercialisation of land in Malawi – specifically the acquisition of huge tracts of communal lands by foreign companies and local elites for sugarcane production in Nkhotakota and Chikwawa districts. The main finding was that ‘land grabbing’ for large-scale commercial agriculture in these two districts negatively affected the livelihoods of the poor communal farmers. The costs to the affected communities outweighed the benefits

Notes from a conference on land grabbing in Southeast Asia at Chiang Mai University, Thailand, 5-6 June. Covers colonial and post-colonial plantations; the infrastructural violence of plantations; winners and losers – gender and generation; what then is the future for small-scale and family farmers?; state power, private capital and people’s rights; comparative thoughts

A video recording of a whole-day conference held on 18 June 2015. The page begins with text presentations. For the video recordings of the event, scroll down to Webcasts....."Co-Organized by RRI and IUCN, in partnership with the Embassy of France in Washington, DC...

A briefer on the Thilawa special economic zone....."Twice the Myanmar Government attempted to confiscate residential and farm land for
the Thilawa Special Economic Zone (SEZ), and twice they failed to properly follow Myanmar
laws. In both the 1996/97 and 2013 attempts to confiscate lands, the government and
private parties ignored the procedures and requirements of Myanmar law, including the
Land Acquisition Act. The Myanmar Government failed to properly notify affected
communities or provide adequate compensation for relocation. Furthermore, the Thilawa

Ten African countries have signed up to the New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition – the G8 countries’ main strategy for supporting agriculture in Africa that was launched in 2012. As the New Alliance has been under way for three years, some of its likely impacts are becoming clearer. This briefing – covering Nigeria, Malawi, Tanzania and Senegal – shows that some large companies involved in the New Alliance are already accused of taking part in land grabs in some countries.

This publication contains the struggles of four cases presented by the aggrieved communities in Cambodia, Indonesia, and the Philippines, and deliberated by an international panel of experts during the Asian People’s Land Rights Tribunal. These cases have all exhausted various grievance mechanisms, seeking justice for the violations committed on people’s land and human rights. A set of recommendations for the communities as well as national government and international organizations, are addresses in this publication.

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.

Over the past 15 years, tens of millions of hectares of land have been acquired by large investors in developing countries. The Land Matrix documented 1,037 transnational land deals covering 37,842,371 hectares during this period, while many more deals remain undocumented.1 This global land rush is causing widespread forced evictions and denial of access to key land and natural resources for millions of women, small- scale food producers, pastoralists, gatherers, forest dwellers, fisherfolk, and tribal and indigenous peoples.

Authors: Carol
Hunsberger,
Esteve
Corbera,
Saturnino
M.
Borras
Jr.,
Romulo
de
la
Rosa,
Vuthy
Eang,
Jennifer
C.
Franco,
Roman
Herre,
Sai
Sam
Kham,
Clara
Park,
David
Pred,
Heng
Sokheng,
Max
Spoor,
Shwe
Thein,
Kyaw
Thu,
Ratha
Thuon,
Chayan
Vaddhanaphuti,
Kevin
Woods
and
Courtney
Work.....