Legal Review of Recently Enacted Farmland Law and Vacant, Fallow and Virgin Lands Management Law - Improving the Legal & Policy Frameworks Relating to Land Management in Myanmar

The Farmland Law and the VFV Law were approved by Parliament on March 30th, 2012. There have
been a few improvements compared to previous laws such as recognition of
non-rotational taungya as
a legitimate land-use and recognition that farmers are using VFV lands without formal recognition by
the Government. However overall the Laws lack clarity and provide
weak protection of the rights of
smallholder farmers in upland areas and do not explicitly state the equal rights
of women to register
and inherit land or be granted land-use rights for VFV land. The Laws
remain designed primarily to
foster promotion of large-scale agricultural investment and fail to provide adequate safeguards for the
majority of farmers who are smallholders. In particular tenure security for farmland remains weak due
to the Government retaining power to rescind farm
land use rights leaving smallholders vulnerable to
dispossession of their land-use rights. In addition there remains some unnecessary de-facto
government control over the
crop choices of farmers.
In particular it is recommended
that recognition of land-use rights under customary law and the
creation of mechanisms for communal registration of land-use rights,
be included in the Farmland and
VFV Laws. There needs to be a comprehensive process of re-classifying land in the country to reflect
land-use changes resulting from conversion of forests and VFV land into agricultural land, loss of
agricultural land due to development projects, urban expansion and population growth. This will serve
to reduce land conflict in the countryside and provide genuine tenure security for smallholders.
Furthermore the specific and independent rights of
women must be explicitly stated in the Laws.
Added to this the fundamental principle of free,
prior and informed consent should be enshrined,
especially in regard to
removal of land-use rights
in the national interest.
It is also necessary that the Government works in partnership with civil society and farmers
associations to revise the Farmland and VFV Laws...