Resource information
A Comparative Study of Land Rights Systems in Southeast
Asia and the Potential of National and International Legal
Frameworks and Guidelines....."Land rights systems in Southeast Asia are in constant
flux; they respond to various socioeconomic and political pressures and to changes in statutory and customary
law. Over the last decade, Southeast Asia has become
one of the hotspots of the global land grab phenomenon,
accounting for about 30 percent of transnational land
grabs globally. Land grabs by domestic urban elites,
the military or government actors are also common in
many Southeast Asian countries. Large-scale land grabs
are facilitated by a coalition of investor-friendly host
governments, local political and economic elites and
a variety of players from the ‘Global North’, including
multinational corporations, international development
banks, commercial financial institutions and bilateral
donors and development agencies. Weakly recognized
customary rights in combination with state ownership
of large portions of the national territory (e .g . forestland
in Indonesia, Myanmar, Lao PDR and Cambodia, public domain land in the Philippines) allow the respective
governments to categorize the people living on these
lands as ‘illegal occupants’...
