This article explores some of the realities of supporting income generation for displaced people in conflict settings, drawing on experiences in Kachin, northern Myanmar, suggesting development and humanitarian actors need to better acknowledge limitations and rethink our approaches.

President of Myanmar, U Thein Sein, announced that the government cannot give back over 30,000 acres of paddy land that the state has been using since it was confiscated by the army two decades ago. On the one hand the President ordered state and regional governments and land management committee to cooperate with members of the parliament to solve the problem of land grabbing cases. On the other hand he has announced the government cannot handover some land back.

Farmland Act
(Pyidaungsu Hluttaw Law No.ll of 2012)
Day of 8th Waxing of Tagu 1373 ME (30th March, 2012).....The translation has some notable shortcomings...

Conclusions: "Widespread land conflicts and pending land governance reform, also in relation to the larger
ongoing peace process, form the key reason for opposition to the pending EU-Myanmar IPA.
As previously explained, land rights are not well established and populations living or working
on land acquired for large-scale investment projects have protested over forced evictions, loss
of livelihoods, inadequate consultation and compensation. Land governance reform is

Land governance is an inherently political-economic
issue. This report on Myanmar1 is one of a series of
country reports on Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Viet
Nam (CLMV) that seek to present country-level analyses
of the political economy of land governance.
The country level analysis addresses land governance
in Myanmar in two ways. First, it summarises what the
existing body of knowledge tells us about power and
configurations that shape access to and exclusion from
land, particularly among smallholders, the rural poor,

This case study presents a country-wide quantitative analysis of a Parliamentary Commission established in 2012 in Myanmar to examine ‘land grab’ cases considered and to propose solutions towards releasing the land to its original owners, in most cases smallholder farming families. The study analyses the information contained in four reports released to the public, but also aims to elicit information they do not reveal.

... Food Security Policy Project

Components:
• Value chains and livelihoods research
• Mon State rural livelihoods and economy survey
• Fish value chain
• Other product and input value chains assessments
• Policy Advising (e.g. Mon State Rural Development
Strategy)
• Training and Outreach...

...[O]n 19th June, 2012, the President of the Union guided on the following land reform matters to draw and implement the national development long term and short term plans: (a) To manage, calculate, use and carry out systematically the Sustainable Development of natural resources such as land, water, forest, mines to enable to use them future generations; (b)To manage and carry out systematically the land use policy and land use management not to cause land problems such as land use, land fluctuation and land trespass; (c) To disburse, coordinate and carry out with the Union Government, t

The phrase “land grab” has become common in Myanmar, often making front page news. This reflects the more open political space available to talk about injustices, as well as the escalating severity and degree of land dispossession under the new government.

But this seemingly simple two-word phrase is in fact very complex and opaque. It thus deserves greater clarity in order to better understand the deep layers of meaning to farmers in the historical political context of 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

The new wave of political reforms have set Myanmar on a road to
unprecedented economic expansion, but,
without
targeted policy
efforts and
regulation to
even the playing field, the benefits of new
investment will filter down to only a few,
leaving
small
-
scale farmers
–
the backbone of the Myanmar economy
–
unable
to benefit from