EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:
"The Thailand Burma Border Consortium (TBBC) first collaborated with communitybased
organizations to document the scale and distribution of internal displacement
in Eastern Burma during 2002. Two years later, another survey was coordinated to
enhance understanding about the vulnerability of internally displaced persons. These
assessments sought to increase awareness about the situation in conflict-affected
areas which remain largely inaccessible to the international community.

...Burma’s State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) military junta claims to be implementing peace and development in Karen regions, but civilians in Toungoo District of northern Karen State say they are facing instead brutal treatment aimed at asserting military control. An example of SPDC-led ‘development’ is a new dam project on the Thauk Yay Ka (Day Loh) river in western Toungoo District.

Karen Internally Displaced Persons wonder when they will be able to go home...

"Sitting in his new bamboo hut in Ler Per Her camp for Internally Displaced Persons, located on the bank of Thailand’s Moei River near the border with Burma, Phar The Tai—a skinny, tough-looking man of 60 who used to hide in the jungles and mountains of Burma’s eastern Karen State—waits for the time when he can return home.

...While the nonviolent struggle of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi against the Burmese military government’s continuing repression has captured the world’s attention, the profound human rights and humanitarian crisis endured by Burma’s ethnic minority communities has largely been ignored.4

Between October 2004 and January 2005 SPDC troops launched forays into the hills of Nyaunglebin District in an attempt to flush villagers down into the plains and a life under SPDC control. Viciously timed to coincide with the rice harvest, the campaign focused on burning crops and landmining the fields to starve out the villagers. Most people fled into the forest, where they now face food shortages and uncertainty about this year's planting and the security of their villages.

The Land Rights Research and Resources Institute held its second National level Public Forum on land on 12-13 May 2005. The two day forum was partly one of the planned activities in the Institute’s three year Strategic plan and a special event to commemorate the Institute’s tenth Anniversary. It thus took place along with other activities such as Training of Trainers (TOT) workshop, preparation and running of a documentary on land rights advocacy, special media programmes, Special theatre performance by Dhahabu theatre arts Group and moving into a more specious office premise.

Mit Zwangsarbeit, ethnischen Umsiedlungen und ausländischen Investitions-Dollars sichert die Militärjunta ihre Machtstrukturen in Myanmar. Forced labour, internal displacement, foreign investments, power structures.

Changing conflict resolution institutions in the Ethiopian pastoral commons:
the role of armed confrontation in rule-making

This paper explores and analyses contemporary contests over land tenure in
northern Tanzania’s village lands as they relate to wildlife management and land policy
and legislation. It details the nature of the contests and conflicts, including their legal
aspects, and further seeks to diagnose the underlying political economic reasons behind
these endemic conflicts. It concludes by relating these underlying issues to the broader
macroeconomic environment and efforts to improve the security of local land tenure in

This paper explores the puzzle of why the pastoral Maasai of Kajiado, Kenya, supported the individualization of their collectively held group ranches, an outcome that is inconsistent with theoretical expectation. Findings suggest that individuals and groups will seek to alter property
rights in their anticipation of net gains from a new assignment, even as they seek to eliminate disadvantages that were present in the status quo property rights structure. Heightened perceptions of impending land scarcity, failures of collective decision making, the promise of

This set of research briefs present a summary of research work undertaken jointly by ILRI, IFPRI and the University of Gottingen. The research has the following objectives:

- To better understand how environmental risk affects the use and management of resources under various property rights regimes.

- To identify circumstances under which different pathways of change in land use and property rights are followed.

This paper reviews, discusses and points issues relating to land tenure and their relevance to policy and legal reforms in Uganda. The fundamental argument on land tenure in the report is that pastoral production is determined by land use patterns which in turn determine whether the herders are mobile or not.