Paper prepared for presentation at the 2016 WORLD BANK CONFERENCE ON LAND AND POVERTY, The World Bank - Washington DC, March 14-18, 2016

“We have to work with the voice of the people,” Nai Aue Mon tells me in Sangkhlaburi, Thailand, as we discuss the recent rise of land confiscation and land disputes in the Mon State. Aue Mon has been with the Human Rights Foundation of Monland (HURFOM) since 1999, when he started witnessing the abuse and violations of the rights of civilians in the Mon State. He first began working as a journalist for the Mon publication Guiding Star, before beginning his work as documenting and defending human rights.

This Field Report describes events occurring in Toungoo District between December 2013 and December 2014. During this period, KHRG mainly received reports from Thandaunggyi Township and surrounding areas. The report includes information submitted by KHRG community members on a range of human rights abuses and issues of importance to local communities including land confiscation, militarisation, fighting between armed groups, commercial activity carried out by military actors, violent abuse, access to education, access to healthcare, and development projects.

Outline of a Pilot Approach towards Cadastral Registration of Customary
Communal Land Tenure in Myanmar....."...The objectives of the study were to identify legal ways using the Farmland Law 2012 and
Association Law 2014 to protect through land registration the untitled agricultural uplands,
including the fallows of upland shifting cultivation that are possessed by ethnic nationalities
that manage their lands under customary communal tenure. The risk of possible alienation of

Documents and analyses on land tenure in Burma/Myanmar.....
"1.Reconcile legality and legitimacy through clear legal recognition of existing
acknowledged rights, whatever their origin (customary or statutory) or nature
(individual or collective, temporary or permanent).
2.Initiate widespread debate on the choice of society that the land policies will
serve (and target), the opportunities for formalisation, how it will be implemented
and its possible alternatives.
3.Build consensus between all the actors concerned (central and local

This step-by-step guide aims to help community-based organizations and advocates working to help communities protect their customary claims and rights to land and natural resources. It provides tools to:

● Prepare communities for negotiations with investors

● Strengthen community governance of land and natural resources

● Monitor, evaluate and assess the implementation of projects.

Dr Gavin Capps joined SWOP at the University of the Witwatersrand as a Senior Researcher in January 2013. He is leader of the Mining and Rural Transformation in Southern Africa (MARTISA) project, a six-year research programme funded by the Ford Foundation.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: "In recent years, many governments globally have formally recognized community land and natural resource tenure, either based on existing customary practices or more recently established land governance arrangements.1 These tenure arrangements have been called by a variety of names, such as community, customary, communal, collective, indigenous, ancestral, or native land rights recognition. In essence, they seek to establish the rights of a group to obtain joint tenure security over their community’s land.

The Netherlands is an important actor in the floriculture sector worldwide. Many Dutch flower companies have in recent years established businesses in the Global South as a result of favourable climatic conditions, available land and water resources, and the presence of cheap labour. With the aim to stimulate investments in developing countries (e.g., in the context of the Private Sector Investment programme) some companies were further incentivized by the Dutch government to start up their business through development-related subsidies or favourable loans.

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.

PUBLISHER'S DESCRIPTION: An exclusive new analysis reveals that the Government of Myanmar has allocated at least 5.2 million acres and plans to allocate another 11 million acres of Southeast Asia’s last remaining biodiversity-rich high-value forests to make way for large-scale, private agribusiness projects that often never materialize. Many of these forest areas overlap with historical land claims made by Myanmar’s ethnic minority groups who will now permanently lose their land, further enflaming decades-old armed conflicts with the national government.

The Bangkok-based Sino-Thai company Choern Pakard Group (CP Group), Asia's largest and most prominent agro-food/feed corporation, has led an industrial maize contract farming scheme with (ex-)poppy upland smallholders in Shan State, northern Myanmar to supply China’s chicken-feed market. Thailand, as a Middle-Income Country (MIC) and regional powerhouse, has long-tapped China’s phenomenal economic growth and undersupplied consumer demand.