The following Interview was conducted by a community member trained by KHRG to monitor local human rights conditions. It was conducted in Hpapun District on October 12th 2016 and is presented below translated exactly as it was received, save for minor edits for clarity and security.This interview was received along with other information from Hpapun District, including six other interviews and 62 photographs.

Land is one of the terrains of struggle for most rural women in Africa because of its importance in sustaining rural livelihoods, and social-cultural and geopolitical factors that hinder women from enjoying land rights. Even when there are progressive land laws, as it is for Tanzania, women have not really enjoyed their rights. However, this has not stopped women to keep fighting for their land rights.  They have sought their own approaches by leveraging opportunities within traditional, religious, and formal systems standing for their rights. 

Kenya’s Vision 2030 aims at transforming the country into a newly industrialized middle income country

and infrastructural development is high on the agenda to achieve this. Competing land uses and existing

interests in land make the use of eminent domain by government in acquiring land inevitable. However

most of the land earmarked for compulsory acquisition comprises of un- registered land whose interests

Las aspersiones aéreas del Plan Colombia a las tierras cultivables del recinto San Martín causaron la devastación de sus cultivos, la contaminación del agua, la pérdida de animales de cría y alteraciones psicológicas en sus habitantes.Por ello, muchos campesinos se vieron forzados a abandonar sus tierras, pero años después retornaron a sus campos e hicieron un proceso de recuperación de suelo.

This Interview with Saw A--- and Saw B--- describes events occurring in Hlaingbwe Township, Hpa-an District before September 2016, including forced labour, forced porters, arbitrary demands and fighting between armed groups.

Between 2014 and 2016, the villagers who live in E--- and F--- villages, Meh Proo village tract, were forced to do forced labour for the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army (DKBA) led by Commander-in-Chief, Kyaw Thet, and Second Commander-in-Chief, Bo Bee.

Se trata de un caso de retorno a la tierra despojada por la violencia ocurrida en el departamento de Antioquía. La propuesta por la paz de la comunidad San José de Apartadó es significativa por la potencialidad de construirse desde adentro y marcando diferentes e independencia del Estado. San José de Apartadó tiene normas propias de conducta interna y además, una política de soberanía para afuera.

This Interview with Saw A--- describes an arbitrary arrest that occurred in Htantabin Township, Toungoo District, in January 2016. Saw A--- describes how he was arrested and sued because of a demonstration, which he and other people held against Kaung Myanmar Aung Company on January 12th 2016 after the company confiscated villagers’ lands. Saw A--- faces criminal charges for using a loudspeaker, as it broke the law against the disturbance of public peace. Chief of Police, Aye Zaw from No. 2 Police Station, Toungoo District, submitted the charge against him as a complainant.

This synthesis of our findings from an investigation of tenure risk in East, West, and Southern Africa, shows that a majority of tenure disputes are caused by the displacement of local peoples, indicating that companies and investors are not doing enough to understand competing claims to the land they acquire or lease. This failure in diligence is particularly noteworthy given that a majority of the disputes analyzed had materially significant impacts: indeed, a higher proportion of projects in Africa are financially impacted by tenure dispute than any other region in the world. 

Pour qu'un barrage contribue avec succès au développement durable de la société, les populations locales doivent également en bénéficier. Cette vidéo de 5 minutes examine les défis relatifs à l’obtention d’une compensation équitable pour les personnes affectées par la construction de grands barrages, et définit les différentes étapes pour s'assurer que les agriculteurs expropriés puissent bénéficier d’un accès sécurisé à de nouvelles terres

For a dam to successfully contribute to the sustainable development of the society, the local populations should also benefit from it. This 5 minute video examines the challenges to obtaining an equitable compensation for the people affected by the construction of large dams and defines the various steps to make sure that the farmers who were disowned of their land can have secured access to new land.

Resumen La violencia armada en Colombia obliga a las personas a abandonar su territorio para salvaguardar la vida. Cuatro estudios de caso con poblaciones desplazadas (mujeres jefas de hogar, afrodescendientes, indígenas, campesinos) fueron emprendidos para aproximarse a la comprensión de dos procesos principales en los que se ven inmersos los migrantes forzados en búsqueda de superar la pérdida de su lugar en el mundo: desterritorialización y reterritorialización.

NRC interviewed 580 Syrian refugee households in Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq to assess their potential Housing, Land and Property (HLP) claims inside Syria if they were to return home.