Displacement Solutions has just published a major 184-page legal report on the land grabbing in Myanmar, including for agriculture, and how these processes constitute internationally wrongful acts.

Threats of and actual displacements of rural communities in the Mekong have been on the rise amid increasing land deals for corporate plantations, mining, logging, biofuels, food crops for exports.

Le RCEP changera la manière dont les gouvernements décident des droits fonciers et qui a accès à la terre. Il pourrait par conséquent intensifier l’accaparement des terres en Asie. Nouvel article de GRAIN.

RCEP will not just change rules on the export and import of goods and services; it will change how governments decide on rights to land and who has access to it.

China-backed banana tissue-culture plantations, banned in Laos and Thailand, began popping up in Myanmar about 12 years ago. A report issued earlier this year by Land Security and Environmental Conservation Network indicated that that there are more than 100,000 acres of banana plantations in Kachin state.

The Myanmar government has tightened a law on so-called 'vacant, fallow and virgin' land, and farmers are at risk.

Rights groups are calling on Myanmar's government to scrap a new land reform law they fear could leave millions of people with nowhere to call home.

Myanmar's new land law amendment has its roots in a British colonial notion of “wasteland” that consciously undermines customary land claims of highland communities to the benefit of foreign investors and tax collectors.

Une loi sur les terres dites vacantes risque de faciliter la confiscation des terres par le gouvernement birman, qui pourrait ensuite les louer à des acteurs privés.

Under a land reformation act, millions of farmers across Myanmar could be forced from land they have tilled for generations. In an open letter, a national grassroots coalition, called for the government to "abolish" the law and "enact a federal law that safeguards people's integrity, their lives and livelihoods."

As refugees began to trickle back, many found their land had been taken for parks, military use or leased to palm oil concessions and rubber plantations. From 2011 to 2016, about 1.9 million acres of land across Myanmar were allocated for agricultural concessions including rubber and palm oil.

Illegally banana plantations backed by obscure nexus of Chinese investors are making quick profits for some, but fuelling land conflict and environmental degradation in Kachin province, Myanmar.