New policy to give farmers edge in land disputes: official

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New policy to give farmers edge in land disputes: official

Myanmar Times, 23 Jan 2015

URL: http://www.mmtimes.com/index.php/national-news/12878-land-use-policy-to-benefit-farmers-in-land-disputes.html
The policy and law will give farmers a better chance of securing the return of their land, he said.

The government released a draft of its national land-use policy in October 2014. It is likely to be approved by cabinet in the first half of this year and will be followed by a land-use law, which will base on the policy.

The policy, which generally gives stronger land-use rights to smallholder farmers, states that the new law will take precedence over existing land-related legislation.

U Tin Maung Than, deputy director of the Land Unit in the Ministry of Environmental Conservation and Forestry – the focal ministry for the drafting of the policy and law – said the legal framework would be “fairer” for farmers after the law is enacted.

According to the land dispute settlement mechanism outlined in the draft policy, parties to a dispute should first attempt arbitration before proceeding to legal action.



A new judicial branch will be set up to handle land disputes, and farmers will be able to apply for an injunction to stop an impending land confiscation.



Farmers will also be able to receive support from non-government organisations throughout the dispute-settlement process.



Meanwhile, land-use rights for farmers will be strengthened. The draft also states that existing land users should be given legal land-use rights even if they do not hold official documents, while ancestral land will be registered and protected from confiscation for private projects.



Article 73 of the policy states that ancestral land includes not only those classified as farmland but also forest, vacant, fallow or virgin land.

Traditional land administration systems will be respected and traditional dispute settlement mechanisms applied if the dispute is between members of the same ethnic group.



“The policy is a draft so it might change but the new law will take precedence over existing land laws. It will put in place a fairer system for protecting land users from losing their land,” U Tin Maung Than said.

Despite these assurances, land rights organisations have called for more specific protections for smallholder farmers, particularly in regards to existing land disputes.

“More specific and clearer instructions on how to handle existing land disputes should be included because there are many concerns that the new policy cannot fully protect the farmers who are already in disputes,” said U Shwe Thein, the chairman of Land Core Group, a network of more than 50 land rights groups.

According to data from the Food Security Working Group, more than 2 million acres of land were confiscated with official permission from 1988 to 2010. U Thein Aung, head of the Freedom of Farmers League, said about 5 percent of the country’s farmers are engaged in some kind of land dispute.

The Land Use Allocation and Scrutiny Committee began drafting the land-use policy in June 2012. It was originally scheduled to be finalised in late 2014 but the committee agreed to give more time for consultations following complaints from civil society groups.