Land Rights and Mine Action in Myanmar
Publisher: Displacement Solutions
Date: 2014
Topics: Dispute Resolution/Mediation, Humanitarian Assistance, Land, Weapons, Waste, and Pollution
Countries: Cambodia, Myanmar, Sri Lanka
As Myanmar continues on its path of political and economic reforms and its pursuit of ceasefire and peace agreements between the government and ethnic groups, the various peace processes underway to resolve the country’s long-standing ethnic conflicts will need to address landmine survey and clearance and the determination of rights to land that is deemed safe to use as a result of demining activity. As important as demining efforts are, however, to protect people and create an environment of peace in today’s Myanmar, the determination of land rights for cancelled and released land will not be a simple task. Each of the millions of acres of mined land in Myanmar is subject to a wide range of land laws and types of land rights, including the constitution and formal statutory law, informal communal and customary rights and other formal and informal arrangements put in place by armed and ceasefire groups in territories under their control.
The mine action process, therefore, will unfold in an extremely complex and highly sensitive legal environment with regard to land rights. In order to pursue a
Do No Harm approach to landmine survey and clearance, involved stakeholders will have to address the question of who has legal rights to the land that is free from evidence of mines and newly available. And they will have to do so bearing in mind the inevitable conflicts over such land that will emerge. Indeed, the higher the perceived return value on currently mined land, the greater the risk of land disputes between those claiming rights over the land and those wishing to exploit the land for economic gain. In all likelihood, the risk of land disputes will grow as the demining process expands.
This report is based on scores of interviews and active consultations with a wide spectrum of landmine related stakeholders. The underlying assumption of the report is that mine action will be most effective and equitable if a land rights-sensitive
Do No Harm approaches to mine action is taken which fully corresponds to the housing, land and property (HLP) rights widely enshrined under international law.
The report provides a brief overview of the types of land rights issues that can emerge and the legal framework for addressing land rights issues. It then sets forth a series of recommendations for core principles on land and demining, and a proposed sequence of steps on addressing land rights in the context of landmine survey and clearance that would embody those principles and facilitate the fair and effective resolution of land rights claims.