Legal pluralism: A terrain of contestation for rights-based land governance in Myanmar
Diana Suhardiman, Miles Kenney-Lazar, Ruth Meinzen-Dick
Dominant state control over land plays a critical role in producing land dispossession throughout the Global South. In Myanmar, the state’s approach towards territorial expansion drives the country’s system of land governance, resulting in widespread and systemic land grabbing. This article investigates ongoing reform processes and brings to light key structural challenges in the country’s land governance system, particularly: 1) the government’s drive to formalise land ownership, which has threatened customary land tenure rights and legitimised land grabbing practices; 2) institutional inertia that impeded the current government’s reform efforts; and 3) the underlying problems of data inconsistency partly due to serial, historical land confiscation. From a policy perspective, we highlight the need to position legal pluralism as a terrain of contestation for rightsbased approaches in land governance, meaning that pluralistic legal systems and norms are contradictory in their capacity to both limit but also generate opportunities for supporting local community’s land rights.
Event: Land Governance in an Interconnected World_Annual World Bank Conference on Land and Poverty_2018
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