"With only our voices, what can we do?’: Land confiscation and local response in southeast Myanmar", 30 June 2015

Villagers in Karen areas of southeast Myanmar continue to face widespread land confiscation at the hands of a multiplicity of actors. Much of this can be attributed to the rapid expansion of domestic and international commercial interest and investment in southeast Myanmar since the January 2012 preliminary ceasefire between the Karen National Union (KNU) and the Myanmar government. KHRG first documented this in a 2013 report entitled ‘Losing Ground’, which documented cases of land confiscation between January 2011 and November 2012. This report, ‘With only our voices, what can we do?’, is a follow up to that analysis and highlights continued issue areas while identifying newly documented trends. The present analysis assesses land confiscation according to a number of different factors, including: land use type; geographic distribution across KHRG’s seven research areas; perpetrators involved; whether or not compensation and/or consultation occurred; and the effects that confiscation had on local villagers. This report also seeks to highlight local responses to land confiscation, emphasising the agency that individuals and communities in southeast Myanmar already possess and the obstacles that they face when attempting to protect their own human rights. By focusing on local perspectives and giving priority to villagers’ voices, this report aims to provide local, national, and international actors with a resource that will allow them to base policy and programmatic decisions that will impact communities in southeast Myanmar more closely on the experiences and concerns of the people living there.

Click here for a copy of the full report in ENGLISH or BURMESE. 

Click here to download APPENDIX 1 & 2 in English, which includes the full-text of the 113 raw data reports and 13 Land Grabbing Forms analysed in this report.

Click here to download APPENDIX 3 in English/Burmese that provides legal background and contextual information, which allows for an analysis of the testimony in this report within a broader framework.