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A primer on defending Myanmar’s customary tenure systems
Author: Oliver Springate-Baginski
In Myanmar, the livelihoods and well-being of rural communities have long been assured through their customary land and resource management systems. These systems have been especially valued in ethnic upland areas, and although increasingly under pressure, continue more or less intact and with strong social legitimacy today.
Customary systems are facing a new threat in Myanmar in the form of a recently (revised) Vacant, Fallow and Virgin Land Management Law. This new law reiterates the central government's historical policy of discrimination and persecution of ethnic nationalities and their customary livelihood and natural resource governance practices, and reaffirms its link to an economic development paradigm that is largely based on large-scale capture and commodification of land and related natural resources for large-scale industrial agriculture and extractive industry.
The new law adopted in September 2018 put customary systems and the villagers that daily reproduce them squarely in the crosshairs, marking them out for final destruction by assigning a deadline to register with the government (to avoid being designated as VFV land) or risk punishment for failure to comply. As many villagers are saying, the law and its deadline makes them squatters in their own lands. That deadline is today (11 March 2019).
Many ethnic peoples and their organizations flatly reject any attempt by the government to designate their customary lands as VFV, hence the subtitle of our new primer on customary systems that draws inspiration from Myanmar and the continuing aspirations and efforts by ethnic peoples to defend and promote their customary lands and systems.
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