By: Roy Prosterman (Landesa)
Date: September 20th 2016
Source: Thomson Reuters Foundation
Could the newly democratic nation become Asia's sixth development success story?
Since World War II, there have been five great Asian development success stories founded upon land tenure reforms that allocated land ownership, or equivalent long-term land rights, into the hands of small farmers. Will Burma be the sixth?
A rare opportunity is knocking, to directly benefit as many as four million of the poorest families on earth, and beyond that to support broader economic growth and the crucial processes of peaceful democratization in a country of 50 million. The place is Burma (also known as Myanmar) and the opportunity is reform of land tenure in favor of the rural poor.
Last week, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, State Counsellor of Burma’s new democratic government, elected by a landslide, made her first state visit to the United States. The winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, who saw her country through dark decades of military dictatorship – much of it under house arrest – will address the new session of the General Assembly and will meet with President Obama and other world leaders.
Daw Suu’s meeting with President Obama reciprocated a visit he made in November 2012 when Burma was beginning its democratic transition and she was still in the political opposition. In his address at the University of Yangon, President Obama recalled Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s “Four Fundamental Freedoms”: freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear. President Obama proposed a partnership in which Burma’s “progress towards democracy” would be coupled “with economic development”, and then offered this ringing affirmation of the centrality of property rights:
“It’s not enough to trade a prison of powerlessness for the pain of an empty stomach.
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