Four people were killed and dozens arrested last week in the village of Dong Tam as a long-running land dispute flared after a dawn raid by police

By Rina Chandran

BANGKOK - A deadly land dispute in Vietnam has led to a crackdown on social media posts, a sign of growing heavy-handedness by authorities as rising demand for land spurs more conflicts across the country, analysts and human rights activists said.

United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) together with World Food Programme (WFP) and the Government of Sierra Leone

The following story is developed from remarks at TEDxJakarta 2019.

Study shows martial law in an island territory is also being used as pretext for violence

President Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs and declaration of martial law in an island territory are being used as a pretext to attack people defending their land and environment in the Philippines, new research shows.

She’d lived on this historically black D.C. block for 40 years. Now the city she knew was vanishing, and so was her place in it.

She was moving slowly, but she needed to speed up. Her blue sandals clicked on the hardwood floor, echoing off the empty green walls of the two-bedroom rent-controlled apartment in Northwest Washington where she had spent the past 40 years of her life. Reluctantly, she spun from one room to the next, packing boxes, folding sheets, unfolding sheets, opening cupboards, closing cupboards, doing a mental inventory.

What the US faces on its southern border is not a security problem, but a humanitarian crisis, and punishing attempts at deterrence cannot resolve it. Enabling people to stay where they are requires, first and foremost, strengthening their right to be there.

• Indonesian companies were given until March this year to disclose their “beneficial owners” under a 2018 presidential regulation, but less than 1 percent have complied.
• In the easternmost corner of the country, investors hidden by layers of corporate secrecy continue to bulldoze an intact rainforest and have nearly finished building a giant sawmill.

Nearly five years into the implementation of the ground breaking global commitments of the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda, the time is upon us to consider what has been accomplished so far and to set the tone for action that will enable the world to meet its ambitious goals.

Abraham Domico’s assassination comes a few days after the murder of two guards on the hands of irregular groups linked to drug trafficking.

The National Indigenous Organization of Colombia (ONIC) confirmed Wednesday the assassination of another indigenous leader in the department of Antioquia, located in the central northwestern part of the country.

Countries and regions devastated by war and civil strife remain fragile and vulnerable for decades after the fighting has ceased. In this post-conflict period, as social, political, and economic institutions are rebuilt, reconfigured or established anew, land is increasingly acknowledged as not only a key driver or root cause for conflicts, but as a critical factor for relapse and a bottleneck to recovery.

Returnees in the Jonglei area have advocated the setting up of land dispute commissions to assist in arbitration and mediation that would ensure that land is returned to its rightful owners.

The former refugees and internally displaced persons were speaking at the end of a consultative workshop on creating an enabling environment for returnees in their areas of origin.