The Dutch LAND-at-scale program was launched in March last year and since then, two rounds for land intervention ideas have been released. The program seeks ideas that contribute to improving land governance in developing countries, and that ultimately support better food and nutrition security, economic development, peace and stability in these countries. At this moment, projects for 16 countries are actively being formulated in close collaboration with embassies and other in country stakeholders.

Main photo: Cambodian farmer and land rights activist Oum Samorl (photo: Ridan Sun)

Cambodian farmer Oum Samorl and her family lost their farm to a corporate land grab 15 years ago. They have never stopped feeling the loss, especially during the pandemic.

Oum Samorl remembers the day in June 2006 when tractors invaded her family’s farm in Cambodia’s Pailin province. 

Main photo: The family of Chai Bunthonglek, a farmer who was killed in 2015 in a community farm in Klong Sai Pattana in Surat Thani province in southern Thailand, Aug 24, 2020. (Photo: Thomson Reuters Foundation/Rina Chandran)

SURAT THANI: Somruedee Bunthonglek has not repaired the bullet holes in the pickup truck her husband was driving when he survived an assassination attempt barely a year after her father was shot dead on the same communal farm in southern Thailand.

• Conflict over how best to protect the biodiversity of Myanmar’s Tanintharyi region may be contributing to the rapid loss of its forest cover.
• Habitats of globally threatened species, including the critically endangered Gurney’s pitta and recently discovered geckos, face destruction due to logging, agriculture and other human pressures.
• Researchers fear that entire species may be driven to extinction without ever being documented if habitats aren’t protected fast.

(Main photo: Lao agricultural expert Sombath Somphone, who went missing in December 2012, in 2005 file photo. Courtesy of Somphone family)

The 10^th annual International Day of Victims of Enforced Disappearance Sunday offers a fresh reminder that Laos has done little or nothing to investigate citizens, including a highly respected development expert, who have vanished in the communist Southeast Asian nation, human rights groups said.

The residents stated that Nwoko had successfully bought over senior policemen in Delta State and Abuja, who allegedly assisted him in intimidating and arresting those, who opposed his attempt to forcefully acquire additional 90 hectares of land from an area earmarked for all indigenes of the community.

Residents of Idumuje Ugboko community in Delta State have accused former senator, Ned Nwoko, of using the police and Ministry of Justice to dubiously harass, intimidate and lock up elders and sons of the town.

Kaduna State Governor Nasir el-Rufai has challenged traditional rulers in the state to show any piece of land that has been forcibly acquired or illegally occupied in their domains.

He was reacting to the allegation by southern Kaduna leaders that their land had been annexed to Fulani herdsmen as grazing reserves.

Leaders of southern Kaduna had decried attacks by armed herdsmen who invaded their communities, destroyed homes and took over lands for grazing.

Main photo: People protest in front of the Dambe district hall in Tbong Khmum province on October 18, 2019. (Supplied)

Twenty villagers engaged in a dispute with a rubber plantation over more than 400 hectares of land in Tbong Khmum province were released from custody on Tuesday after they were arrested the day before for allegedly damaging the company’s land-clearing machinery, an official said.

The Philippines was the deadliest country in Asia for land and environmental defenders again last year while slipping to second most dangerous in the world behind Colombia, a watchdog said Wednesday.

A total of 43 defenders were killed in the archipelago -- the vast majority on the fertile and resource-rich islands of Mindanao and Negros -- compared with 30 in 2018, Global Witness said in a report.

Global Witness campaigners warn of risk of further killings during Covid-19 lockdowns

Main photo: Celia Xakriaba, an indigenous educator and activist of the Xakriaba people of Brazil, with a portrait of Paulo Paulino Guajajara, who was killed in an ambush by illegal loggers in 2019. Photograph: Olivier Hoslet/EPA

Main photo: land to be taken for the Vientiane Expressway in Laos is shown in a 2020 photo (RFA)

Residents of the Lao capital Vientiane are resisting seizure of their land by a Lao-China joint venture building an expressway, saying they had been promised earlier their land would not be taken, and calling offers of compensation unacceptably low, Lao sources say.