Main photo: The Chinese fence inside Myanmar’s territory in October 2021. / NamKhamnews

China has cut off electricity to a border village in northern Shan State for nearly nine months due to boundary disputes, according to residents. 

Representatives of a group of civil society organisations are calling for the United Nations Development Programme to retract a Memorandum of Understanding signed with the Musina-Makhado Special Economic Zone that could contribute up to 10% of South Africa’s total emissions from all sectors combined — and threaten water security from Limpopo to Zimbabwe.

LONDON: A British Pakistani family from Birmingham has complained to Overseas Pakistanis Commission Punjab that their land worth tens of millions of Rupees has been taken over fraudulently by three men with powerful connections.

Main photo: A screenshot of a video of villagers in Lang village, Ea Pok town, Cu Mgar district in south-central Vietnam's Dak Lak province who have been proesting since mid-May to reclaim about 40 hectares of arable land from a forestry company. (Protesters' Facebook page).

Hundreds of ethnic minority households from a commune in south-central Vietnam's Dak Lak province are fighting to reclaim their land from a forestry company after 40 years of working on it as hired laborers.

International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED)  and the Land Portal are launching a new blog series on the governance of land-based investments in the Global South. The series will explore practical strategies and approaches adopted by rights defenders and others to address common challenges surrounding these investments.

Banner photo: Since most of the evicted families were Bengali-speaking Muslims, it was alleged that they are illegal immigrants who had forcibly occupied government land as well as land of indigenous people and also settled on grazing land. (PTI PHOTO.)

Over 1,000 people deported to Djausdjan province. The move favours their Pashtun supporters in northern Afghanistan. Tribal council convened to resolve the case. Tajikistan and Uzbekistan ask the Taliban government to address the ethnic issue.

Land grabbing is a major cause for concern in Bangladesh. Of course, a huge amount of land is illegally grabbed. According to the Land Ministry, about 1.3 million hectares of government-owned lands are currently grabbed by influential elites. Influential persons illegally grabbed government-owned lands in char areas, riversides, roadsides, forests, hill tracts and other areas. But it is difficult to exactly say about the total amount of lands illegally grabbed because there is a lack of record of illegally grabbed private lands.

Dr Franklin Obeng-Odoom, Associate Professor in the Discipline of Global Development Studies at the University of Helsinki  has recently reviewed a new book by one of South Africa's leading legal minds and land analysts Tembeka Ngcukaitobi . His review of Land Mattters: South Africa's Failed Land Reforms and the Road Ahead appears in the LSE Review of Books.

According to Obeng-Odoom Land Matters is outstanding. Some extracts from his review appear below.