With less than two months before the newly amended Vacant, Fallow and Virgin Lands Management (VFV) Law goes into force, millions in ethnic rural areas now face the risk of eviction while others across the country may lose their lands upon return.

Labelled by land rights NGO Land In Our Hands (LIOH) as “burdening and oppressive”, the amended VFV Law worries many, as more conflicts are likely to ensue and could tear the already divided country apart once enforced. 

HATIYA, Bangladesh, Jan 14 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Ferdousi Akter's family struggled to survive after a crumbling riverbank forced them to abandon their home and move to a new part of the island where they live, off the Bangladesh coast.

Her husband worked as a day labourer on fishing boats but earned too little to cover their expenses.

Just over a year ago, however, the five-member Akter family was one of 45 households offered land on Hatiya Island under a decade-long free lease by the Bangladesh Forest Department.

NEW YORK - A small Native American tribe in Louisiana whose land has nearly vanished into the sea has moved a step closer to relocating its community further inland after authorities acquired new land for the move, part of a first-of-its-kind project.

The 515 acres (208 hectares) of farmland will be made available to members of the Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw tribe and other inhabitants of the Isle de Jean Charles to relocate after their village was nearly wiped by erosion and rising seas.

The Yomiuri ShimbunThe Japanese government intends to propose that Japan and Russia mutually abandon rights to compensation and other claims over the four northern islands during negotiations on a peace treaty, according to sources close to the bilateral talks.

The idea has emerged to form an agreement specifying abandonment of rights to claim compensation at the same time a peace treaty is concluded.

IT is impossible to identify several core human rights, which are all well established in international law and could be applied directly to development – induced displacement of a large number of people.
The rationale and the need for reviewing human rights arises from the proven inadequacy of so-called “entitlements” of affected people in resettlement plans prepared by national governments following involuntarily resettle policies.
The key issues that are not resolved fully in this policies are:

Territorial dispute behind the forced exodus of residents of Chalchihuitán

It’s been 14 months since some 5,000 people in Chiapas were forced to flee their homes in Chalchihuitán. And although about 4,000 have since returned, 1,200 remain homeless, a situation for which they hold the municipal government responsible.

Representatives of the displaced people told a press conference this week that they have yet to recover their properties, which were occupied by armed civilians after the residents fled.

Indigenous communities in central Chiapas have been displaced due the presence of rival armed groups in their territories.

A territorial dispute between municipalities in Chiapas, southern Mexico, has displaced thousands of Indigenous people who now remain in precarious situations. In this attack, two people suffered gun shot wounds when an armed group prevented them from returning to their crops, a human rights organization reported.

SINGRAULI, India -- After years of developing the thermal energy sector to meet the demands of a nation prone to outages, India is now facing a power glut with over 30 such producers teetering on bankruptcy. Yet the government shows no letup in its drive for more coal power and the effect of oversupply is rippling out to other sectors such as banks.

India's embrace of coal has allowed it to triple power generation over the past 15 years to 344 gigawatts, surpassing Japan to become the world's third largest electricity market.

It has been six decades since communities in the Malenadu region were uprooted in the name of progress and development. They are still fighting for basic amenities in the villages where they have been resettled.

It was in 1905 when renowned engineer Sir M. Vishveshwaraya saw the roaring torrents of Jog, the second highest plunge waterfalls in India, and exclaimed: “What a waste!” It was his visionary imagination which first seeded the idea of harnessing hydel power from River Sharavathi, considered a lifeline by many in the Malenadu region of Karnataka.  

Up in the highlands of Guatemala, a dark history haunts the mist-covered treelines. In the late 1970s and 1980s, a raging civil war claimed the lives of some 200,000 people, most of whom were indigenous. Across the country, 626 massacre sites have been identified.