...In the last six to eight months there’s been a lot of commotion made about land disputes in Burma. Legally speaking, what’s setting the precedent for this to happen now?

Well the whole phenomenon needs to be looked at in terms of the history of the country when it comes to land ever since independence, whereby a system of law, which essentially gave all power to the state when it came to the control, use and allocation of land, was used and very often abused by those who were members of the state or closely associated with the state to acquire land for personal benefit.

...[O]n 19th June, 2012, the President of the Union guided on the
following land reform matters to draw and implement the national
development long term and short term plans:
(a) To manage, calculate, use and carry out systematically the
Sustainable Development of natural resources such as land, water,
forest, mines to enable to use them future generations;
(b)To manage and carry out systematically the land use policy and land
use management not to cause land problems such as land use, land
fluctuation and land trespass;

နိုဝင်ဘာလ ၂၀၁၄
မြန်မာနိုင်ငံ၏ အမျိုးသားမြေအသုံးချမှုမူဝါဒမူကြမ်းနှင့်ပတ်သက်၍ Global Witness ၏
အဆိုပြုလွှာအနှစ်ချုပ်
ဒီမိုကရေစီနိုင်ငံအဖြစ် ပြုပြင်ပြောင်းလဲမှုများပြုလုပ်ရာတွင်မြန်မာနိုင်ငံအစိုးရသည်
အမျိုးသားမြေအသုံးချမှုမူဝါဒမူကြမ်းကို ၂၀၁၄ ခုနှစ် အောက်တိုဘာလတွင်ထုတ်ပြန်ခဲ့ပြီး
ပြည်သူလူထုနှင့် တိုင်ပင်ဆွေးနွေးရန်နောက်ဆက်တွဲမြေယာဥပဒေတစ်ခုအတွက် အစီအစဉ်များကိုလည်းထုတ်ပြန်ခဲ့ပါသည်။

Housing, land and property rights are fundamental human rights and a global advocacy priority for
the Norwegian Refugee Council. The restitution of housing, land and property rights after conflicts
and periods of non-democratic governance are fundamental aspects of transitional justice which
are essential for the achievement of durable solutions to forced displacement, and to broader
concerns of peace, reconciliation and economic prosperity. The NRC Country Office in Myanmar

Summary: "As part of its transition to democratic reform, in October 2014, the Government of Myanmar released a draft national land policy and plans for a subsequent Land Law, for public consultation. The importance of this cannot be understated and Global Witness welcomes both the potential for a strong codified framework for land, and the opportunity for public participation. It is crucial, however, that consultation is meaningful and genuinely participatory, and the resulting feedback is incorporated into the policy and Land Law in a process that is fully transparent.

Abstract:
"In 2012, the Government of Myanmar (GoM) passed
the Farmland Law and the Vacant, Fallow, Virgin
(VFV) Land Law—creating a formalized land market. In essence, this created a formalized land
market. Land titling is often considered “the natural end point of land rights formalization” (Hall et al.
2010: 35). This thinking has become dominant among most governments and development agencies
ever since De Soto (2000) popularized it in
The Mystery of Capital
, in which he argued that the

BURMA ACT LXXXIII, 1947] (24th December 1947)

INDIA ACT XXI, 1850....."Whereas it is enacted by section 9, Regulation VII, 1832, of the Bengal Code, that “whenever in
any civil suit the parties to such suit may be of different persuasions, when one party shall be of
the Hindu and the other of the Muhammadan persuasion, or where one of more parties to the suit
shall not be either of the Muhammadan or Hindu persuasions, the laws of those religions shall
not be permitted to operate to deprive such party or parties of any property to which, but for the

[BURMA ACT XXXVIII, 1947] (28th July, 1947).....
"WHEREAS it is expedient to make provisions for requisitioning lands and premises in certain
respects;
* * * *
It is hereby enacted as follows : — ...

BURMA ACT XI, 1927 29th October, 1927

This Study discusses the human rights issues raised by large-scale land deals for plantation agriculture (‘land grabbing’) in low and middle-income countries. Firstly, the Study takes stock of available data on large land deals, their features and their driving forces. It finds that ‘land grabbing’ is a serious issue requiring urgent attention. Secondly, the Study conceptualises the link between land deals and human rights, reviews relevant international human rights law and discusses evidence on actual and potential human rights impacts.