This document presents the findings, conclusions and recommendations of the People's Tribunal on Food Scarcity
and Militarization in Burma. The Tribunal’s work will appeal to all readers interested in human rights and social
justice, as well as anyone with a particular interest in Burma. The Asian Human Rights Commission presents this
report in order to stimulate discourse on human rights and democratization in Burma and around the world.

an edited version of a report by the People's Tribunal on Food Scarcity and Militarization in Burma, which was published by the Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) in October 1999.

This article combines both land tenure and food security issues within a dynamic framework that recognizes not just the conventional link between access to land and access to food in the short run, but also the recursive link between the access to food and the ability to maintain sufficient resources to meet long-run needs.

Analyses the effects of smallholder commercialization on foodcrop input use and productivity in rural Kenya.

What have we learned about land markets in South Asia about land reform, land fragmentation, sharecropping, security of tenure, farm size, land rights, transaction costs, bargaining power, policy distortions, and market imperfections (including those associated with gender)?Faruqee and Carey review the literature on land markets in South Asia to clarify what's known and to highlight unresolved issues. They report that: We have a good understanding of why sharecropping persists and why it can be superior to other standard agricultural contracts.

Paper addresses the following concerns:rural women have limited access to and control of landmost agrarian reforms and legislation that directly or indirectly regulate access to land discriminate against womenthe establishment of legal frameworks with a gender perspective and the elimination of cultural and institutional factors that prevent the recognition of women as producers are essential to safeguard rural women’s access to land.Merely introducing principles of equality into constitutions and in certain norms is not sufficient.

What are the gains from a better education, more land ownership, or a different occupation in Bangladesh? Do the gains differ in urban and rural areas? Have they remained stable over time? Do household size, family structure, and gender affect well-being? Do consumption, poverty, and inequality depend more on characteristics of households or on the areas in which those households are located?Using household data from five successive national surveys, Wodon analyzes the microdeterminants of (and changes in) consumption, poverty, growth, and inequality in Bangladesh from 1983 to 1996.

Continued agricultural growth and diversification into nonagricultural activities are essential if India is to continue reducing rural poverty. But policymakers hoping to alleviate rural poverty must also be aware of the causes and implications of persisting, if not increasing, inequality within villages. Jayaraman and Lanjouw review longitudinal village studies from a variety of disciplinary perspectives to identify changes in living standards in rural India in recent decades.

Examines—from the perspective of transaction costs—factors that constrain access to land for the rural poor and other socially excluded groups in India. They find that: Land reform has reduced large landholdings since the 1950s. Medium-size farms have gained most. Formidable obstacles still prevent the poor from gaining access to land. The complexity of land revenue administration in Orissa is partly the legacy of distinctly different systems, which produced more or less complete and accurate land records.

Access to land is deeply important in rural India, where the incidence of poverty is highly correlated with lack of access to land. Mearns provides a framework for assessing alternative approaches to improving access to land by India's rural poor.