The politics of legal pluralism in the shaping of spatial power in Myanmar’s land governance

ABSTRACT

Following the National League for Democracy’s landslide victory in the 2015 national election, Myanmar embarked on a series of legal and political transitions. This paper highlights parallel processes alongside such transitions. Linking land governance with the ongoing peace processes, and taking Karen state as a case study, it brings to light how both processes are in fact closely interlinked. Building on legal pluralism research, we argue that in the context of ethnic states, farmers’ strategies to strengthen their land rights resemble the very notion of state transformation.

KEYWORDS:

• Dual authority
• land use rights
• state transformation processes
• ethnic states
• Myanmar

Acknowledgments

We are grateful to all of the interviewees for generously providing their time and inputs. We would also like to thank three anonymous reviewers for their comments and edits on earlier versions of the paper. Any remaining errors or omissions are our own.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Diana Suhardiman is a Senior Researcher and Research Group Lead Governance Inclusion and Equality at the International Water Management Institute, based in Vientiane, Laos. Putting power and politics central in natural resource governance, her research highlights the complex and contested nature of water and land governance across scales in South and Southeast Asia.

Saw John Bright is a Water Governance Coordinator at the Karen Environmental and Social Action Network (KESAN), based in Yangon, Myanmar, where he works with local communities in Karen state to achieve environmental sustainability and gender equity. He is currently pursuing his MA in Sustainable International Development at Heller School of Social Policy and Management, Brandeis University.

Casper Palmano is a Consultant at the Karen Environmental and Social Action Network (KESAN), based in Yangon, Myanmar, where he works on land governance issues. He is a co-founder and moderator of Myanmar Land, Agribusiness and Forestry Forum (MYLAFF), where he builds and moderate a repository collating information on land, agribusiness, environment, fisheries, forestry, investment and other related topics in relation to development in Myanmar.

Notes

1 Established in early 1949, the KNU strives for a federal system, centered on the central government’s full recognition of an autonomous Karen territory and Karen people’s aspiration to decide their own political destiny. Operating in an area experiencing one of the worlds’ longest ongoing civil wars, the KNU is equipped with an armed wing, the Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA).

2 In this paper we present the central government and the KNU as state actors. Both have some degree of authoritative rule making and some organized political force, thus comprise of sets of institutions and social power relations, albeit in different scope.

3 See also Rasmussen and Lund (2018) on how authority can emerge through control over space and the people in it, embedded in the processes of territorialization.

4 Initially, the central government invited 15 EAOs to participate in ongoing peace negotiations, but seven declined or later dropped out before the signing due to perceived unfairness. Apart from these 15 EAOs, some EAOs were never invited to the discussion in the first place. On 13 February 2018 the New Mon State Party (NMSP) and the Lahu Democratic Union (LDU) signed the NCA, increasing the total number of signatories to ten.

5 The commission is colloquially referred to as the Shwe Mann Commission considering the powerful role that he plays in it. Shwe Mann is a former general and protégé of senior general Than Shwe who was powerful within the State Peace and Development Council and then later was the head of the Union Solidarity and Development Party. Due to reported tensions with Thein Sein, Shwe Mann was removed from the party and began to develop closer connections with Aung San Suu Kyi, despite their seemingly oppositional political positions.

6 Prompted by mounting challenges from ethnic armed struggle in border areas, General Ne Win stage a military coup against the democratically elected government in 1962.

7 Names and locations of villages and other actors involved in the paper have been changed.

8 The DKBA is a Karen armed group that broke away from the KNU/KNLA in 1994.

9 Formed in 2009, Border Guard Forces are subdivisions of the Tatmadaw, consisting of some segments of Ethnic Armed Organizations including the DKBA.

10 Farmers did not pay land tax to the KNU, but they paid a one-time land registration fee to cover the cost of land measurement and registration.

Additional information

Funding

This work was undertaken as part of, and funded by, the Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) Research Program on Policies, Institutions, and Markets (PIM) led by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). The opinions expressed here belong to the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of CGIAR, IFPRI, or PIM.