This report covers much of SE Asia, with specific references to Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Philippines, Myanmar....."...In Myanmar, the ceasefire negotiations and move toward democracy have opened the door to a virtual gold rush for foreign investors, posing new threats to the country?s rural populations in the guise of economic development. On March 30, 2012, the Parliament approved the Farmland Law and Vacant, Fallow and Virgin Lands Management Law, which are designed to encourage large-scale agricultural investment and retain the government?s power to revoke the use rights of local communities to farmlands and confiscate lands.3 The laws fail to recognize the tenure rights of farmers and local customary laws governing land. Particularly disadvantaged are ethnic nationalities that practice swidden or shifting cultivation and complex systems of land use and management. Most local communities do not have legal registration papers to prove land ownership, and forced evictions of local populations for foreign investment, as well as arrests of those who resist these incursions, are on the rise..."