Southeast Asia is world’s hotspot for land disputes: report
Businesses in Southeast Asia are increasingly counting the cost of land grabs, more than half of which result in delayed projects and nearly three-quarters of which lead to lawsuits, according to a wide-ranging research report.
Out of a sample of 51 major land disputes surveyed across the region, all but 6 remain unresolved, meaning that Southeast Asia is the region most prone to land conflict in the world. That is according to research published Tuesday by UK-based consultancy TMP Systems and the Rights and Resources Initiative, a global coalition of land rights activists funded in part by the British and Norwegian governments.
That 88% of land disputes in Southeast Asia are not resolved puts the region above the 61% global average, according to the research, which covers land disputes dating from 2001. …
On mainland Southeast Asia — Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam — disputes last an average of 8.9 years and of those documented since 2001, only 10% have been resolved, while across Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines, the percentage of resolved land disputes is only a notch higher, at 14%. …
Simon Roughneen
