World Bank's Leaked Report on Land Grabs Contradicts its Advice to the Developing Countries

August 2, 2010. Oakland (CA): Recently leaked draft report from the World Bank, The Global Land Rush: Can it Yield Sustainable and Equitable Benefits, challenges the publicly held position of the World Bank on investments in agricultural lands in poor nations - a trend that has come to be popularly known as land grabbing. Although such investments have been hailed by the World Bank as a way to generate jobs and infrastructure, the report states, "investors are targeting countries with weak laws, buying arable land on the cheap, and failing to deliver on promises of jobs and investments," and in some cases inflict serious damage on the local resource base.

"Conclusions of the leaked report confirm those of(Mis)Investment in Agriculture: The Role of the International Finance Corporation in the Global Land Grab, a report released by the Oakland Institute in April this year. They pose a challenge to the World Bank whose policy prescriptions, up to now, have contented that the land deals reflect a potential win-win situation for both investors and developing countries," said Anuradha Mittal, director of the Oakland Institute. "This calls for heightened scrutiny of the Bank's activities in promoting investor-friendly policies that spur foreign direct investment in agriculture in poor countries, and holding it accountable instead of allowing it to sweep the damning findings under the rug," she continued.

In April, as the World Bank and UN agencies released a discussion note entitled "Principles for Responsible Agricultural Investment that respects rights, livelihoods and resources," the Oakland Institute released (Mis)Investment in Agriculture, exposing the role of the Bank's private sector branch, the International Finance Corporation (IFC), in fueling land grabs, especially in Africa.

"The Bank's report is certainly a surprising turn of events given that the International Finance Corporation (IFC) has not only legitimized the land grab trend but effectively facilitated and promoted it," said Shepard Daniel, Fellow at the Oakland Institute and co-author of the(Mis)Investment report. "The report's conclusions that land deals are dangerous, lack transparency, and rarely seek to incorporate the host countries' overall investment strategies reflect our findings. The key question is how this acknowledgment will be integrated into the work of the Bank's agencies like the IFC, which have increased the ability of foreign investors to acquire land in developing country markets," she continued.

Following the publication of its reports, The Great Land Grab: Rush for World's Farmland Threatens Food Security for the Poor (2009) and (Mis)Investment in Agriculture: The Role of the International Finance Corporation in the Global Land Grab (2010), the Oakland Institute is continuing to examine and document land deals in an effort to expose their impact and how this trend impedes the urgent and critical task of improving food security for the world's most vulnerable.

Click Here to download a copy of (Mis)Investment in Agriculture  (http://www.oaklandinstitute.org/pdfs/misinvestment_web.pdf).

Click Here to download a copy of The Great Land Grab. (www.oaklandinstitute.org/pdfs/LandGrab_final_web.pdf)

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Posted in land grab , land grabbing , World Bank

Sri Lankan government acquiring lands in Tamil areas

(December 02, CHENNAI, Express News Service) Even before resettling the Tamils in their traditional areas, the Sri Lankan government is in the process of acquiring lands in the northern and eastern regions of the country to attract foreign investors.

Speaking on ‘Trade and investment opportunities in Sri Lanka’, Sri Lankan Deputy High Commissioner Vadivelu Krishnamoorthy said that vast areas of suitable land had been identified for cultivation of food crops and foreign investors with a capacity to introduce high-yielding advanced agricultural techniques are being given priority. He said that with the eradication of terrorism most areas in the north and east of the country have been opened for tourists and invited Indian investors to build tourism-related infrastructure such as theme parks.

Nilaveli in Trincomalle district and Pasikudah, Vakarai and Arugambay in Batticaloa district had been identified as potential areas for investment in tourism.The Sri Lankan government had also put in place single window clearance system for foreign investors and streamlined the process so that the investors would get clearances in a short span of time.

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Posted in land grabbing

Sri Lanka schemes ‘legal reform’ to negate identity and grab land

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 11 November 2009, 02:34 GMT]
News reports from Colombo indicate Sri Lanka government is planning to revise the Theasa Vazhamai law of Tamils, which is a constituent legal code, ever since the formulation of the island’s current legal system by the Dutch. The urgency of the Sri Lanka state at this juncture is not social reformation but grabbing the lands of Tamils without legal hurdles, besides removing last vestiges of Tamil sovereignty in the state apparatus, Tamil legal circles said.

The very word ‘Theasa Vazhamai’ means the conventions of the nation or country.

This is a civil legal code applicable to the people of the Jaffna Peninsula and was codified by the Dutch in early 18th century, by compiling the traditional laws of the times of Tamil sovereignty before the advent of colonialism.

The legal code was a result of a consensus between the Dutch administration and the chieftains of Jaffna. Earlier, at the fall of the kingdom of Jaffna, the chieftains had a convention on such matters with the Portuguese. The details of this convention, mentioned by historians, are said to be available in the archives of Goa, but are yet to be translated.

The nomenclature Theasa Vazhamai implies that the Tamils had a Theasam (country) in the island and the incorporation of it as an identifiable legal code in the Roman-Dutch legal basis of the island by the Dutch indicates that separate sovereignty of Tamils in the island was acknowledged in matters of civil law. The territories of the kingdom of Jaffna were a separate unit called Jaffna Patnam under the colonial administrations of the Portuguese and the Dutch.

A Tamil coastal community of the eastern and western parts of the island also had a similar code compiled by the Dutch, but it became obsolete and removed in British times. When the British conquered Kandy in 1815, as a consequence of a convention between the British and the chieftains, the Kandyan Sinhalese received a similar legal code, which is still recognised as Kandyan Law.

The most conspicuous part of Theasa Vazhamai is its property and inheritance laws, which strike a balance between patriarchy and matriarchy, in differentiating Muthusam, property that comes in father’s line from Seethanam, property that comes in mother’s line.

Unlike the Tamil Nadu custom of Vara-thadcha’nai, which in etymology and in practice means donation to the bridegroom, the Seethanam of Jaffna means woman’s property and in practice also go in female line. Husbands live in wives houses and sons will not get the property when there are daughters.

British colonialism lenient to patriarchy, as seen with the case of the abolition of Marumakka’l Thaayam (a matrilineal practice among the Naayar community) in the princely state of Trivancore, brought in changes twice in Theasa Vazhamai too, according to which the husband has to countersign when a woman transacts her property.

The British version of Theasa Vazhamai, before changes, is available in the form of palm leaf manuscripts in London. Prof. S. Pathmanathan has reproduced some of them a couple of years ago in his book in Tamil on Theasa Vazhamai.

According to legal circles, what the Sri Lankan state eyeing now in the guise of social reform is erasing an important element in the property laws, called Earvai that prevents selling a land to others, when neighbours are prepared to pay the same money.

The law was a reason for strong ‘village identities’ among Tamils but at the same time also contributed to caste segregation of settlements.

Migration to foreign countries, displacement and the drastic conditions faced by Tamils are in many ways changing the social picture today in which diaspora remittance determines land transactions among castes, but yet as a social consensus, land is retained within Tamils and has not gone to non-Tamils.

The idea of the Sri Lankan state is to break the identity of Tamils with their land in their heartland on one hand, and on the other, to pave way for the purchase of Tamil lands by the new economic forces dominated by Sinhalese, said an academic in Jaffna, adding that once practical applicability is invalidated, Theasa Vazhamai, the symbol of a separate identity and the last vestige of legal sovereignty of Tamils in the island will become obsolete.

Some LTTE circles also, when there was a de facto state, thought of revising Theasa Vazhamai, but for social reasons. This is different from what the Sri Lanka government aims now without exclusive consent of the people concerned. This is a matter for Tamils to decide under their own sovereignty, the academic said.

The Sri Lankan state could have easily achieved multi-ethnic land ownership in any part of the island had it conceded the rights of Tamil nation in the island and had eliminated fear of genocide. But the state now tries to achieve it as a part of a systematic structural genocide after militarily crushing the balance of Tamils and some greedy powers are assisting to this process, the academic further said.

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Posted in land grabbing , Sri Lanka , Thesawalamai

No licences for encrachers of state land in Sri Lanka

(October 30, 2009) Sri Lanka Ministry of Land and Land Development has decided to suspend the issue of licenses for the persons who have illegally settled in state land after 1995.

The Minister of Land and Land Development Jeevan Kumarathunga says that the step was taken to discourage encroachment of state land by people.

Encroaching has several dimensions and the low income group people settle in state land due to poverty while the politically backed affluent persons encroach valuable state land for business purposes. Clearing state forests for cultivation also takes place in mass scale and this has also generated issues such as man-elephant conflicts.

However, the worst kind of encroachment takes place with the support of the government politicians and the affluent encroaches obtain the licenses easily and own the land for generations if not for forever.

The Minister of Land and Land Development points out that the state is now in short of prime land for development in Colombo and suburbs due to this illegal encroachments. 

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Posted in encroach , land , land grabbing , Sri Lanka