"Of all the challenges that Myanmar has faced over recent decades, few have been as fundamental and none have been as overlooked as land. This fine study provides a key to understanding the country''s enduring inequalities, as well as its politics, and will be essential reading to anyone wanting to chart a fresh vision of Myanmar''s future." ( --Thant Myint-U , author of The Hidden History of Burma: Race, Capitalism, and the Crisis of Democracy in the 20th Century) "Housing, Land and Property rights are an important cross-cutting issue, affecting many aspects of life and livelihoods in Burma. This unique study explores successive regimes'' failures to address HLP issues equitably, despite the opportunities of a partial democratic opening between 2011-21. Since the February 2021 coup, the military regime has weaponized housing rights, seizing property from hundreds of opposition activists and destroying tens of thousands of homes in communities struggling to resist the junta. This book is essential reading for all those working for a just land and property regime in Myanmar and will inform the wider struggle for justice and democracy." ( --Ashley South , Chiang Mai University (Thailand)) "Scott Leckie and José María Arraiza''s excellent new book demonstrates how Myanmar''s painful history of war and exploitation is very much a history of denied housing, land, and property rights. The book reconstructs in painstaking detail the development of HLP in Myanmar since independence and up through the failed reform period of the 2010s.

Their advice on how a just HLP regime can be constructed is valuable guidance for Myanmar''s democratic constitution-makers and should be required reading for peacemakers engaging with the country." ( --Philipp Annawitt , Former advisor to Myanmar''s government and parliament (Austria)) "Myanmar''s reform period from 2011 to 2021 offered hope that the country could transcend the legacy of decades of authoritarian rule and build a more hopeful future where its people would enjoy greater freedoms, human rights and economic opportunities. Although the reform process was imperfect, both in conception and execution, it was the first time in decades that people felt the future would be better than the past, and a young generation began to share many of the hopes and aspirations of their peers in the region, and to believe that they could achieve them. All that came to a screeching halt with the military''s February 2021 coup d''état, which ended the liberalisation process, instantly wiped-out years of economic growth and progress in poverty alleviation and turned the clock back several decades to a time of repression, violence and a controlling military elite that treated the country, its population and its land as their personal resources to plunder. The coup treated with disdain the clearly expressed will of the people in the 2020 elections which handed a second term, in a landslide, to Aung San Suu Kyi''s National League for Democracy. The younger generation saw their futures destroyed, catalysing a powerful and determined resistance movement. Older generations who had lived through the previous period of military rule were similarly determined to prevent a return to the past. Since the coup, the Myanmar military and other authorities under their control have unleashed extreme human rights violations - arrests, torture, killings and targeting civilian populations with military atrocities.

This volume deals with another set of important rights that have perhaps received less attention - the set of rights known collectively as Housing, Land and Property (HLP) rights. It carefully and comprehensively catalogues the changes in the HLP Rights framework in Myanmar from 2011 to 2021, including some of the challenges, constraints and missed opportunities from that period. It describes how HLP rights have been violated in the aftermath of the coup, in a deliberate way and as a specific target of the regime. Importantly, it then offers a detailed plan for the future for how to protect and promote HLP Rights. It is my hope that this volume can serve as more than just a historical record of a past period of reform in Myanmar, and that in the future the situation in the country will be such that it can act as a catalyst for positive change in HLP rights." ( --Richard Horsey , Myanmar analyst, Crisis Group, Senior Advisor on Myanmar (Australia)).