From Indonesia to Myanmar to Brazil to Canada - Global land news from around the world. Thanks to @lauragoodwin and @CGinsburg for submissions. Add your stories and comments below. 
### [India: Odisha Plan to Protect Land Rights of Single Women](http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/other-states/odisha-plan-to-protect-land-rights-of-single-women/article7548211.ece)
August 17, 2015
The Odisha government with support of a social organisation ‘Landesa’ has decided to identify landless single women to provide them homestead land.
### [Malaysia: New Film Exposes Indigenous Rights Violations](http://www.theecologist.org/campaigning/2974490/broken_promises_new_film_exposes_malaysias_indigenous_rights_violations.html)
August 17, 2015
Malaysia is pushing ahead with its plans for a devastating series of 12 dams in the rainforests of Borneo that will kill a billion trees, bring death to wildlife on a stupendous scale and evict tens of thousands of indigenous people and their communities. Now a new film honours their struggle for land, forest and freedom.
### [Global: Large Food Firms Back Voluntary Plan to Stop Land Grabbing](http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/08/17/food-farming-rights-idUSL5N10S2Z620150817)
August 17, 2015
Global food giants and international NGOs have drafted a framework to prevent land grabs just as hedge funds, companies and plantation owners race to acquire new territory.
### [Canada: Haida Gwaii, Where Sustainability Dates Back 13,000 Years](http://www.alternet.org/environment/postcard-haida-gwaii-where-sustainability-dates-back-13000-years)
August 17, 2015
Visiting a First Nation that has been successful in reclaiming their territorial and resource rights.
### [India: Farmers in Himachal Pradesh Fight for their Rights over Forests](http://scroll.in/article/747617/polluters-or-protectors-farmers-in-himachal-pradesh-fight-for-their-rights-over-forests)
August 16, 2015
Farmers are rallying for the implementation of the Forest Rights Act, which gives them the right to govern forest resources, as a High Court order brands them ‘polluters’.
### [Indonesia: How forest law is being used against poor people](http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2015/08/16/how-indonesian-forest-law-being-used-against-poor-people.html)
August 16, 2015
Hundreds of people are detained in Indonesian jails for having claimed their rights on their land, forests and other resources while resisting eviction and land grabs. Indonesia’s Forest Law No. 18/2003 on Prevention and Eradication of Forest Destruction, ostensibly intended to protect the forests from organized crime and illegal logging, is instead being used to criminalize Indigenous Peoples and local communities.
### [Myanmar: Land Rights Activists Are Newest Political Prisoners](https://www.hrw.org/news/2015/08/15/burma-land-rights-activists-are-newest-political-prisoners)
August 15, 2015
Burmese authorities should immediately stop using abusive laws on association and expression to halt the activities of land rights activists. The recent arbitrary arrest of a prominent land rights advocate in Karen State exemplifies the government’s persecution of vocal opponents of land grabs by officials and their business associates.
### [Brazil: Indigenous Leaders March for Land and Rights](http://www.worldbulletin.net/brazilian-indigenous-leaders-march-for-land-and-rights/163199/brazilian-indigenous-leaders-march-for-land-and-rights)
August 15, 2015
The demonstration came as lawmakers are considering a constitutional change that would give them power over indigenous land – sparking fears that congress could be influenced by lobby groups working for commercial interests.
### [Cambodia: The Path to Clean Sugar Still Paved with Delays](http://www.equaltimes.org/in-cambodia-the-path-to-clean#.VdQEI1zB43Y)
August 14, 2015
For more than 30 years, mother-of-nine Chhim Phay and her family farmed a modest, eight-hectare plot of land in Cambodia’s Kompong Speu province. That tranquillity, however, was snatched from them in early 2011 when five of those hectares were lost to powerful Senator Ly Yong Phat, whose Phnom Penh Sugar Company– a wholly owned subsidiary of LYP Group – had been driving farmers off their land, sometimes violently.
### [Global: ‘Violent Displacement’ in the Name of Conservation Must End](http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2015/8/14/american-conservation-hurts-biodiversity-natives.html)
August 14, 2015
A new indigenous rights campaign called “Stop the Con” is trying to prevent the American conservation model of national parks and reserves from being further exported around the world.
### [Sierra Leone: CSOs Call for Review of Land Policy](http://awoko.org/2015/08/14/sierra-leone-news-csos-call-for-review-of-land-policy/)
August 14, 2015
Africa Youth Coalition Against Hunger (AYCAH) in collaboration with Action Aid-Sierra Leone has launched a report identifying problems affecting land use in the country.
### [Malawi: CISANET, CEPA Call for Quick Enactment of Land Laws](http://www.maravipost.com/business/development/9477-cisanet,-cepa-call-for-quick-enactment-of-malawi-land-laws-to-protect-locals-from-g7-new-alliance-exploitation.html)
August 13, 2015
The country’s Civil Society Agriculture Network (CISANET) and Centre for Environmental Policy and Advocacy (CEPA) have urged the nation’s leadership to quickly enact land laws in a bid to safeguard the citizenry welfare from any exploitation that might come in the course of implementing The G7 New Alliance.
### [Brazil: Women Leaders Meet to Discuss the Intersection of Interests for Women’s Land Rights](http://www.landesa.org/blog-brazil-convening)
August 12, 2015
Scores of women leaders from across Brazil, including indigenous and Afro-Brazilian, rural and urban, from government and civil society, gathered in Recife, the capital of the Brazilian state of Pernambuco last week to call for concrete indicators focused on women’s economic empowerment to be among the measures of progress toward the new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
### [Honduras: Garifuna Communities Resist Eviction and Theft of Land](http://www.theecologist.org/News/news_analysis/2984333/honduras_garifuna_communities_resist_eviction_and_theft_of_land.html)
August 12, 2015
Along the Atlantic coast of Honduras, Afro-Caribbean Garifuna communities are being forced from their land, as proposals for the creation of mega-tourism projects and corporate-run cities, commonly referred to as ‘model cities’, gain momentum internationally.
### [Philippines: Government to Give Land to Two Indigenous Communities](http://manilastandardtoday.com/2015/08/11/govt-to-give-land-to-negros-indigents)
August 11, 2015
The National Commission on Indigenous Peoples is set to award almost 10,000 hectares of land to two indigenous communities in Negros Occidental this year through its certificate of ancestral domain title program.
### [Zambia: Highlighting land grabbing and malnourishment](http://www.fian.org/fr/actualites/article/detail/highlighting_land_grabbing_and_malnourishment_in_zambia/)
August 11, 2015
As levels of malnourishment appear to worsen and land grabbing increases, land rights expert Archie Mulunda will meet the European Commission to discuss the impact of development policies on the Zambian population.
### [South Sudan: Land ownership and conflict of laws](http://www.sudantribune.com/spip.php?article55887)
August 11, 2015
Land in South Sudan is a prickly thing, complicated even further by the confusion associated with legal land ownership. The parallels and discrepancies between provisions in the laws and practice on the ground have driven the confusion. The absence of sound government policy on land ownership has made it even worse.
### [Liberia: Will palm oil help Liberia? Industry expansion has critics crying foul](http://news.mongabay.com/2015/08/mrn-will-palm-oil-bring-jobs-to-liberia/)
August 11, 2015
Land grabs are made easy because many Liberians don’t have ownership rights to their property. Communities and watchdog groups are speaking up about perceived industry wrongdoings.