For eighteen years, U Sai Kham, a farmer in Tachileik, Eastern-Shan State, Myanmar watched as military families exploited the ancestral land that the military had illegally seized from his family. The land grab denied his family access to their sole source of income and food.
The military had initially seized the land under the auspices of building a school, but once completed, the school only occupied a small section of the land while the rest went to military families.
Things changed for U Sai Kham when he reached out to Daw Dae Na, a community paralegal who works with Than Lwin Thitsar, one of Namati’s partners in Myanmar.
Myanmar has a lengthy history of poor farmers being dispossessed of their land, but things are changing. See how the legal empowerment work of civil society organizations such as Than Lwin Thitsar, and community paralegals like Daw Dae Na, is having an impact.