In defense of land rights: A monitoring report on land conflicts in six Asian countries 34 Nepal (cont.) n Philippines n Urban expansion, growth pf property markets and squatting/ informal settlers especially in the terai (lowland region) n Government land acquisitions (eviction, compensation issues), infrastructure projects (army camps, roads, airports), and government federal restructuring (new infrastructure, new boundaries and delineations, taxation and local revenue generation) n Agrarian conflicts, landowner-tenant issues (land rents, tenancy land separation, evictions) n Post-conflict issues (1996-2006 insurgency) and post-disaster issues (2015 earthquake) Government infrastructure (Economic Zones, water systems, power, buildings) and private investments (power, real estate, tourism, industry) n Agribusiness investments (unfair business/lease contracts, land grabbing for plantations) n Mining and extractive industries (for metals, coal, natural gas and sand/gravel quarrying) n Forestry (logging, reforestation, industrial tree plantations) n Conflicts over resource use (informal settlers in forestlands, indigenous people and dwellers in protected areas, conflicts over land classification and use) n Overlapping claims among communities, due to overlapping land laws and multi-agency jurisdictions, and the multiplicity of titles, leases and permits issued over the same land, often in ancestral domains n Agrarian conflicts, including landowner resistance to agrarian reform MECHANISMS FOR CONFLICT RESOLUTION Formal Mechanisms n Judicial court systems. Land-related cases continue to clog court systems ANGOC in many countries. In Bangladesh, land in general is the cited source of almost 60 percent of all legal disputes in the country, according to Transparency International. In Nepal, about one-fourth of all court cases filed from 2012-2016 has been land-related. Moreover, there is a backlog of land-related cases in court. The Supreme Court Annual Report of 2015 stated that a total of 41,591 land-related cases (or 24 percent of all cases) were registered in the Supreme, Appellate, and District Courts in Nepal. Courts are frequently criticized by the public for the slow-paced hearings and decision-making processes. Costs are high especially to the poor in terms of time, money, and resources spent. In Nepal, court systems frequently take up to five years, and require huge amount of resources. In Bangladesh, lawyers’ fees account for about 60 percent of total costs of land disputes, and households spend about 45 percent of their annual