Focus Policy Review: Understanding Land Grabbing, Land Rights in the 21st Century

28 August 2015

Issues or problems associated with land have become more multi-layered in the 21st century.  In particular in the Philippine setting, a number of “pro-poor” land laws were enacted after the Marcos dictatorship. These laws were products of social movements’ struggles and mass movement assertions on land rights in a democratic set-up. The 1987 Constitution has a very strong social justice component, which recognizes the rights of farmers/peasants to land, of fisherfolk to traditional fishing ground, and of indigenous peoples (IPs) to ancestral lands.