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LAOS: Land Legislation Disempowers Women – Part 1

VIENTIANE, Sep 21 2009 (IPS) - Ki is seven years old but looks more like three. His legs are bowed and skull misshapen. He looked at me with a blank stare. The health worker, Kheo, suggests rickets.

Rickets and beri beri or thiamine (B1) deficiency are still far too common 19th century diseases in 21st century Laos.

The boy gets enough sun. It’s the other nutrients, calcium, phosphorus and dietary oils that are lacking. He is the worst effected of 93 other kids in his village who suffer chronic micronutrient deficiency. His mother is herself severely stunted, being less than 150 cms tall.

Ki’s people are hunters and foragers from the Annamite Ranges in Laos. His father said the village was moved to enable the Vietnamese and Lao military to mine gold high in the mountains. Soon they moved again to make way for Vietnamese-run plantations.

When they landed in the valley of Attapeu, in Lao’s south, the villagers knew virtually nothing about farming. They still don’t. Instead they continue to search for food in the rapidly receding forest, taking hungry children on up to 12-km hikes.

Lao’s rapidly growing population (2.8 percent per annum) the majority (85 percent) of whom are rural, suffer chronic food insecurity and hunger. It is generally agreed that 50 percent of Lao children are undersized, becoming stunted adults. Around 30-50 percent of children are underweight, girls being generally less affected. Since they help their mothers with searching for food, they get to eat as they forage.

Amongst women, 40 percent, of whom have been found to be anaemic, childbirth complications and generally poor maternal health are the outcomes.

In 1990, a Thai survey reported an infant mortality rate (IMR) of 116 per thousand births. Almost 20 years later a survey undertaken by the public health unit of the Theun Hinboun Power company revealed an IMR of 200 in the immediate community, representing a significant worsening.

“Populations are growing, land area is shrinking. It’s that simple,” said Dr Sean Foley, a human ecologist.

An insatiable hunger for land that is driving economic growth has usurped Lao’s tradition of land being informally owned by women. The greatest threat to women’s power and resources in the rural areas is posed by land legislation.

Lao’s rural transition has involved collective and traditional structures being transformed into privatisation led by individual land ownership. The state is exploring every possibility to enrich its treasury, and land tax offers substantial contributions.

A series of land certification projects resulted in a lot of land being registered by the ‘head of household’ which by some ill-thought out logic is usually a man. As land tax is based on production, farmers are pressured to plant as many cash crops as possible with an emphasis on rice and less on a variety of foods as grown by women.

Darryl Bullen, until recently head of public health with the Theun Hinboun power company, identifies dams as a cause for hunger. There are more than 60 hydropower projects in the pipeline. A senior minister envisages Laos as the “battery of Asia”.

“Dams really make life hard for people,” he says. “They get moved off land they have farmed. The relocated people generally get crappy land. So they go hungry.”

Lao has a new nutrition policy and draft strategy, created in a flurry after donor concern surfaced, but as this story indicates, some doubt that food policy can influence the reckless profiteering at regional and national levels. Nor will policies make the soil more fertile or the landscape less mountainous or easily change long held beliefs.

Listed as one of the least developed nations, revenue from taxation is low and average per capita income dismal. But evidence of wealth is appearing. A Lao supplying the Beijing Olympics with Lao forest timber owns one of the number of Lamborghinis to be seen in Vientiane. He plans an indoor swimming pool in his palatial house.

Land is cheap in Lao. Vietnamese and Chinese plantation owners pay as little as 5 U.S. dollars per hectare over 10 years to raze forests and plant rubber and eucalyptus. To mitigate fuel prices rises, biofuels are also being grown. Toxic and unreliable jatropha, occupies thousands of hectares of potentially arable land.

Kickbacks for granting land concessions and hotel and casino licenses are said to be huge.

In June 2009, 200 hectares of prime riverfront land were granted to a Korean company for a golf resort. In July, the Governor of Sekong province admitted to the Vientiane Times there was insufficient land left to feed the people of the province.

The Lao government is investing large amounts of money and national pride in the December 2009 South East Asian games. The four lane commemorative road is breaking up before it is completed.

The driver taking me south looked disdainfully at statues, the only residents of a huge triumphal park near the SEA games site. “That’s what is taking food from our mouths. When we can eat stadiums and statues we will be fat.”

(*This is the first of a two-part series on chronic malnutrition in Laos. Part two focuses on cultural factors including food taboos.)