A/62/286 47. Of special concern is the systematic practice of forcibly displacing and relocating indigenous communities to make way for the construction of infrastructure mega-projects, especially dams, or extractive activities. This practice has led to the removal of millions of indigenous and tribal families from their ancestral lands in countries such as India and China, at an incalculable human cost. The forced removal of these communities sometimes reflects a deliberate State policy of pursuing so-called economic “modernization” and eradication of traditional forms of shifting cultivation, as, for example, in the Lao People’s Democratic Republic and Viet Nam, or the eradication of illicit crops, as in Thailand. The goal of modernization has also led to policies of sedentarizing peoples that traditionally practise nomadic herding in large areas of the Mongolian and Central Asian grasslands. 48. In the majority of cases, violations of indigenous peoples’ land and natural resource rights are made possible by gaps in legislation in the Asian countries, most of which recognize neither indigenous ownership based on ancestral possession and use nor traditional cultivation or herding practices on an equal footing with other forms of production. To fill these gaps, some countries have adopted specific legislation on indigenous lands and resources, as in the recent case of India, which in 2006 adopted a new law recognizing the Adivasis’ forest rights. Experience shows, however, that even where specific laws exist on indigenous lands, as in the case of the Philippines’ Indigenous Peoples’ Rights Act of 1997 or Cambodia’s Land Act of 2001, their provisions are not fully enforced and indigenous peoples have complained that they are insufficiently implemented. 49. Cambodia’s Land Act of 2001 is one of the few examples in Asia of legislation that expressly recognizes the rights of indigenous peoples and communities to their ancestral lands and natural resources, including recognition of their traditional practice of shifting cultivation. Even though this advanced legislation is in place, the indigenous communal land demarcation and titling process (regulated by the 2001 Act) is paralysed by the lack of implementing legislation or clear administrative guidelines. As currently designed, the demarcation process, which requires that indigenous communities be registered as public law entities, is a slow and cumbersome procedure that leaves such communities unprotected pending the issuance of the final communal property title. 50. When land ownership conflicts arise, in practice private interests with title to property are given priority over indigenous communities’ claims. This, together with the failure to enforce the penalties established by the Land Act for cases of abuse, has helped to generate a climate of corruption and impunity whose end result has been to seriously reduce land ownership by indigenous peoples, to the point where many communities fear that there will be no land left to demarcate by the time demarcation is actually implemented. 51. Other major problems affecting indigenous land ownership in Cambodia include the granting of concessions for natural resource exploitation in areas that are part of indigenous ancestral territories. These concessions, which are inconsistent with the provisions of the Land Act and international indigenous rights standards, cause serious social problems, including the dispossession and eviction of indigenous communities. 52. Indigenous peoples in Asia have been especially hard hit by the armed conflicts that have plagued more than a few countries in the region since 12 07-48664