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Malaysia has declared its vision of developed country status by the year 2020. Much has been written about its top-down development approach, its relative economic success and the social as well as environmental costs of such approach. In 2011 and 2012 the Human Rights Commission of Malaysia (SUHAKAM) set into motion a national inquiry into the status of customary rights to land in the country. As part of the inquiry, a nationwide series of consultations was held over several months in 2012, culminating in formal public hearings in Peninsular Malayasia, Sarawak and Sabah. A major objective of the inquiry was to evaluate ways which could make development in Malaysia more inclusive and delineate obstacles to a better acknowlegement of indigenous peoples' rights to customary land. Keywords: Malaysia, indigenous rights, customary land, peoples' organizations., Processes of inclusion have been an important focus both of theorizing on development and of practice concerned with promoting the inclusion of marginalized or partially included groups in the socio-political [...]

In partnership with Associate Professor Dr Fadzilah Majid Cooke of the Universiti Malaysia Sabah and Dr Olivia Guntarik of RMIT University, SOJOURN has the privilege of publishing in this edition [...]