In order to promote industrialization and economic growth, the government of Laos introduced a village resettlement programme to bring various ethnic minority peoples from different scattered mountainous villages down to low land areas set up market-oriented, bigger villages. This programme may please top policy makers and planners wanting to  increase the percentage of the population accessing markets, roads, electricity, schools, and healthcare centres, but many conflicts over land and forest have occurred because of different perceptions and arrangements of land ownership, and the overlapping of land and forest ownership claims between various resettled communities, other villagers and the government. This has caused obstacles to the improvement of the local people’s lives and potential ethnic conflicts and social unrest.

It is important to prevent conflicts, or else to have a suitable approach to solving them whenever they happen in order to protect vulnerable ethnic minority people. To contribute to this discourse, this research illustrates the causes of conflicts, a conflict resolution process, and the lessons to be learnt from that process. The case study focuses on the two villages of Densavang and Phonsavat in the Luang Prabang district, Luang Prabang province, Laos.