Land policy and administration

Interior Minister Sar Kheng reminded governors of border provinces yesterday to pay special attention to issues surrounding the lease of Cambodian land to foreign nationals. ...

Representatives of 526 Koh Kong families hopped on their motos on Friday morning to deliver petitions to their district town halls calling for the return of land taken from them by a 2006 economic land concession (ELC), as well as compensation for lost crops.   ...

Former residents of Phnom Penh’s Borei Keila community on Wednesday handed petitions to the U.N.’s human rights envoy to Cambodia, requesting that she intervene in their feud with authorities after they were snubbed by City Hall earlier in the day.   ...

More than 100 residents from Svay Chrum village in Preah Vihear’s Choam Ksan district continued their second day of protests yesterday, attempting to claim back their land before being stopped again by provincial authorities despite a letter from the Ministry of Interior ordering authorities to ...

Villagers involved in a land dispute in Preah Vihear province say police attempted to arrest one of their representatives on Wednesday after about 200 of them returned to reclaim their land, while the district governor said he was only seeking to speak with the villagers. ...

On Friday, it will have been a month since Prime Minister Hun Sen took the stage during the opening of the Environment Ministry’s palatial new headquarters in Phnom Penh to announce that 1 million hectares had been confiscated from wayward landholders and would be doled ...

Local rights group Adhoc has cried foul after roughly 1,200 square metres on 2 hectares of land that used to be home to an airport in Preah Vihear province have been granted to a local official to build a house. ...

The legal battle of 13 land rights activists from Phnom Penh’s Boeng Kak neighborhood ended on Wednesday with the Supreme Court upholding their conviction for aggravated obstruction of public officials and illegal occupation. ...

The demarcation process of the Cambodia-Vietnam border covering three provinces is almost 90 percent done, according to a report on security and social order. ...

A working group within Phnom Penh City Hall is continuing its effort to help get compensation to Borei Keila families who have yet to accept the government’s offer, according to a Facebook post from Governor Pa Socheatevong, who led a discussion with community members on ...

Two women were arrested on Friday for allegedly breaching a court order related to an ongoing dispute over 1,000 hectares of land they live on along with 165 other families in Kompong Speu province’s Phnom Sruoch district.   ...

More than 100 villagers from Chroy Changvar yesterday protested a draft sub-decree that would make Phnom Penh Municipality the legal owner of 280 hectares of land that are part of the Overseas Cambodia Investment Corporation’s $3 billion satellite city development. ...

Activists have cast doubt on whether Prime Minister Hun Sen’s new initiative for the country’s problems to be solved through social media can tackle the country’s most pervasive problem—land disputes. ...

While vast tracts of Cambodia remain concentrated in the hands of a few and accusations of land grabbing remain rife, the broader distribution of land is more than equitable and could never lead to an uprising, the government official in charge of finding solutions to ...

Revenue from the property transfer taxes collected by the General Department of Taxation (GDT) was about $72 million last year, according to a report from the Ministry of Land Management, Urban Planning and Construction. ...

A bipartisan commission of National Assembly lawmakers arrived in Battambang province yesterday to investigate three unresolved land disputes before going on to Banteay Meanchey to investigate six more over the next two days. ...

Residents and evictees from Phnom Penh’s Boeng Kak and Bo­r­ei Keila neighborhoods re­turned to the World Bank’s country headquarters on Norodom Boul­evard on Monday to hurl eggs at the front gate and demand that the international lender leave Cambodia.   ...

Nearly 100 residents from Samrong commune’s O’Trachak Chit village in Preah Sihanouk province’s Prey Nup district gathered yesterday in front of the provincial hall to ask authorities to expedite the resolution of their year-long land dispute with the provincial Forestry Administration, according to community representatives. ...

After a seven-year struggle, a Banteay Meanchey teacher finally got $8,000 in compensation for her land, which was seized by the Cambodian military during a border flare-up with Thailand. ...

The government is refusing to release copies of letters it claims to have sent to timber traders Try Pheap and Lim Bunna giving them permission to collect already felled wood on a pair of canceled economic land concessions (ELCs) inside a wildlife sanctuary. ...

Mong Reththy Group, one of the Kingdom’s largest agro-industrial conglomerates, insisted yesterday that it had settled arrears on its palm oil concession more than six months ago, contrary to local media reports stating the company owed concession rental fees dating back nearly 20 years. ...

Cambodian tycoon Kith Meng’s Royal Group failed to persuade a high-level meeting of government and Preah Sihanouk officials to resume construction of a 40-metre port at Otres Beach, and will instead have to explore the use of other locations along the coastline. ...

As a national crackdown on illegal logging rumbles on, Try Pheap, Cambodia’s most prominent timber tycoon, issued a public denial of reports that he was linked to an economic land concession (ELC) where authorities found hundreds of cubic metres of potentially illegal timber. ...

Thirty-one evicted Borei Keila community families received flats and another four families got $15,000 buyouts on Saturday as part of a “lucky draw” organised to resolve their years-long land dispute. ...