Land policy and administration

A Cambodian delegation to the United Nations last week used the stage to shame the World Bank’s financial arm for failing to adequately monitor investments in a Vietnamese rubber giant accused of illegal logging, forced evictions and sexual harassment. Representing 17 indigenous communities in Ratanakkiri that ...

Eight huts were torn down and about 50 families were ordered to vacate land yesterday in Mondulkiri province’s Koh Nhek district as the couple whom police said illegally sold them the plots was arrested and sent to court. ...

Two draft laws on judicial reform were easily passed by the single-party National Assembly on Friday but the session was overshadowed by a rookie lawmaker’s attack on lax enforcement of forestry laws in Stung Treng province. On the fourth day of the third plenary session of ...

The land on which the former Chamkar Mon Referral Hospital sits was put up for sale for $12.1 million on Friday, just days after a municipal health official denied that the property would be sold. According to an advertisement posted on the Khmer24 classified advertising website, ...

A group of about 200 farmers from Kratie province refused on Thursday to leave a pagoda in Phnom Penh—their home base for protests against their eviction at the hands of a Vietnamese rubber company—as the city’s deputy governor warned them that the municipal government would ...

A rights group worker has earned a court summons for monitoring villagers who were embroiled in a Preah Vihear land dispute with a Chinese company. Lut Sang, the Khmer Ponlok employee scheduled to appear in provincial court today, said that he was only a passive observer ...

Municipal and military police on Wednesday blocked a group of about 100 displaced farmers from Kratie province who were attempting to deliver a petition to the Cambodian Red Cross’ Phnom Penh headquarters calling on the group to help them in their land dispute with a ...

Families forced to leave their homes to make way for a railway rehabilitation project funded by the Asian Development Bank and the Australian government have told the bank that a draft compensation plan it has drawn up to remedy their situation is inadequate. On Monday, Inclusive ...

More than 400 people clashed with police and military police in Ratanakkiri province on Wednesday as authorities attempted to bulldoze their houses to make way for a rubber company plantation, villagers said. Authorities managed to bulldoze the houses of about 200 families, who they said had ...

In yet another land swap deal that will see lucrative state-owned land handed to a private business in exchange for a new building on cheaper land, the Try Pheap Group has built a new headquarters for the Women’s Affairs Ministry in Stung Meanchey commune. In return, ...

Nearly three years after it was shut down for supposed renovations, Phnom Penh’s Chamkar Mon Referral Hospital is still not operational and former staff say they have been left out in the cold about what will happen to the site. Commune, district, municipal and national health ...

The Swift Rubber Company demolished three homes in Ratanakkiri province’s O’Chum district last week without compensation, telling about 120 families to leave immediately or face the destruction of more houses, according to villagers and rights group Adhoc. ...

Some 250 families in Kampong Speu province’s Phnom Sruoch district have sought intervention from rights group Adhoc to help resolve a land dispute involving a business they allege is headed by the son of former provincial governor Kang Heang. Families from three villages say Heang, who ...

When an old building formerly owned by the state was demolished on the outskirts of Battambang City in February, for some, it was the last straw. The giant, freestanding colonial-era mansion with the round windows, the blue shutters and the cracking yellow paint had become one ...

Prominent businessman and Cambodian People’s Party Senator Ly Yong Phat yesterday questioned what he had done to warrant a verbal attack from opposition party leader Sam Rainsy, who said on Wednesday that the tycoon had grabbed land from people in Koh Kong province and should ...

The head of a construction company working to upgrade Phnom Penh’s dusty, potholed Veng Sreng Street said Thursday that the project would take twice as long to complete as expected. In November, Phnom Penh governor Pa Socheatvong announced that a 6.5 km strip of the road—which ...

A special committee set up in March to settle a long-running land dispute between 52 families in Kompong Chhnang province and the wife of Mines and Energy Minister Suy Sem has finished its work, leaving 17 families without a deal. Deputy provincial governor Dork Sothea, who ...

The U.N.’s special rapporteur on freedom of assembly and association, Maina Kiai, has sent his third thematic report to the U.N. Human Rights Council following trips to various countries, including a three-day visit to Cambodia in February. The report focuses on groups that Mr. Kiai, a ...

Sexual assault and the annihilation of sacred graveyards are among the many claims levelled at Vietnamese Rubber giant Hoang Anh Gia Lai (HAGL) by villagers in Ratanakkiri province, a report by the World Bank’s investment arm reveals. In February, 17 indigenous communities that accused HAGL of ...

Authorities in Stung Treng province discovered and confiscated a haul of luxury wood that was being transported in three trucks on Sunday night from the protected Virachey National Park, officials said Tuesday. Provincial deputy police chief Yorn Din said the trucks were stopped and searched as ...

Russian businessmen Nikolai Doroshenko and Sergei Polonsky are locked in a legal dispute over Sihanoukville’s Victory Beach following Mr. Polonsky’s release from prison last month, according to copies of court documents obtained Monday. The Preah Sihanouk provincial court has temporarily prevented Mr. Doroshenko from transferring the ...

Cambodia’s exports of protected rosewood and other high-value timber to China more than tripled last year, according to U.N. figures cited in a new report that blames lax law enforcement across the Mekong region and skyrocketing demand in China for pushing some species to the ...

A worker with the Cambodian Center for Human Rights (CCHR) has been intimidated and received death threats while trying to document the plight of three families involved in a bitter land dispute with a developer in the country’s capital, according to the center. The worker, Vann ...

The government has issued a total of 3.4 million land titles across the country, 500,000 of them since a renewed push personally orchestrated by Prime Minister Hun Sen, according to new figures released by the Land Management Ministry. In a notice posted to its website Friday, ...