Land tenure and land titling

Jarai ethnic minority villagers appeared at Ratanakkiri provincial court yesterday, demanding compensation from a Vietnamese company they say illegally cleared 30 hectares of community land in November last year. Chea Chanrith was granted a licence from the Ministry of Agriculture last year to clear land ...

The British chairman of an embattled agricultural investment firm was arrested Saturday by Cambodian authorities over charges of forging documents and using them in an attempt to illegally purchase thousands of hectares of land, a court prosecutor said. Greg Fryett, the main shareholder of Sustainable Agro ...

The legitimacy of a lawsuit filed by prominent businesswoman Chhin Sokountheary, also known as “Crocodile Grandmother”, accusing Phnom Penh Governor Kep Chuktema of abusing his power by stealing some 34 hectares of privately owned land is being called into question by the Phnom Penh Municipal ...

The Council of Ministers yesterday backed Prime Minister Hun Sen’s plan to rebuild the flattened homes of 49 families who were violently evicted earlier this month in Preah Sihanouk province’s Stung Hav district. In a statement on Sunday, Mr. Hun Sen dismissed the Council of Ministers’ ...

Debt levels among the more than 1,000 families being evicted by a $142.6 million railway project bankrolled by Australia and the Asia Development Bank (ADB) have reached “crisis” proportions and require major intervention, according to a U.S resettlement expert who was hired by the ADB ...

Three ethnic Jarai minority communities passed a crucial hurdle on the way to obtaining communal land titles in government-sanctioned ceremonies this week. But a human-rights activist tempered the celebration, saying mass deforestation in the province had already stripped most of the land the villagers are ...

It was not the hero’s welcome that greeted Mam Sonando when more than a thousand boisterous supporters cheered his release from Prey Sar prison Friday and lifted the popular radio station owner onto their shoulders for an impromptu parade. But for the three unheralded farmers caught ...

Yet another resident of Phnom Penh’s Sen Sok district came forward yesterday to join “Crocodile Grandmother” Chhin Sokoutheary in accusing city and district officials of issuing a false sub-decree to acquire land in the vicinity of Pong Peay Lake in Phnom Penh Thmey commune. Chea Savean, ...

Twenty-seven families in Oddar Meanchey’s Trapaing Prasat district filed a complaint with Hun Sen’s cabinet and the rights group Adhoc on Monday, maintaining that soldiers have been preventing them from farming since October 2012. A representative of the villagers, Soeung Sophea, 59, said yesterday that troops ...

The Asian Development Bank has refused to release a critical study on the impacts its $141.6 million railway project is having on thousands of Cambodian families because disclosure of the report could hurt its relationship with the government, an ADB spokeswoman said. Raising concerns about the ...

Fifty Tampuon ethnic minority families protested yesterday in front of the Soeung Commune Hall in Bakeo district against their commune chief, who they allege sold land that belonged to the Ratanakkiri community. In a complaint filed to rights group Adhoc yesterday, the families claim that commune ...

The Prime Minister ordered 49 family’s houses to be rebuild [sic] at Keo Pus Village, in the Steung Hav District of Sihanoukville, after they had been demolished by authorities earlier this month. He also ordered Bin Chhin, Chairman of the National Authority for Land Dispute ...

Prominent businesswoman Chhin Sokountheary yesterday announced her intention to sue Phnom Penh Governor Kep Chuktema for falsifying documents saying she illegally occupied state land in Phnom Penh’s Sen Sok district in a bid to steal the land and develop a sports stadium on it. Sokountheary, 57 ...

Faced with widespread evictions and opaque private sector deals, activists in Cambodia are calling on the government to be more open and transparent about land concessions, beef up mechanisms for resolving land disputes, and abide by the rule of law. It is estimated that ...

Dotted with rice fields flanked by palm trees, Cambodia’s southeastern province of Kampong Speu is nothing short of picturesque. But behind the idyllic exterior is an on-going struggle to turn this region’s natural beauty into a global attraction and improve the lot of poor local farmers, ...

Eight members of the Prey Lang forest community network, summonsed to the Kampong Thom provincial court yesterday to answer a 2011 complaint, rejected its accusation that they had caused intentional damage by uprooting cassava plants belonging to Ol Ratha and maintained they had acted only ...

People applying for land titles in urban areas are at a huge disadvantage compared to their rural counterparts due to the higher percentage of property disputes with powerful officials and businesspeople in the country’s cities, a new report on land registration has found. To improve ...

Beehive radio owner Mam Sonando, along with two others appeared in the Court of Appeals Thursday to listen to their verdicts. The sentence was changed from five years to eight months imprisonment, but will be released on March 16, 2013 for having spent the same amount ...

At least six people were seriously injured Wednesday in clashes between about 100 villagers demanding land compensation and 300 security personnel in front of the home of Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen, activists said. According to villager representative Tep Vanny, the evictees from Phnom Penh’s Boeung ...

Four families who were violently evicted from Borei Keila in January last year built shelters yesterday in the rubbish where their houses once stood, claiming the land still belonged to them. The evictees erected small frames on the land, in the capital’s Prampi Makara district, irritating ...

The Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) said yesterday that it had still found no replacement donor to commit long-term to carrying on its work helping indigenous ethnic minority groups secure communal land titles once it pulls out in May. Kan Vibol, project field manager for CIDA’s ...

Preah Vihear province – The residents of this sleepy district, on the edge of the Boeng Per Wildlife Sanctuary, grow rice, cassava and cashew nuts. But in a few short years, Chinese investors envisage that Rovieng will be rapidly transformed into an industrial town. ...

More than 40 families from Koh Kong province gathered on Friday outside Prime Minister Hun Sen’s Phnom Penh home to ask him to intervene in their land dispute with provincial forestry administration, village representatives said yesterday. According to one villager, 37-year-old Sam Sary, 47 families delivered ...

The U.N.’s expert on housing rights has cited the World Bank’s failure to help thousands of families evicted from Phnom Penh’s Boeng Kak neighborhood as a prime example of why the bank needs to make human rights a focus of its land sector programs worldwide. At ...