Hun Sen’s Land Titles Receive Rare Praise From Germany

Since Prime Minister Hun Sen announced an ambitious new plan some 10 months ago to make nearly half a million families official land owners, hardly a week goes by that a rural community does not complain of local officials trying to scam the project. But when Franz-Volker Muller, who heads the land rights program for the German development agency GIZ, addresses the World Bank’s annual conference on land and poverty in Washington on Tuesday, he will paint a very different picture. In the most comprehensive report on the prime minister’s land titling project to date, Mr. Muller, with a few reservations, will anticipate a resounding success. “In a period of only one single year, almost two million people, most of whom were illegally using state public land before, will see their land rights secured. This can be considered a tremendous step towards the progressive realization of human rights of Cambodia’s vulnerable and poor populations in rural areas,” he said. Mr. Hun Sen first announced the project- dubbed Directive No.1- in mid June. Vague on details at first, Mr. Hun Sen said the new titles would be going specifically to families living in state forests, economic land concessions and former timber concessions. The target is to reach 4,700,000 families living on 700,000 parcels of land covering a total 1.8 million hectares by June this year, just one month before the national elections. … His praise of the project is not without its caveats. He calls his report only a “preliminary” look at an unfinished project, and said that his high marks for the project are “overshadowed” by problems the prime minister’s scheme is causing communities of indigenous ethnic minorities- some of the most vulnerable groups of people in the country. … Mr. Muller notes, too, the “political calculus” Mr. Hun Sen has surely worked out in timing the land titling project to wrap up just ahead of July’s national elections. … “The outcome is of course positive for the people who did receive land titles,” said Nicolas Agostini, a legal adviser on lands issues for local rights group Adhoc. “However, the scheme does not address the needs of those people and communities who are most in need of land tenure security: people who live in disputed land areas in the countryside or areas coveted by investors, people who live in the informal urban settlements and indigenous people.” … Ever the optimist, Mr. Muller still believes that other developing countries in Cambodia’s situation can take some positive lessons away from the project when he delivers his report to the World Bank conference. …

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