Land

Security guards armed with axes, clubs and hammers have reportedly threatened villagers with eviction at the Union Development Group (UDG) site in Koh Kong province just weeks after the Chinese company pledged to peacefully resolve the dispute. About 50 security officials arrived at the villagers’ homes ...

Villagers in Ratanakkiri’s O’Yadav district last week seized several logs of illegal timber, ending what they said had been a lull in illegal logging since the arrests of two officials accused of colluding with loggers. ...

Just two days after Prime Minister Hun Sen promised to resolve a 20-year-old land dispute in Siem Reap City, the government on Friday issued a subdecree that divides 115 hectares of the contested plot between more than 700 families. ...

An environmental activist and a fisherman said Sunday that about 70 residents of Koh Kong province had worked together over the past few days to chase away sand-dredging barges they accused of operating illegally around Koh Kapi island and damaging vital fishing grounds. ...

Officials charged with protecting Cambodia’s Samkos Wildlife Sanctuary are colluding with loggers responsible for felling at least 300 trees each day, according to activists in the area. ...

At least 16 more families that have been locked in a bitter and lengthy dispute with the municipal government over land in Phnom Penh’s Boeng Kak neighborhood accepted municipal governor Pa Socheatvong’s offer of a land swap Thursday morning. ...

Armed guards evicted residents from their homes from a village in Cambodia’s Kratie province on Thursday as rival villagers burned their houses down when local authorities tried to hand over their land to the first group, local witnesses said. ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen on Wednesday told provincial governors to take responsibility for curbing forestry crimes in their respective provinces and scolded officials who blame one another when illegal logging is uncovered. ...

A government official rejected calls from a pair of NGOs on Tuesday to do more for Phnom Penh’s slums amid what they described as an opaque land-titling system that has routinely failed poor communities. In a joint report, “The Exclusion of Urban Poor Communities From Systematic ...

Cambodia’s land-titling review process lacks transparency and clarity and is in danger of leaving behind Phnom Penh’s urban poor, according to a new report. Since the Systematic Land Registration (SLR) program was established in 2002, the Ministry of Land Management, Urban Planning and Construction has granted ...

According to a new survey, land disputes in Cambodia lead to employment insecurity, causing poverty, food insecurity, and increasing physical and psychological insecurity. The survey found that most expressed a desire for the government to eliminate land disputes and set a clear policy to address ...

Both the number of accidents and casualties caused by old landmines and other unexploded ordnance (UXO) rose by nearly 40 percent last year, according to the latest government data, though the two figures were still the second lowest on record following years of progress in ...

Cambodia’s foremost logging baron exported more than 100,000 cubic metres of timber from Sihanoukville Port last year, likely including a species protected by an international treaty to which the Kingdom is a signatory, an analysis by Global Witness of leaked export records suggests. The data, obtained ...

A network of about 400 activists completed a five-day patrol of the unprotected 650,000-hectare Prey Long forest in the country’s north Sunday, seizing and burning illegally logged wood and confiscating chainsaws from those they discovered felling trees. ...

Four ethnic Jarai village representatives in Ratanakkiri province, including the wife of a rights group activist, were ordered to appear at court today or face arrest on charges of defamation against Keat Kolney, the sister of Deputy Prime Minister Keat Chhon. The case is part of ...

The Phnom Penh Municipal Court on Saturday fined and released 10 workers swept up in a crackdown on illegal sand dredging operations by the Ministry of Mines and Energy last week. ...

Angry locals burned tires on the Chroy Changva peninsula Friday to protest the building of a road through their village, which is at the center of a land dispute with the Overseas Cambodian Investment Corporation (OCIC). ...

Three owners of sand dredging companies were among 11 people arrested Thursday by military police—working in tandem with the Ministry of Mines and Energy—for operating without a proper license, according to a spokesman for the ministry. ...

Rights groups yesterday took aim at the private-sector arm of the World Bank for investing money into companies that are responsible for human rights abuses around the world, highlighting a Vietnamese rubber firm accused of illegal logging and land grabbing in Ratanakkiri province as a ...

The justice minister on Wednesday wrote to the Phnom Penh Municipal Court requesting that the judge in charge of a case surrounding a long-running land dispute report to the ministry, following intervention from the National Assembly’s human rights commission. ...

Rampant land grabs, economic land concessions and a disastrous land-titling program have fostered an environment of insecurity for Cambodia’s most marginalised citizens, according to a new report, which argues that the Kingdom needs to rethink its current business-centric development model. ...

After overseeing the destruction of all but six of 172 temporary shelters that had been erected on farmland claimed by an ethnic Bunong community in Mondolkiri province on Tuesday, authorities returned to destroy the remaining structures Wednesday, again on the grounds that the land belonged ...

The World Bank’s private sector arm may be doing more harm than good when it invests in private equity firms, banks and other financial intermediaries, global development group Oxfam said in a report on Wednesday. In one project indirectly sponsored by the bank’s International Finance Corporation ...

Representatives for some 200 families in a yearslong land dispute with the Union Development Group (UDG) in Koh Kong province met for the first time with both company and government officials Tuesday but left with little to show. ...