Land

A recently approved road project leading to the border with Vietnam in Mondulkiri would do irreversible damage to the province’s protected forest and threaten future attempts to reintroduce tigers to the Kingdom, according to the World Wildlife Fund. ...

Environment Ministry officials on Thursday found a cache of more than 400 pieces of illegally logged first-grade wood in Ratanakkiri province’s Lumphat Wildlife Sanctuary, which the ministry oversees, and suspect officers from a nearby military police base of being involved. Thin Ngoal, the sanctuary’s deputy director, ...

Ethnic Bunong communities in Mondulkiri’s Bousraa commune will soon hold protests that will call on French industrialist Vincent Bollore to honour promises his firm made during a meeting with them in Paris in October, a representative has said. His Bollore investment group is a shareholder in ...

About 50 protesters, mainly from Phnom Penh’s Boeng Kak and Borei Keila communities, demonstrated Wednesday morning outside City Hall to demand that governor Pa Socheatvong help them stay within their eviction-hit communities. ...

Villagers in Koh Kong province were sent back to the drawing board yesterday, when the Court of Appeal upheld the provincial court’s decision that about 62 hectares of land belongs to Heng Huy Co. ...

About 100 former members of the Dey Krahorm community returned to the site of their brutal eviction in central Phnom Penh on Saturday afternoon to mark six years since they were forced off their land, but were prevented by authorities from screening a video of ...

The Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries saw at least 2,400 cases of forest- and wildlife-related crimes in 2014, of which almost 1,800 were forwarded to the courts, though fewer than 10 people were sentenced in relation to the crimes, ministry figures say. ...

Hundreds of indigenous families from Ratanakkiri’s Andong Meas district have demanded the government cancel the economic land concession of a Vietnamese rubber company that they say is illegally prospecting for gold. About a dozen people representing 384 families handed a petition to CNRP lawmakers yesterday requesting ...

The European Union (EU) said this week that it has hired a pair of consultants to help the government design a system for compensating the thousands of families believed to have had their homes or farms illegally confiscated by the country’s private sugar plantations. ...

Security guards from a Chinese firm building an airport to serve a planned resort in Koh Kong province Thursday destroyed the homes of 11 families and bulldozed 30 hectares of farmland in an area claimed by both the company and residents. The Union Development Group (UDG) ...

The United Nation’s human rights envoy Surya Subedi met yesterday with the president of Cambodia Chamber of Commerce, Kith Meng, to discuss human rights and economic growth in the Kingdom. At the top of the agenda was the management of economic land concessions and the role ...

Siem Reap officials yesterday promised almost 100 protesters a resolution to a land dispute between villagers and a military unit.​ ...

The National Assembly’s Human Rights and Complaints Commission has asked the government to grant land titles to more than 500 families in Tbong Khmum whose land is claimed by a rubber plantation. ...

The government seized more than 7,000 cubic meters of illegally logged wood last year, according to a report released by the Ministry of Agriculture on Thursday. ...

Newly released maps using U.S. satellite data show that Cambodia continued to suffer major deforestation in 2013, much of it in nominally protected forests and wildlife sanctuaries. In November 2013, the University of Maryland released what it said was the first study to combine a consistent ...

After promising in September to quickly resolve a years-long land dispute involving villagers and the politically connected development company KDC International, a member of the National Assembly’s human rights commission visited affected families in Kampong Chhnang province yesterday.​ ...

Villagers in Kampot town have filed a complaint against a businessman who has allegedly ordered the filling in of a pond dug during the French protectorate, which they rely on for their water supply. ...

Seven ethnic Bunong villagers in a land dispute with a Vietnamese-owned rubber plantation in Mondolkiri province have been summoned by the provincial court for questioning after the company accused them of illegally occupying its land in Keo Seima district. ...

A couple was arrested in Preah Vihear province’s Chheb district yesterday morning after the woman in the pair – a local land activist – protested against being moved from the area to make way for a local infrastructure project. Military police, forestry police and other ...

Some Siem Reap families are balking at the Apsara Authority’s order for them to leave their homes – which were allegedly constructed illegally – and move to a government-provided settlement by Friday. ...

Members of a community in Preah Vihear province chased down a group of illegal loggers and briefly detained one of them yesterday, less than a week after the community accused the local wildlife sanctuary director of destroying their patrol station. ...

The European Union will speak to Cambodia’s government on behalf of two communities in Battambang involved in land disputes, according to the rights group Adhoc. ...

Authorities in Oddar Meanchey province found a haul of valuable luxury wood inside the luggage compartment of a passenger bus on Friday, but let the driver go although he later admitted to smuggling the wood. Chongkal district military police chief Un Kimseng said the Rith Mony ...

Illegal logging and destructive farming practices have archaeologists racing to rescue an ecologically crucial mountain and its hidden temples. Some 80 per cent of the forest on Phnom Kulen – one of Cambodia’s National Parks – has disappeared due to a combination of illegal logging, ...