News

The Ministry of Interior has officially allowed Equitable Cambodia, an NGO involved with community advocacy, to resume its work after it had been suspended since September last year.​ ...

The Ministry of Interior yesterday ordered the temporary suspension of land rights NGO Equitable Cambodia for allegedly violating its own by-laws and the controversial law regulating NGOs passed in 2015. ...

Rights groups say families being forced off their land by development projects recently revealed to have World Bank Group backing could probably file successful complaints against the institution, effectively forcing it to help the families save their homes or at least win better compensation. ...

Representatives of evicted families and a sugarcane plantation owned by a prominent CPP senator announced an agreement on Thursday that provides compensation ranging from $500 to $5,000 to eligible villagers after a five-year battle over land. ...

Efforts by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) to restore the living standards of families evicted by its railway rehabilitation project continue to fall far short of expectations, and urgent action is needed if the bank is to comply with its own safeguard policies, according to ...

Meanchey district police and security guards yesterday clashed with about 70 Koh Kong province villagers at the capital’s Samaki Rainsy pagoda, shoving and pushing them as they tried to make their way to the Ministry of Land Management. ...

The World Bank has approved $130 million in developmental aid aimed at reducing poverty in Cambodia, signalling its first direct re-engagement with the Kingdom since it left in protest in 2011 after one of the largest forceful evictions led by the government displaced more than ...

Representatives of 526 Koh Kong families hopped on their motos on Friday morning to deliver petitions to their district town halls calling for the return of land taken from them by a 2006 economic land concession (ELC), as well as compensation for lost crops.   ...

New figures show that Cambodia’s sugar exports to the European Union fell by 94.8 per cent between 2013 and 2015, amid accusations of rights abuses and land grabbing in the Kingdom’s industry. ...

Australian banking giant ANZ has come under fire for its response to a scandal over its financing of a sugar plantation previously linked to forced evictions and child labour in Kampong Speu province. ...

The European Union says the Cambodian government has agreed to the first part of a comprehensive plan they have been wrangling over for more than a year to properly compensate thousands of families that have lost land to sugarcane plantations. ...

A year after some 2,000 families filed a complaint with the International Finance Corporation (IFC) for financing rubber plantations they accuse of grabbing their farms and logging their sacred forests, all sides have finally agreed to a set of ground rules for negotiations and hope ...

Two major US beverage companies say they are mindful of alleged human rights abuses amid sugar plantations in Cambodia and will not do business with those proven to be involved in them. Representatives from Coca-Cola and Pepsi both said in emails to VOA Khmer that they ...

Representatives of Oddar Meanchey villagers who allegedly lost their homes in a 2008 land grab by Thai-owned sugar giant Mitr Phol are hopeful a settlement may soon be reached after they testify before Thai human rights officials today. Witnesses representing more than 400 families are slated ...

A British lawyer has filed new documents against senior Cambodian officials at the International Criminal Court, accusing them of systematic land grabs that constitute human rights abuses. A communication filed on Oct. 7 claims that over the last 14 years, an estimated 770,000 Cambodians, or ...

NGO workers interviewing evictees in Oddar Meanchey province said police pulled their car over without cause on Saturday and tried to seize one of their cameras, the third reported case of authorities in the area harassing the group’s staff in the past month. ...

NGOs have filed a new complaint against Australia’s ANZ Bank claiming it owes compensation to 681 Cambodian families who say their farms were illegally grabbed by a sugarcane plantation the bank helped to finance. ...

As the World Bank considers supplying fresh loans to Cambodia, a new study uses the country as exhibit A for how the financier effectively sponsors corporate land grabs at the expense of the rural poor it purportedly helps. Three years ago, the bank’s own inspectors found ...

More than 15 months after a Global Witness report revealed that Vietnam’s state-owned rubber giant had illegally cleared land and displaced communities in Cambodia, the company has announced that it will accept and respond to complaints from those whose lives it has damaged. Vietnam Rubber Group, ...

Early this month, in what looks like a failed attempt to save its reputation, Australia‘s ANZ Bank severed its ties with Phnom Penh Sugar, a company accused of a range of human rights abuses linked to its plantations in Kampong Speu province, Cambodia. The move ...

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 ...

A Vietnamese firm behind several Cambodian rubber plantations accused of rampant land grabbing and illegal logging has bowed to a request from the International Finance Corporation (IFC)—which helps fund its operations—to temporarily suspend forest clearing at some of its local subsidiaries. In an April 28 decision, ...

A World Bank-supported rubber company accused of land grabs has suspended some of its projects, as an investigation by the bank continues. The Hoang Anh Gia Lai company, which received support from the bank’s International Finance Corporation, said in a decision following an April 2 ...

The government is refusing to compensate up to 1,000 families forced to wait for income restoration measures after being relocated from their homes for an Asian Development Bank-funded railway rehabilitation project, a previously unreleased action plan from the ADB reveals. The ADB Management Action Plan, released ...