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A controversial land titling program set up by Prime Minister Hun Sen has been suspended ahead of the July 28 elections, but critics say the program should not be restarted. The titling program itself began in December 2012 and is expected to end after elections scheduled ...

A land titling campaign in Cambodia launched and financed by Prime Minister Hun Sen’s lacks transparency and could leave thousands of people landless, a human rights group said Wednesday, urging the country’s donors to push for reform of the program. The campaign, which employs volunteer youth ...

Fifteen villagers representing 18 families from Kratie province involved in an ongoing dispute with the Sovan Vuthy Rubber Company yesterday submitted a petition to the Ministry of Land Management calling for intervention after the company allegedly cleared their farmland. The families say they have lived ...

Prime Minister Hun Sen said Wednesday that he hoped land being registered to rural families as part of the government’s nationwide land-titling program would be used to cultivate rubber trees in order to help the country compete with Vietnam as the world’s third-largest rubber exporter. ...

A year to the day since armed soldiers stormed into the remote village of Pro Mar in Kratie province, killing a 14-year-old girl, arresting her husband and evicting hundreds of families, Sreng Pho still has nightmares. “I’m really scared when I think back to that day ...

Five men working for Ratanakkiri rubber concessionaire DM Group, including a soldier, have been arrested for allegedly beating a villager and his children – one of whom, doctors say, may not survive – in a scuffle over their family’s land, the father said yesterday. Police confirmed ...

Farmers in Kompong Chhnang province locked in a land dispute with a local businesswoman are waiting for the government to make a decision on who owns the property after student volunteers measured the area earlier this month as part of Prime Minister Hun Sen’s nationwide ...

The World Bank is under pressure to review some of its policies around the world to ensure that in countries like Cambodia it is not funding the wrong projects. In a discussion at George Washington University this week, panelists said the World Bank is needed for ...

Student volunteers from across the country yesterday took a break from their land-measuring duties to attend a pre-Khmer New Year ceremony at Phnom Penh’s Koh Pitch where they were presented with a thank-you letter from Mr. Hun Sen. Since Mr. Hun Sen launched the land titling ...

Phnom Penh, a city once fabled for its stately colonial buildings and boulevards, and its serene riverside setting, is becoming a city of glaring contrasts. An economy left in ruins by the years of war and violent revolution in the 1970s and 80s grew at a ...

Ten families locked in a long-standing land dispute with the Pheapimex Group in Pursat provinces’s Krakor district said yesterday that the company was refusing to recognise titles recently granted to them and blocking them from the land.“We 10 families have been given more than 30 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

Authorities in Battambang province on Saturday summoned two villagers from Salmot district’s Ta Sanh commune after they refused to hand over money to officials asking for donations to feed students working in the area as part of the government’s nationwide land titling project. Heng ...

About 50 families living on the site of the long-discussed Preah Vihear airport went to the provincial hall yesterday to request that local officials reconsider their earlier decision to refuse them land titles on the grounds that the airstrip would soon be rebuilt. Villagers attended ...

More than 60 families living in Preah Vihear province filed a complaint with rights group Ahdoc yesterday after officials announced that their land had been set aside for a new airport and would not be measured for private land titles, local officials said. Adhoc Preah ...

More than 100 villagers in Preah Vihear province have accused a group of Chinese-owned sugar plantations of encroaching on their farms and community forests since mid-2012 and say they are still waiting for a resolution. Sen Som, a rice farmer in Chheb district, said Heng Rui ...

More than 2,000 student volunteers yesterday were sent to measure land in 19 provinces, starting the second phase of Prime Minister Hun Sen’s nationwide land-titling program. Of the 2,016 volunteers, 1,362 are new and the rest are returning for the second time. ...

The chief of 120 students spearheading the government’s land-titling program in Pursat province has filed a report with Prime Minister Hun Sen’s second son, Hun Manith, to find a solution for villagers who say local officials in the area have confiscated their registration documents. ...

Canadian funding for ethnic minority communities in the process of applying for communal land titles will run out in March, and other donors have not yet signed up to take over the task, officials from the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), which currently provides the ...

The court system is still “chronically underfunded” and laws on its management are almost 20 years overdue, the U.N. human rights envoy Surya Subedi said yesterday. One year ago, during his sixth mission to Cambodia, Mr. Subedi described reform in the courts as moving at a ...

Forestry Administrative officials in Battambang province have again halted logging and clearing inside a community forest and are attempting to prevent student volunteers deployed by the Ministry of Land Management from demarcating land in already cleared areas, local officials said last week. ...