News

About 200 people representing 540 families from the Prek Takong 1 and Kva communities in the capital’s Meanchey and Dangkao districts gathered in front of the Land Management Ministry for the fourth time yesterday, asking to receive titles from land cut from the ING City ...

In defiance of an order by Phnom Penh Deputy Governor Khoun Sreng, more than 100 people protested outside the offices of Equitable Cambodia (EC) yesterday. They held signs denouncing the NGO, as community representatives inside submitted a letter withdrawing their consent for the group to represent ...

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 Ministry of Land Management, Urban Planning and Construction unveiled the team members and case loads of the 27 land dispute resolution teams it announced it was creating on June 3 in an effort to more quickly handle such conflicts.    ...

Despite earlier statements by company representatives that $500 compensation packages being offered to land disputants at Ly Yong Phat’s Kampong Speu economic land concession (ELC) were negotiable, attendees of a meeting between company representatives and residents yesterday said they felt pressured to take the offer. ...

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. ...

While vast tracts of Cambodia remain concentrated in the hands of a few and accusations of land grabbing remain rife, the broader distribution of land is more than equitable and could never lead to an uprising, the government official in charge of finding solutions to ...

Representatives of 14 ethnic mi­nority communities in Ratana­kkiri province on Friday accepted $1,700 each from Vietnamese rubber company Hoang Anh Gia Lai (HAGL) to buy a buffalo and hold a ceremony to appease the spirits that had been disturbed by the firm’s plantations. ...

Another group of families living along Cambodia’s dilapidated railway tracks is filing a complaint with the compliance review panel of the Asian Development Bank (ADB), accusing the lender of failing to abide by its own resettlement policies. ...

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. ...

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 ...

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, ...

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 ...