News

Mondulkiri provincial Military Police have summoned three members of the Bunong indigenous community in Sokdum commune’s Laoka village of Sen Monorom town to appear on May 19 over accusations that they disregarded the court ruling and used violence and made death threats against a local ...

Fifty indigenous people in Mondulkiri province on March 15 stopped the clearing of forest land in Sokdom commune’s Laoka village, claiming that the site was reserved for collective land registration of the Bunong indigenous community. They said that clearing the land will result in the ...

The “Cultural Landscape of the Bunong People” has been named to the 2022 World Monuments Watch, as one of 25 heritage sites deemed to be of worldwide significance, critical for the local community, and in urgent need of preservation. ...

Indigenous people play a very vital role in the development of safe (organic) agricultural products and sustainable, according to Cambodia Rice Federation (CRF). ...

The government does little to protect the rights and livelihoods of the country’s many ethnic minorities who are under constant threat from rapid development, representatives of indigenous groups said yesterday. “We have polices laws and guidelines to protect indigenous people, but we see that it doesn’t ...

Human rights workers and other civil society groups on Wednesday urged the competing political parties for July’s election to address the ongoing land crises and illegal deforestation that are hurting indigenous populations. About 100 people from various ethnic minority groups from five provinces attended a forum ...

Land Management Minister Im Chum Lim awarded a community of ethnic minority Banong in Mondolkiri province a communal land tile to their ancestral land last week, only the eighth communal land title to be handed out since the 2001 Land Law made them available. The title ...

About 200 people from Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia affected by hydropower dam projects on the Mekong River and its tributaries gathered in Phnom Penh yesterday to share their experiences of how their lives have been adversely affected since the dams were constructed. Speaking at the ...

A community of ethnic minority Tampuon people in Ratanakkiri province yesterday filed a complaint with the provincial court against six people they believe illegally cleared 80 hectares of community forest land and sold it to a rubber investor, villagers and court officials said. The land in ...

For Meach Mean, a veteran campaigner against hydropower dams in Cambodia’s northeast, this year has brought a double dose of bad news. First, he says, two Chinese hydropower companies have begun feasibility studies into a pair of dams planned for tributaries of the Mekong River ...

Opposition lawmaker Son Chhay said yesterday that he would ask the government to cancel the land concession of a Vietnamese rubber firm in Ratanakkiri province he accused of logging and exporting wood illegally. Mr. Chay, a candidate in July’s national election for the Cambodia National Rescue ...

Commune authorities in Ratanakkiri province’s O’Yadav district have allegedly banished a local resident for persisting with a lawsuit that accuses them of selling 500 hectares of community forest to two Cambodian developers for $300,000. Romas Svang, who is a member of the ethnic Jarai minority, filed ...

A rubber company that has been repeatedly accused of encroaching on communal land belonging to an ethnic minority in Ratanakkiri province has cleared 150 hectares of forest outside of its economic land concession (ELC) in the past month, according to the senior investigator for local ...

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 ...

Since Prime Minister Hun Sen announced an ambitious new plan some 10 months ago to make nearly half a million families official land owners, hardly a week goes by that a rural community does not complain of local officials trying to scam the project. But when ...

Economic land concessions remain a major concern, with more than 230 people arrested in 2012, an increase of more than 150 percent from the year before, according to an annual report by the rights group Adhoc. That means land conflicts have increased, Thun Saray, president ...

Seven months after Prime Minister Hun Sen unveiled an ambitious plan to demarcate 1.8 million hectares of state land and formally acknowledge those who live on it, the completion of the first – albeit the smallest – of eight affected provinces has wrapped up. Marking the ...

Though they held out hope for years that they would get communal land titles, hundreds of ethnic minority families in Mondolkiri and Ratanakkiri provinces have now opted to accept individual private land titles under Prime Minister Hun Sen’s new titling scheme. While individual titles offer immediate ...

Government-issued economic land concessions are making the country’s indigenous communities in the northeast provinces worse off, according to a study by the Mekong Institute of Cambodia. Presented yesterday at the 2012 Development Research Forum in Phnom Penh, the study comes on top of mounting criticism of ...

Three ethnic Bunong communities in Mondolkiri province may soon receive long-awaited collective property titles, which would bring to six the total number of communal land titles granted to the country’s indigenous people since the Land Law was created in 2011. And while the possible issuing of the three ...

Hundreds of indigenous people called on government to pick up the pace in granting them communal land titles at a ceremony marking the U.N.-sponsored International Day of the World’s Indigenous People in Kompong Thom province yesterday. “The gathering today is to mark the 8th anniversary of Indigenous Day ...

The government has postponed a top-level meeting with its foreign donors scheduled for November, a move that comes just over a week after a displeased World Bank revealed its decision to freeze all future loans to Cambodia. In an Aug 17 letter to World Bank ...