News

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 ...

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 ...

The Australian Federal Police (AFP) said Monday they have taken the necessary steps to investigate claims that the world’s largest mining company, BHP Billiton, bribed officials in Cambodia and played down reports that it had mishandled one the country’s largest cases in corporate corruption. “The ...

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 ...

More than 100 Banong ethic minority villagers in Mondolkiri province on Wednesday stopped and briefly apprehended a group of 11 outsiders who they say were caught illegally logging timber in the area, villagers said yesterday. The villagers say that they took it upon themselves to stop ...

Australia’s Renaissance Minerals (Cambodia) Ltd. unveiled Thursday that it estimated that gold resource[s] at O’kvau area in Cambodia’s Mondolkiri province could be as much as 1.2 million ounces, the firm’s Managing Director Justin Tremain said. Speaking during a meeting with Cambodian Minister of Industry, Mines and ...

The Ministry of Agriculture has signed a deal with Try Pheap Import Export to give the firm the right to purchase all timber felled in economic land concessions (ELCs) in Ratanakkiri province, according to a letter sent from the Agriculture Ministry to the Forestry Administration ...

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 ...

Construction began yesterday on a bridge crossing an upstream section of the Vam Co Dong River that borders Cambodia. The US $2.2-million friendship bridge will link the southern province of Tay Ninh with Cambodia’s Prey Veng Province at the Tan Nam – Mean Chay border gate ...

Mondolkiri and Kompong Thom provinces could suffer some of the most extreme effects of climate change in the Lower Mekong Basin region, such as a high incidence of flash floods and droughts by 2050, according to a new study. Analyzing temperature and rainfall from 84 provinces ...

Initial mapping of three ethnic minority Banong communities in Mondolkiri province got underway yesterday, a critical step in their plans to gain much coveted communal titles to their ancestral land. Established by the 2001 Land Law, communal land titles were designed specifically to protect the ancestral ...

An indigenous ethnic Banong community in Mondolkiri province yesterday began the final stage in acquiring a communal land title, setting it up to become only the sixth community in the country to secure one of the coveted documents. Established by the 2001 Land Law, communal land ...

A delegation of 15 Indian firms is in Cambodia this week looking to increase the country’s involvement in Cambodia’s economy, particularly in the agriculture and mining sectors. At present, Cambodia does modest trade with India, the second largest country in the world by population. But the ...

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 ...

Seventy-two ethnic minorities Banong families received communal titles to a combined 1,008 hectares of ancestral land in Mondolkiri province yesterday morning in a ceremony attended by Land Management Minister Chhun Lim. Communal titles were designed to protect the ancestral lands of the country’s minorities from outside ...

Shares in Renaissance Minerals jumped after the company announced a 1.2 million ounce gold resource at its Okvau deposit in Cambodia. Emerging from the trading halt this morning, the company revealed an indicated and inferred resource of 15.6 million tonnes at 2.4 grams per tonne gold ...

The number of people arrested over land disputes jumped 144 percent from a year earlier to 232 in 2012, the Cambodian Human Rights and Development Association (Adhoc) said Thursday. Speaking at a news conference, he [Adhoc president Thun Saray] said Adhoc last year received 70 ...

For four years now, this mineral-flecked land deep inside the Prey Lang forest has drawn thousands of small-scale seasonal miners. There are perks to working the dry season: space is one, avoiding the unofficial “taxation” system is another. For years, development agencies have urged a sweeping ...

About 80 ethnic Bunong villagers living in Mondolkiri’s Pech Chreada district staged a protest against the Socfin-KCD rubber company Monday, demanding that the firm honor its long-standing pledge to return 1,000 hectares of farmland located inside its concession. Socfin-KCD, a join venture between Socfin, a ...

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 ...

Ethnic Bunong villagers in Mondolkiri province’s Pech Chreada district are bitterly divided over how best to protect their ancestral land amid efforts by authorities to map it in preparation for property titles. Bosra commune chief Yoeth Sarin said that since student volunteers-deployed across the country as ...

About 1.8 million Cambodians traveled to the coastal and northeastern provinces to celebrate Khmer New Year, a 50 percent increase compared with last year, Tourism Minister Thong Khon said yesterday. Mr Khon said Cambodians are starting to seek out other vacation spots besides the coastal provinces ...

Cambodia’s Ministry of Industry, Mines and Energy had issued mineral resource exploratory licenses to 24 local and foreign companies in the past year. According to the annual report of the ministry’s mineral resources department released on Friday, the firms are mostly Cambodian-owned ones and those from ...

Spurred on by a rash of recent news about illegal logging activities around the country, and concerns about its public image, a government-led group on forestry issued a rare public statement yesterday urging its partners to help crack down on the illicit trade. In a statement ...