28 September 2009

COHRE today released an important report on housing rights in Cambodia, “Untitled: Tenure Insecurity and Inequality in the Cambodian Land Sector,”. The report, written in conjunction with partners Bridges Across Borders South East Asia and Jesuit Refugee Services (JRS), reviews the multi-donor funded Land Management and Administration Project (LMAP) in Cambodia, which concludes in December 2009. It considers why, despite its commendable objectives, and the issuing of nearly one million titles, many vulnerable Cambodian communities continue to face land tenure insecurity and forced displacement.

The principal finding of the report is that Cambodia’s land administration institutions have failed to improve tenure security on an equitable basis because vulnerable groups that have legitimate claims to land are routinely and arbitrarily denied access to land titling and dispute resolution mechanisms.

"In areas where households have been able to access the new titling system, tenure security has likely been improved; however, for those households that have been unable to obtain land titles, the new system has failed to uphold rights recognised under Cambodia’s pre-existing tenure system and the 2001 Land Law, leaving them more vulnerable to land rights violations,” said Dan Nicholson, Asia and Pacific Programme Coordinator at COHRE. “The fact that these households do not have title is often used against them as a justification for eviction, despite the fact that many have well documented rights under the law” the report states. “Meanwhile, the wealthy and well-connected have little difficulty in acquiring land title in high value areas in which poor communities reside due to their connections or their ability to pay the high ‘unofficial fees’.”

The report also states that vulnerable communities involved in disputes with powerful and well-connected individuals often find their complaints to the Cadastral Commission and the courts unresolved, rejected or simply ignored. This leaves many threatened communities who have no access to the titling system also unable to obtain a just resolution to their dispute.

The report identifies the absence of transparent State land management as a key failure of LMAP, which has contributed to the problem of tenure insecurity throughout the country. It states that the lack of transparency and an unimplemented or inadequate legal framework has led to the loss of public spaces in both urban and rural settings, as well as the large-scale depletion of the country’s natural resources, especially forests.

“The mismanagement of State land has negatively impacted the poorest Cambodians most,” said David Pred, Director of Bridges Across Borders South East Asia. “Rural and indigenous communities have been deprived of the land on which their lives depend in order to make way for Economic Land Concessions, and poor urban households with possessory rights under the 2001 Land Law have been denied the opportunity to secure their land tenure despite their legal entitlements, when they are wrongly labelled as squatters on State land.”

The organizations called for an end to the practice of “de facto State land classification bylocal authorities” during the land registration process, stating that the proposed Land Management Sub-Sector Program (LMSSP) must ensure that State land is identified, demarcated, and registered through a transparent process, in accordance with the law, during the process of land registration.

The report recommends that LMAP’s successor titling program, the Land Administration Sub-Sector Program (LASSP), place its emphasis on titling vulnerable households, including in urban poor areas, resettlement sites, and areas that are targeted for development, in order to ensure that the rights of vulnerable groups are protected.

The report calls on the RGC and its development partners to fully implement the long-neglected aspects of the project, including overhauling the corrupt sporadic titling system; conducting widespread public awareness campaigns on land rights and registration procedures; and providing free legal assistance to poor households involved in land disputes.

Finally, the report urges the RGC to speed up the process of indigenous land registration and enforce existing provisions of the Land Law that prohibit interference with land in areas populated by indigenous people until the process of land registration is complete.