Housing Rights Groups Deliver Humanitarian Relief and Call for Urgent Intervention for Displaced Families in Sihanoukville

“Evicted families are IDPs who have the right to return to their homes and be compensated.”

18 May 2008. Bridges Across Borders Southeast Asia (BABSEA) delivered tarpaulins and rice today to 84 families illegally evicted from the Mittapheap 4 village in Sihanoukville more than one year ago. The families, who remain homeless and continue to live on the side of the road next to the site of their former homes, are in desperate need of humanitarian relief.

BABSEA and the Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions (COHRE) called on the Royal Government of Cambodia to urgently address the humanitarian situation of these families. The organizations also urged the government to ensure the safe return of the displaced community to their former land and to conduct a criminal investigation into the circumstances surrounding the eviction.

The Mittapheap 4 community is now facing their second rainy season living under tattered tarpaulins that fail to provide adequate protection from the elements. Displaced from their farm lands, the community has lost their primary source of livelihood. While nearly all the community children attended public school prior to the eviction, they are no longer enrolled because their required legal documents were burned during the eviction. Children’s health and nutrition, which declined rapidly in the wake of the eviction, has only gradually improved as a result of regular children’s health assistance provided by the local organization M’lop Tapaing. A further risk is posed to the safety of the children by the large trucks passing only metres away from where the families are forced to live on the side of a busy road.

Dan Nicholson, COHRE Asia and Pacific Programme Coordinator, said, “It is time to start recognising that these families, like thousands of others across Cambodia who are the victims of illegal land-grabbing, are living as Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs).”

Natalie Bugalski, Legal Officer at COHRE, explained, “As persons who have been forced to leave their homes as a result of human rights violations but remain displaced inside State borders, the Mittapheap 4 families squarely fall under the international law definition of IDPs recognised by the United Nations. As IDPs they must be afforded their legal right to humanitarian assistance as well as the rights to return to their former land and to full restitution for their housing and property that was unlawfully destroyed.”

David Pred, BABSEA Cambodia Country Director, said “The Sihanoukville authorities have utterly failed to meet their minimum humanitarian obligations, so we have acted today in order to provide some temporary measure of relief while the families wait for their government to fulfil their responsibility.”

The organisations also called for a moratorium on forced evictions in Cambodia, supporting similar calls made earlier this year by Amnesty International and the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH).

A full copy of the joint statement can be found below.

For further information contact:
Dan Nicholson, COHRE Asia and Pacific Programme Coordinator - +855 17 523 274 or dan@cohre.org.
David Pred, BABSEA Cambodia Country Director - +66 876761905 or davidpred@babsea.org.

The Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions (COHRE) is an international human rights organisation based in Geneva, Switzerland that promotes the right to adequate housing and works to prevent forced evictions. COHRE has Special Consultative Status with the United Nations.

Bridges Across Borders (BAB) is an international organization working to strengthen relationships between the world’s peoples through cooperation on poverty reduction, environmental protection, peace-building and the promotion of human rights. BAB’s Southeast Asia Program is working in Cambodia, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore and the Philippines.