Aware of the growing need for immediate and fundamental land policy reforms in Cambodia, CCHR has produced this Report in order to provide an overview of the land rights situation as it developed in Cambodia throughout 2012 and in the first half of 2013. The Report provides an introduction to the legal, institutional and policy framework related to land and an overview of the root causes and impact of the land conflict affecting the country. The Report also formulates concrete recommendations for the improvement of the land situation in Cambodia and will be used as an advocacy tool to engage with the Cambodian people, national and international organizations, donors, embassies, and of course, with the new RGC.

Cambodia’s shadow state generates much of its illicit wealth via the expropriation of public assets, particularly natural resources, as well as through institutionalised corruption. With particular reference to the forest sector, this report looks at three of the main ways in which this works.

The Inspection Panel has prepared this Investigation Report in response to the Request for Inspection received on September 4, 2009 from the Centre for Housing Rights and Evictions (COHRE), which submitted the Request on behalf of communities claiming to have been affected by the Land Management and Administration Project (hereinafter referred to as the “Project” or “LMAP”) in Cambodia. These communities are situated in the Boeung Kak Lake (BKL) area, within the Sras Chok commune, Daun Penh district in the Municipality of Phnom Penh. The Requesters asked the Panel to keep the names of the affected people and the villages where they live confidential. The Panel registered the Request for Inspection on September 24, 2009. Management submitted its Response to the Request on November 2, 2009.

In the past decade an area of land eight times the size of the UK has been sold off globally as land sales rapidly accelerate. This land could feed a billion people, equivalent to the number of people who go to bed hungry each night. In poor countries, foreign investors have been buying an area of land the size of London every six days. With food prices spiking for the third time in four years, interest in land could accelerate again as rich countries try to secure their food supplies and investors see land as a good long-term bet. All too often, forced evictions of poor farmers are a consequence of these rapidly increasing land deals in developing countries. As the world’s leading standard-setter and a big investor itself, the World Bank should freeze its own land investments and review its policy and practice to prevent land-grabbing. In the past the Bank has chosen to freeze lending when poor standards have caused dispossession and suffering. It needs to do so again, in order to play a key role in stopping the global land rush.

The primary focus of the research was to identify when and how exclusions and other barriers are preventing people from accessing SLR (Systematic Land Registration), and how this is impacting on the broader benefits of the titling system. Here, “exclusion” refers to those who have been excised from adjudication areas prior to or during the process of survey and demarcation, and to those cases where land parcels are left unregistered due to having “unclear status”. The study also sought to gather more detail on the incidence of disputes during the SLR process, and the issue of subsequent registration of land – the process of re-registering titled land when it is transferred to a new owner. This study has drawn on existing research and aims to build on those findings by looking in more detail at how the system is being implemented in practice in four target areas spread across the country.