In Cambodia and Guatemala The Power of Rights

In the pages ahead, you’ll read about indigenous people in Cambodia’s Ratanakiri province who, for thousands of years, have enjoyed the bounty from land they hold in common. They fish, hunt, forage, and farm on it, ensuring their families will have both food and income. But there is now enormous pressure on those families to claim title to a small area of their common land, and then sell it to developers who are hungry to establish rubber plantations and gold mines. In the end—when their money from the sale is gone—Ratanakiri’s indigenous people are left with nothing. Poverty replaces their rights to that communal property.