The first ever gathering of indigenous people from around the country starts Thursday in Kompong Speu province’s Oral district, organizers said Monday.
An estimated 105 people will attend the historic three-day meeting, including representatives from Ratanakkiri’s Tampoun, Kreung and Jarai minorities, Kui people from several provinces, and Kompong Speu’s indigenous Suy minority, organizers said at a Monday meeting.
At this weekend’s forum, organized by a consortium of NGOs at the request of indigenous communities, minority groups will discuss how to secure their right to ancestral lands, the organizers said.
“There is a small window of opportunity to implement huge reform in indigenous land rights,” said Todd Sigaty, a legal adviser for the subdecree on the registration of indigenous land.
The land law, passed in 2001, allows indigenous communities to own land used by the community, but the government must pass a subdecree outlining the registration process before communities can get communal land titles. The meeting is the first step in consultations to prepare the subdecree.
“Indigenous communities manage and allocate land in a different way from the rest of Cambodian society. They fought to have that recognized in the land law, and it is recognized. Now it is time to make the subdecree,” said Graeme Brown, Ratanakkiri Coordinator for the Community Forestry Alliance for Cambodia, and an organizers of the meeting.
Without communal titles, minorities’ historical lands have been especially vulnerable to land grabbing by powerful people or the government, organizers said.
Near the site of the forthcoming meeting, the government has approved a Chinese company’s project to develop an 1800-hectare resort and theme park on an area inside Oral Wildlife Sanctuary sacred to the Suy people.
