The government on Friday released a draft of a new public policy guide on the country’s contentious land sector, a move that was welcomed by NGOs, who also called for the government to hold further consultations on the draft.
At an inter-ministerial workshop on the draft in Phnom Penh, Duy Pheng, an adviser to the government’s Council on Land Policy, said the so-called “white paper” was aimed at helping officials better apply existing rules and laws on land use and to preclude future land disputes.
“We create the white paper to strengthen our land management and to prevent land disputes from happening,” he said at the workshop.
Local rights groups have singled out the abuse of the country’s land laws as one of Cambodia’s most pressing human rights problems, in particular the granting of economic land concessions (ELCs) to industrial scale agribusiness firms. They accuse such concessions of grabbing land from hundreds of thousands of farmers over the years and causing much of the country’s deforestation.
They also blame ELCs for an uptick in land disputes between local farmers and the concessions’ often well-connected owners.
The paper does not set out any new land laws but offers guidance on how government agencies should apply the ones they have so as “to facilitate the use and management of land and natural resources for socio-economic development in an equitable and sustainable manner,” according to a copy of the draft.
In a section aiming to lay out the current state of the land sector, the paper spreads the blame for land disputes far and wide, from unspecified “interferences from some NGOs or unfair groups” to rich and poor alike seeking to grab increasingly valuable land. But it also places some of the fault on the government—for poor management, delays in zoning and leaving boundaries between state and private land unmarked.
On ELCs, the paper repeats the government’s policy that they strive to alleviate rural poverty and calls for “strict monitoring” that they abide by all rules. Rights groups say the concessions have failed to stem rural poverty, and rather often contribute to it.
Chhith Sam Ath, executive director of the NGO Forum, an umbrella group of nearly 100 local and international nongovernment groups, said they were invited to Friday’s workshop but chose not to attend as the four-day notice the government gave them was not enough time to thoroughly review the dense, 57-page document.
“We welcome the policy and thank the government for doing a consultation,” Mr. Sam Ath said, adding that he hoped the government would schedule more such workshops on the draft.
He also said that his group was still reviewing the draft and declined to comment on it.
At Friday’s workshop, Land Management Ministry Secretary of State Rath Sarin said the government hoped to have the paper finalized by the end of the year.
