During a meeting Tuesday on the rights of Cambodia’s indigenous communities, an NGO worker complained that the one government body that could help the country’s ethnic minorities with land registration—the Interior Ministry—is the one that never attends their gatherings.
More than 100 villagers from 15 provinces representing ethnic minority groups, including Jarai, Sa’och, Stieng and Phnong, attended the fifth NGO Forum on Cambodia organized workshop at the Ministry of Women’s Affairs on Monday and Tuesday to discuss registration of their land. In late 2006, the government unveiled plans to register and protect land belonging to Cambodia’s ethnic minority communities.
However, Srey Sras Phanha, a project officer for NGO Forum, told the conference that since 2006 only three ethnic minority villages have been registered by the Interior Ministry’s Local Administration Office—two in Ratanakkiri and one in Mondolkiri province.
The Ministry of Interior’s absence from this year’s workshops, she added, is indicative of official neglect of ethnic minority land rights.
“It is the fifth national forum on the rights of indigenous people but the involved officials always refuse to take part in the workshop,” Srey Sras Phanha said.
“It is a major issue…because whenever [ethnic minorities] create the community, the authorities do not recognize them,” she said.
Kiev Horn, deputy chief of the Ministry of Interior’s Local Administration Office, declined to comment Tuesday on the process of land registration for indigenous people, saying that reporters need to write a formal letter to the ministry for an interview.
Srey Sras Phanha also told the conference that one of the more serious problems ethnic minority communities face is the government’s issuance of land concessions to private firms without following proper procedures. “People have complained that the economic concessions have been granted for companies without conducting environmental or social impact assessments,” she said.
Participants ended the two-day national forum with a call for the government to fully implement the law and protect indigenous land rights.
