CCHR Bats For Traditional Land Rights In Cambodia
Guwahati: With an aim to protect the lands against excessive resource extractions in Cambodia, an influential rights body urged the authority to maintain indigenous land rights for the natives. The Cambodian Center for Human Rights (CCHR), while releasing a report recently at Phnom Penh, fervently called the Cambodian royal government to accelerate the collective land registration process.
The report titled ‘Access to Collective Land Titles for Indigenous Communities in Cambodia’, which is available at CCHR website ( http://www.cchrcambodia.org ) both in English and Khmer, has been the outcome of research conducted by the rights body’s land reform project on the experiences of indigenous communities and their engagement with the process to obtain collective land titles (CLT) in the Burma bordering southeast Asian country.
“While collective land ownership is recognized in theory in Cambodia, the indigenous population is losing their land at an alarming rate due to outside interests, including large-scale logging of forests and resource extraction, infrastructure projects, land concessions and encroachment by newcomers,” said a statement issued by the CCHR, which
is a non-aligned, independent, non-governmental organization working to promote & protect democracy and respect for human rights across Cambodia.
It also stated that the report seeks to examine the obstacles to
registration of collective land for indigenous communities in Cambodia
and highlight the shortcomings in the implementation of the CLT
process. It reveals the astounding complexity of the process that
makes it near impossible for communities to complete without sustained
external assistance.
While revealing numerous pressures faced by indigenous communities
throughout the CLT process, such as intimidation, judicial harassment
and pressure to accept private land titles, the report also offers
concrete recommendations for those with an ‘interest in the process,
to promote better implementation of collective land registration and
thereby ensure greater land tenure security for Cambodia’s indigenous
communities’.
“CCHR strongly urges the Royal Government of Cambodia to accelerate
the allocation of CLTs by strengthening the capacity of relevant
institutions and allocating an adequate budget for each stage of the
process, to amend interim protective measures so they guarantee tenure
security throughout the process and to disseminate information on how
to obtain CLTs to communities and local authorities,” added the
statement.
In addition, the rights body reminds companies operating on or near to
indigenous lands to comply with domestic & international law and to
avoid causing human rights violations, urges fellow non-governmental
organizations & development partners to increase cooperation and
provide technical & practical support to government & communities and
finally it encourages indigenous communities to strengthen community
cohesion.