Indigenous Cambodians call for land protection
Updated
Cambodia's indigenous community has called on the government to live up to its obligations under local and international law and protect their interests. Representatives of Cambodia's 17 ethnic groups are urging the government to suspend hundreds of concessions awarded to foreign and local companies they say are operating on their land. The call comes after a recent United Nations committee hearing submitted evidence about serious shortfalls in Phnom Penh's commitment to the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination.
Presenter: Robert Carmichael
Speakers: Pheap Socheat, indigenous Bunong people representative; Chhit Sam Ath, executive director Cambodian NGO Forum; Graeme Brown, consultant, indigenous people's rights
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CARMICHAEL: Representatives from four of Cambodia's indigenous communities said Wednesday the government must start protecting their interests, and stop carving up traditional lands into concessions for investors.
Cambodia's indigenous people are worried that their way of life, traditions and customs are being destroyed as investors get huge parcels of land in 99-year concessions with no consultation or compensation for those who have used the land for generations.
The representatives from four of the country's 20 or so tribal groups were in Phnom Penh Wednesday to give their thoughts on the findings of a United Nations committee that earlier this month examined Cambodia's compliance with the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination.
The UN committee found extensive problems with the government's award of land concessions affecting indigenous people, including corruption, impunity and widespread reports of intimidation against those who try to protest the loss of communal land.
The UN committee says "a proper balance" must be found between the country's development needs and the rights of its people. Economic development, it says, cannot come at the cost of the rights of the most vulnerable.
Pheap Socheat is a representative of the Bunong people from the north-eastern province of Mondolkiri. He explains that the lives, culture, tradition and religion of Cambodia's indigenous people are inextricably bound up with the land and natural resources.
The answer, he says, has been provided by some experts who believe that those traditions will die out. And the loss of land pushes the indigenous people further into poverty, contrary to donor-funded goals and the government's commitment to reduce widespread poverty.
For that reason alone the representatives stress that donors - which last year provided almost 1 billion US dollars to the government - must monitor Phnom Penh's compliance on the issue.
Graeme Brown is an independent consultant on the rights of indigenous people. He says the problem of land loss has reached crisis point with vast tracts given over to concessions for agriculture and mining as well as hydropower projects.
CARMICHAEL: Asked what can be done about it, Brown says the answer is straightforward.
BROWN: The solution in actual fact is really quite simple. It's like the indigenous people say: Implement the laws - there is no shortage of laws in Cambodia to rectify the problem. Then we have to examine deeper why the laws aren't being implemented, and people have to be held to account for that. So: who is supporting who, and what's not being done need to be asked.
CARMICHAEL: Chhit Sam Ath heads the civil society grouping called NGO Forum, and says at least 1 million hectares of economic land concessions have been granted so far.
He says indigenous people should be given traditional rights to forests - which they have used for generations as a source of food, medicine and for cultural purposes.
Chhit Sam Ath says the irony of land registration in Cambodia is that investors are able to get huge economic concessions with ease, but indigenous communities have as yet been unable to register even a single parcel of communal land.
CHIT SAM ATH: As we already repeated again and again, the indigenous people's land has not been registered and the land concessions have been given almost on a daily basis. And the land registration is so, so, so slow that as of now there is not one piece of land registered yet. And when the land has been granted as a concession how can we register the land because there is no land to be registered?
CARMICHAEL: Dam Chanthy, a woman from the indigenous Tampuon tribe from Ratanakkiri in north-eastern Cambodia, says that if the government is serious about preserving the identity and traditions of the indigenous people, then it must start to pay attention to what they need too.
