| Forced Evictions in Cambodia |
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Forced evictions of the poor are carried out in the name of ‘development.' Homes and possessions are destroyed while relocation of evicted communities is carried out with no regard for the human rights or welfare of those affected. In recent years, urban poor communities in Phnom Penh have been evicted from their homes, herded like cattle under threat of violence and summarily dumped in unimproved rice fields on the outskirts of the city. With no access to jobs, potable water or sanitation, conditions are horrendous for thousands of families. In rural areas, economic land concessions totaling nearly one million hectares have been granted to private companies for the development of agro-industrial plantations. These concessions have led to large-scale displacement, loss of livelihoods, and environmental destruction. Community activists working to end these injustices are routinely imprisoned and tortured, driven into hiding and in the several instances killed. No province or municipality in Cambodia from the southern coast in Sihanoukville to the remote forests of Rattanikiri has remained unaffected by the land grabbing crisis.
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While Cambodia has had impressive economic gains since the civil war ended in the early 1990s, rural landlessness is skyrocketing and many of the essential ingredients for the realization of the right to adequate housing remain absent. Without adequate safeguards in place, market liberalization and economic growth have failed to reduce poverty but have instead led to increases in inequality most starkly seen through landlessness and housing conditions for the poor. Evictions and forcible confiscation of land continue to rank as one of Cambodia's most pervasive human rights problems. Security of tenure is weak or absent for both urban and rural poor communities. Despite progressive developments in the legislative framework, wide-scale flouting of land laws prevails. Spiraling land speculation has resulted in ever-increasing demand for land in prime urban and rural areas. As a consequence, land grabbing by a powerful and wealthy elite - to the severe detriment of local communities - has reached epidemic proportions.