Background
The Stop Evictions campaign has been established in response to the recurrent problem of government-sanctioned forced evictions in Cambodia and the continuing absence of secure land tenure for the poor. 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 realisation of the right to adequate housing remain absent. Without adequate safeguards in place, market liberalisation 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. Spiralling 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.
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. During 2006 and 2007, 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 totalling 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.
The Stop Evictions campaign seeks to bring an end to violations of land and housing rights in Cambodia through short-term strategies for cases of communities under the threat of forced evictions, emergency response to forced evictions when they are carried out, and long-term structural strategies to lobby for secure land tenure and participatory development processes.
Bridges Across Borders contributes to this campaign through its active role on the Housing Rights Task Force (HRTF) . Bridges is one of four members of the Core Committee of the Housing Rights Task Force, along with the Community Legal Education Center (CLEC), the Urban Sector Group (USG) and Samakun Teang Tnaut (STT). HRTF is a coalition of more than 20 diverse local and international organizations that work together in an effort to defend housing rights of the urban poor in Cambodia. HRTF fills an important niche in terms of coordinating, networking, policy advocacy and casework in support of urban poor communities. HRTF's mission is to prevent forced evictions and housing rights violations and to promote the development and full enjoyment of housing rights for all Cambodian people.
Bridges also seeks to assist community-led advocacy work by supporting emerging people's networks, which are organizing throughout the country to challenge social injustice and assert the rights of marginalized and vulnerable communities. These grassroots, people-owned networks have developed to take on important problems that NGOs have been unable to resolve, most notably in relation to access to land and natural resources.
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