Publication : Report

In the countryside, home to approximately 85 per cent of the Cambodian population, landholdings are increasingly skewed, with hard-pressed subsistence farmers often forced to sell to urban speculators who hold large plots of arable land idle. Although rural land was relatively equitably distributed in the 1980s, landlessness subsequently mushroomed from in the late 1990s to in 2004. Meanwhile, programs meant to distribute land back to the rural poor have not been implemented. A prominent NGO, the Cambodian Center for Human Rights, has seen land disputes rise to the human rights and social problem number one for rural Cambodians participating in its regular public forums.

Information Source : Respect for Housing, Land and Property Rights in Cambodia

• COHRE