Today, 6 March 2013, the Cambodian Center for Human Rights ("CCHR") is releasing the fourth in a series of four Briefing Notes. Each examines key issues related to human rights in Cambodia: political and electoral reform; judicial reform; freedom of expression; and land reform.
The attached Briefing Note - on land reform - provides an overview and analysis of how the Kingdom of Cambodia’s (“Cambodia”) recent history has adversely affected the development of land ownership and registration; discusses the structural, legal and societal causes behind the dispossession of land and how the Royal Government of Cambodia (the “RGC”) has both failed to safeguard human rights and actively violated those rights through violence and oppression; and offers recommendations aimed at addressing these issues. In order to address these issues, CCHR offers a series of recommendations, among which are the following three key suggestions: 1) the continuation of the existing moratorium on the awarding of any further economic land concessions to commercial interests, and a full and transparent review of those already awarded to determine their compliance with the law, and their resulting forfeiture if found not to be in compliance; 2) the immediate halt to any forced eviction of people from their land, and the immediate release from detention and the dropping of any pending charges for anyone who has been arrested for non-violently protesting government policies; and 3) the immediate issuance of preliminary land titles, with hard titles to follow, to those people who should be deemed to have present legal possession of their land, unless there are specific, compelling and transparent reasons to determine otherwise.
Please find the Briefing Note attached in Khmer and English.
For more information, please contact CCHR President Ou Virak via telephone at
+855 (0) 12 40 40 51 or e-mail
at ouvirak@cchrcambodia.org
or Senior Consultant Robert Finch via telephone at +855 (0) 78 80 99 60 or
e-mail at robert.finch@cchrcambodia.org.
Kind regards,
CCHR
No comments:
Post a Comment