Everything must go. A Cambodia for Sale. How the Cambodian Legal System is allowing Extralegal Land Acquisitions

Abstract

Cambodia’s history of colonialism and an infamous communist regime has left the country with a legacy of corruption, weak rule of law and a lack of tenure security. The concept of land grabbing is becoming more and more frequent, while at the same time receiving a great deal of attention from NGOs and the international community. In a country where the idea of ownership is relatively new, most of the country is still untitled. With no land title, it is difficult to prove ownership of the property. This is taken advantage of by the government, who is selling, leasing and concessioning already occupied property to dubious corporations.

In 2001, a new land law was adopted that, in theory, offers protection not only to titleholders, but also to occupants of land. In practice however, this protection is very weak. Though the progressive law was drafted with the help of the international donor community, the implementation of this law has not been successful. The law is systematically circumvented by the government when divesting of land to companies, owned by influential businessmen with close ties to the ruling party. In order to avoid bad media coverage and pressure from NGOs, the companies hide behind several shell companies. This further clouds the already limited transparency process. There are appeal mechanisms set in place, but corruption and lack of an independent court system deny the individual of any real possibility of making his case heard. This is aggravated by the lack of knowledge and resources within the court system. As the court stands under the influence of the state, judges dare neither hear land grabbing cases nor rule in the favor of the complainant. As such, the cases are simply rejected.

The problem of land grabbing is exacerbated by the blurry line between state public property and state private property on one hand, and private property on the other. With the support of the World Bank, an ambitious land titling project was initiated. Because of differences between the Cambodian government and the WB, the project was later canceled. This has left the land titling process in the hands of the government and is now proceeding ahead very slowly. The first step towards strengthening tenure security is to resurrect the project of the WB, in order to accelerate the process of land titling and thus prevent future land grabbings.