This report compares independently-gathered household data from four communities located along railroad tracks in Phnom Penh to data gathered by the Inter-Ministerial Resettlement Committee (IRC) in charge of the resettlement of households along the railways. Based on comparative data from 70 households, the report finds significant and widespread anomalies in the data gathered by the IRC. In the majority of cases, data collected by STT shows households are eligible to receive higher rates of compensation than those proffered by the IRC.

ABSTRACTED FROM THE INTRODUCTION: This report shows how, contrary to Cambodia’s obligations under international human rights law, those affected by evictions have had no opportunity for genuine participation and consultation beforehand. Information on planned evictions and on resettlement packages has often been incomplete and inaccurate, undermining the right to information of those affected.

This study explores the reasons behind the government’s exclusion of many Phnom Penh urban poor communities (UPCs) from the Systematic Land Registration (SLR) process, and the impact of this on affected households, particularly women and children. The study was conducted in 12 UPCs that had been excluded from the SLR process in six khans where SLR had been completed or was well under way. Data collection methods included interviews with 60 households from excluded UPCs, as well as village chiefs, community representatives, government officials, and NGO members.

As shown in this report, harassment of local activists in Cambodia, including defenders of the right to housing, is widespread. Cambodia’s rich and powerful are increasingly abusing the criminal justice system to silence communities standing up against land concessions or business deals affecting the land they live on or cultivate. Many poor and marginalized communities are living in fear of the institutions created to protect them, in particular the police and the courts. As forced evictions increase, public space for discussing them is shrinking.

This document provides a comprehensive list of Phnom Penh settlements under formal or informal threat of eviction. Data are provided on stated reasons for eviction, location features, and other factors. Includes maps showing affected areas.

ABSTRACTED FROM THE CONCLUSION: LMAP has had considerable success in several areas, including the number of titles adjudicated in rural areas, development of legal framework for land management and administration, and the increased institutional capacity of the Ministry of Land. Unfortunately these successes are overshadowed by an increase in landlessness, forced evictions, land-grabbing and widespread tenure insecurity in Cambodia. In large part this is the result of a persistent lack of political will to consistently implement the legal framework that LMAP has developed.

The rural economy in Bangladesh has been
a powerful source of economic growth and has substantially
reduced poverty, especially since 2000, but the remarkable
transformation and unprecedented dynamism in rural
Bangladesh are an underexplored, underappreciated, and
largely untold story. The analysis identifies the key
changes occurring in the rural economy, the principal
drivers of rural incomes, the implications for policy, and

Groundwater is a vital yet threatened
resource in much of South Asia. This paper develops a model
of groundwater transactions under payoff uncertainty arising
from unpredictable fluctuations in groundwater availability
during the agricultural dry season. The model highlights the
trade-off between the ex post inefficiency of long-term
contracts and the ex ante inefficiency of spot contracts.
The structural parameters are estimated using detailed

This issue includes the following
headings: Changes in Poverty and Female-Headed Households in
Africa; Growth and Capital Inflows in Africa; Growth and
Capital Inflows in Africa; Vulnerability to Climate Change
in Coastal Bangladesh; Improving Agricultural Data for
Better Policies; Enhancing Transparency of Large-Scale Land
Acquisition; Explaining the Gender Gap in Agricultural
Productivity; Changing Patterns of Growth and Poverty

This paper assesses the relation between
access to markets and cultivated land in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Making use of a geo-referenced panel over three decades
(1970-2005) during which the road network was significantly
improved, the analysis finds a modest but significant
positive association between increased market accessibility
and local cropland expansion. It also finds that cropland
expansion, in turn, is associated with a small but

Despite its rapid growth in recent
decades, GDP per capita in India remains at a relatively low
level by international standards, and the country continues
to be marked by large subnational disparities in levels of
well-being. These large disparities naturally lead to
interest in India’s spatial landscape of potential for
economic development. Against this backdrop, this paper
presents the results of an analysis of underlying variations

The Philippine Economic Update (PEU)
provides an update on key economic and social developments,
as well as policies over the past six months. It also
presents findings from recent World Bank studies on the
Philippines. It places them in a longer term and global
context, and assesses the implications of these developments
and policies on the outlook for the Philippines. Its
coverage ranges from the macro-economy and financial markets