News on Land

The Party committee and government in Liaoning Province, northeast China, recently issued a document to steadily promote the implementation of rural collective property right system reform.

The document instructs officials to safeguard rural women's legitimate rights and interests in the process of identifying the membership of collective economic organizations.

During the 1990s, a new wave of large-scale land acquisitions for agricultural investments emerged world-wide and in the Mekong region, in particular. Two decades down the road, it is crucial to learn from what has happened in the last two+ decades by:

It is well documented from the work of grass roots, civil society and non-governmental organisations that the women, in Africa, are among the poorest of the poor and their lack of access to land and housing is largely as a result of their limited access to resources. Unemployment and underemployment, particularly for women, and therefore insufficient wages to purchase housing means women have little chance to own their own home. Unfair inheritance and divorce laws also force women into situations of hardship and homelessness.

About 200 people from Kampot and Kandal provinces gathered yesterday at the Land Ministry asking for two separate disputes with development companies to be resolved.

The protesters asked the ministry to take land from the companies for them to us because they were struggling to make a living.

Bo Sambath, a representative of 308 families from Techo Angkanh and Techo Chrey Bak villages in Kampot province, said their dispute over 1,231 hectares with First Bio-Tech Agricultural (Cambodia) began in 2013.

Investment in urban infrastructure such as new roads, public utilities or parks invariably increases real-estate prices. In Pakistan, stories of riches earned overnight due to new highways passing through agricultural lands are common.

About 100 villagers from southwestern Cambodia’s Koh Kong province clashed on Tuesday with security forces in Phnom Penh during a protest over a decade-long land dispute with two sugar companies, a spokesmen for the residents said.

The villagers travelled from Chikhor commune in Sre Ambel district and from Botum Sakor district in Koh Kong to the country’s capital to protest what they called land grabs by the Koh Kong Sugar Industry Company Ltd. and Koh Kong Plantation Company Ltd. that took place in 2006, said Phav Nheung, representing the villagers.