Following the »Land Policy Declaration« from July 2009, the Royal Government of Cambodia henceforth has the unique opportunity to implement a land valuation policy by the Council of Land Policy. Land valuation, taxation and capacity building are indispensable elements of a land reform in Cambodia. By improving prior assessment tools for valuation and taxation, Cambodia could serve as an example for the development of taxation in circumstances when rent-seeking, speculation, informal land markets and an unequal land distribution occur.

This paper focuses on legal and economic instruments of the multi-donor-driven land reform in Cambodia with its overarching aim of achieving tenure security and reparation after the Khmer Rouge. Land tenure applies to state public/state private property and private property. The essential property form for public land management is state public property. This property must be interpreted in the future as the property of Cambodian people that serves all human beings in the country.

This document presents selected analyses of key issues in CFM in Vietnam. It brings together contributions by leading analysts and thinkers and is organized in three main parts: Part 1 discusses issues related to the transfer of forest rights to local people through FLA. It starts with an overview of FLA policy and its outcomes by Nguyen Quang Tan and Thomas Sikor. A case study by Nguyen Dinh Tien, Tran Duc Vien and Nguyen Thanh Lam alerts readers to the fact that too much emphasis on conservation objectives may endanger the food security of the local people.

The Land Law of 2001 was a landmark statute intended to strengthen and protect the rights of ordinary Cambodian landholders. A land titling programme (LMAP) was initiated soon afterwards, with extensive World Bank and donor support. The land occupied by the community of Boeung Kak, in the heart of the capital was excluded from this process, despite evidence of prior residence going back decades. Instead it was classifi ed as having “unknown status” by the LMAP, as “state land” by default, and as a “development zone” by authorities.

Corruption in land management from the perspective of a simple risk framework. These risk factors and forms of corruption spring from more general shortcomings in the integrity framework. In this regard, this report argues that corruption is most likely to occur when an official or office has a monopoly, when the official or office has a great deal of discretion over how the decision is taken, and when there is little accountability for that decision or transparency, which might make it harder for the corruption to proceed unabated.

The purpose of this dissertation was to discover possible shortcomings in the land registration processes and to indentify minimal adjustments for a successful land registration initiative in Cambodia. The enjoyment of collective ownership from 1979 to 1989 witnessed the failure of this system and therefore the country signalized a need of a new property system. Consequently, Cambodia introduced land privatization in 1989 in which Cambodian citizens could have a right of ownership over residential land and a right of possession over agricultural land.

Debates and critiques around land policy often focus on the neo-liberal agenda of formalising land as alienable property, most notably through land titling schemes. Sometimes these schemes are posited against alternatives such as land reform and community land holding under common property arrangements. Claims and counter- claims are made for land titling as a means to boost smallholder security in the face of involuntary or otherwise unfair alienation of land sometimes under the rubric of land grabbing.

This paper aims to describe the status of land reform in Cambodia by looking at the background information, general approaches and basic types of land reform from the world’s views and experience, and the efforts taken thus far on land reform in Cambodia. The paper also reflects on key elements, principles, good and bad experiences, innovations, achievements and challenges around the issues of Cambodia’s land reform.

OVERVIEW: Cambodia is a largely agrarian country that emerged from a history of political strife and instability into a period of steady economic growth. However, the country started from such a low base that even after a decade of growth averaging 7% per annum, GDP is only $650. Cambodia is ranked 176th out of 213 countries in terms of purchasing-power parity. Poverty rates have reduced somewhat, but they remain higher than in most countries in the region and are only slightly lower than in Laos.

ABSTRACTED FROM EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: This paper seeks to add to the growing literature on land concessions by examining a recent, high-level concession as a means of understanding three aspects related to concessionary investments: (1) the process by which concessions are awarded and implemented; (2) the intricate relationship between land use, land tenure, and land ownership in the face of concessions; and (3) the way in which village and household livelihoods are impacted due to such massive land use and ownership changes.

ABSTRACTED FROM SUMMARY: One of the peculiarities of the Vietnamese land system is the existence of a ‘zero state’ with regard to land institutions: all the country’s existing land institutions were put in place in the last 25 to 30 years. However, this does not mean that there is no history of such bodies; indeed, those that are now emerging carry the traces of each past period.

Vietnamese land-tenure policy reforms were embedded into general economic reforms (Doi Moi), enabling the country’s transition toward a market economy. Since 1998, they were implemented incrementally together with complementary instruments such as agricultural market liberalization and new economic incentives. Major steps included disentangling socialist producer cooperatives and assigning land-use rights to its former members, developing and adapting a national legal framework (Land Law), and enhancing tenure security through gender-balanced inheritable land-use certificates.