"Gov’t sets land concession criteria", 5 August 2019

The government has set the criteria which must be met for long-term residents to be granted state property, and while civil society groups said it was a positive move, they asked the government to speed up the process of granting the land.

Under the new conditions, people must be acknowledged by the authorities to have lived on government land for at least 10 years.

The directive, signed by Prime Minister Hun Sen …, stated that people have the right to occupy government land as long as they have proof, which can be confirmed by the local authority, that they have been residing there for at least 10 years…

“This provision is designed to achieve fairness and to serve people’s need to secure their livelihoods and cultivate crops for their families, while also preventing the exploitation of government property,” the directive said…

Dok Doma, the deputy director of the General Department of Housing at the Ministry of Land Management, Urban Planning and Construction and the director of the Land Allocation for Social and Economic Development Project II, said … that villagers who do not have land can write a letter to their local authority.

The authority will then assess their livelihoods and determine if they qualify for a social land concession, he said…

Rights group Adhoc senior investigator Soeng Sen Karuna applauded the government directive but said local authorities were too slow to issue social land concessions to villagers.

“It’s great that the government is considering these cases, but the process needs to be speeded up. It looks good on paper, but the execution is poor.”…