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Resettlement

(i)  Introduction

Development has been underway in many dimensions in Cambodia particularly in infrastructure, with State-assisted funding from the government, loans from multilateral and bilateral development banks, funding agencies and many other private sources. While development projects bring lots of benefits to the public, they also cause several negative effects to the people too — for instance, for some projects, thousands of families are forced to resettle temporally or permanently. According to a major development project survey, 3,198 families are affected by the Vietnam-Takeo electrical cable connection project. In the same manner, thousands of other people are affected by road rehabilitation, such as National Roads no.1, no.2, no.4, no.5, no.6, no.7, no.56, and no.68, other road refurbishments in the city; and other development projects that involve resettlement such as sewage canal rehabilitation, rehabilitation of dams to prevent flooding and irrigation projects.

A survey conducted by NGOs working with urban poor communities show that in Phnom Penh and in its outer Khans there are 62,249 households in 569 areas, which are classified as poor communities. Most of them face eviction by development projects and investments; and the most at risk are those who live on public land.

During the last 2–3 years, resettlement and eviction have been increasing sharply. The affected people became poorer and poorer due to the fact that their compensation was not equivalent to the land and housing they lost. In addition they had to spend a lot of money for resettlement and other basic expenses such as transportation, traveling and other conciliatory expenses for public services.

(ii)  Key Issues

The projects requiring resettlement are often implemented without compliance to clear procedure. This leads to forced eviction by local authorities without compensation or appropriate support to the evicted people.

In addition to forced expulsion, affected people face with serious consequences and losses such as:

The major issues that cause serious relocation problems are the lack of a resettlement policy and legislation to protect affected people against development projects, such as a sub-decree on “Resettlement”. Moreover, there is a lack of enforcement of existing legal safeguards, such as the Constitution, the Land Law, the International Convention on Economic Social and Culture Rights, etc.

(iii)  Recommendations

The recommendations on resettlement issues in Cambodia are as follows:

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For more information and the issues raised in this paper, please contact:

Resettlement Action Network, Email: leakhana@ngoforum.org.kh