Property Rights for the Urban Poor in Cambodia

The Dey Krahorn eviction underway in Phnom Penh. Photograph by Sarah Grime

July 27, 2009
by Christine Robinson
The WIP

It was two in the morning when we first heard the loudspeakers. My friend was annoyed thinking the noise was coming from people partying late, but we later learned something very different was happening. I got up early that morning to eat breakfast before a long day at the Killing Fields and Tuol Sleng. Walking downstairs, I saw about a hundred people outside our hotel in Phnom Penh including press, local police, and the Cambodian military.

I rushed outside and found a member of my group. He explained that the slum down the street, Dey Krahorn, was being forcefully evacuated by the military and police. A barrier kept us from getting too close, and a green fence had been put up along the perimeter. We saw trucks coming out of the slum carrying what I thought was junk, but later realized were whatever possessions the people could salvage from their houses.

We stopped to talk to Kevin Knight, who works in a different slum with an NGO. He told us that the development company 7NG, along with the ruling party in Cambodia, the Cambodian Peoples’ Party (CPP), were responsible for the evictions. Dey Krahorn was located in a prime location in downtown Phnom Penh and worth an estimated US$44 million.

Kevin explained that the 150 families living in the slum had been negotiating with 7NG in the weeks prior to the evictions. The company offered each family US$20,000 or an apartment in a resettlement site named Cham Chao, located at least 16 kilometers from the center of Phnom Penh.

At first this seemed like a reasonable offer, but what I failed to realize is that the residents of the slum had livelihoods, access to water and education, and other things that the city center offered. The majority of people living in Dey Krahorn made a living as street vendors, so if forced into a location with a reduced population they would lose their incomes.

The truth of what was happening just a few hundred yards away was finally settling in. Why was all of this happening here, I wondered, and why now? I learned that because of all of the foreign investment in the area (including our hotel), land prices had dramatically increased. According to the Cambodian League for the Promotion and Defense of Human Rights (LICADHO), slum evictions are not a new phenomenon in Cambodia. The country is suffering from a classic case of the rich getting richer while the poor get poorer.

According to the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in Cambodia, “The eviction was carried out in the middle of the night, with bulldozers, tear gas, rubber bullets, batons, and workers equipped with sticks and axes contracted to demolish the houses… The residents were thrown onto the street to watch their homes being destroyed.” A friend of Kevin’s who had been inside the slum when the eviction started described a woman collapsing in front of her house and bulldozers that continued to plow into her, sending her to the hospital with injuries.

After speaking with Kevin and other foreigners in the area, I realized how much the past really does influence the present. In order to understand what is happening in present day Cambodia, it is necessary to look to history, especially the period immediately following the Khmer Rouge.

When the Khmer Rouge came into power they wanted to make everyone in the society equal, which meant destroying money, books, private possessions, and land titles. During the period from 1975-1979, the cities of Cambodia were cleared out as the people were made to live and work in rural areas. After the fall of the Khmer Rouge in 1979, the people came flooding back into the cities. Since all of the land titles had been destroyed, people grabbed whatever they could, and the cities, especially Phnom Penh, became home to thousands of “squatters”.

Not everyone I spoke with explained the situation in the same manner. Some were sympathetic to the residents of Dey Krahorm, while others believed the government and 7NG were taking the required actions for the city to further “develop”. I was told by several people that the majority of the residents in Dey Krahorn had legal rights to their land. Some families were “squatting” illegally, but according to the Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions (COHRE), around 140 families living in Dey Krahorn had been there since the 1980s and were given rights to the land under the Cambodian Land Law (2001). Not only do the residents meet all of the preceding requirements, they have documentation to prove it.

According to Amnesty International, Cambodia is a state party to the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) and “has an obligation to protect the population against forced evictions… [the evictions at Dey Krahorn] show all too clearly how little respect Cambodian authorities have for these requirements”. Another person added that while the residents had been living in Dey Krahorn for years, the land was owned by the government so it was free to be taken at any time.

Regardless of the exact legal situation of the slums in Phnom Penh, it’s clear that Cambodia’s land title situation is in peril. A quick search for the land laws of Cambodia reveals relentless confusion in the period following the Khmer Rouge. We are only just starting to see the severe affects of the land laws today, as foreign investment and rapid growth in Phnom Penh cause once worthless land to become a precious commodity.

Christine's blog entry is part of a two-part series written by WIP Contributor Pushpa Iyer's students. In the coming weeks, more entries will follow. Part I, "Legacy, Responsibility, Justice and Spirituality" will contemplate how Cambodia is coping with its painful past. Part II, "Identity, Sex Trafficking, HIV/AIDS and Property Rights" will explore some of the challenges modern-day Cambodia faces. – Ed.

Christine Robinson grew up in the Chicago area and completed her undergraduate work at the University of Iowa with a BA in International Studies and Spanish. She is currently studying at the Monterey Institute of International Studies where she is pursuing a MPA in International Management. In her spare time, Christine enjoys sports, travel and studying languages.