Proposed Agricultural Deal Carries Risk for Cambodia's Rural Poor

Cambodian farmers prepare seedlings for their rice plantation at the paddy rice farm in Kandol village, Kampong Cham province, about 60 kilometers (37 miles) north of Phnom Penh (Photo: AP/file photo)

Phnom Penh 18 February 2010
Robert Carmichael, VOA

An investment group out of Australia has unveiled a $600 million plan to create a massive farm project in Cambodia. However, human rights workers are concerned that this deal, and others like it, will do little to help Cambodia's rural poor. Robert Carmichael in Phnom Penh has more.

BKK Partners, an Australian financial advisory firm, has a client that wants to buy 100,000 hectares of Cambodian land on which to grow crops such as rice, bananas, sugar cane, palm oil and teak.

BKK managing director Peter Costello was in Cambodia recently to discuss the idea. The client for the deal is a company called Indochina Gateway Capital Limited, which has ties to BKK.

The Phnom Penh Post newspaper recorded an interview with Costello, a former Australian finance minister, in which he explained why investing in food is so tempting. "I think agriculture is going to come back into its own as an investment in the decades that lie ahead and of course that's a great opportunity for Cambodia," he said.

The investors say the project will create jobs in an impoverished country, and help improve farming methods for the undeveloped - yet vital - agriculture sector.

But human rights workers say previous farm-industry deals have worked against ordinary Cambodians because of corruption, poor governance and often-violent land evictions.

Poor farmers often are kicked off the land and because of Cambodia's inadequate land-ownership records, often receive no compensation. So they wind up with no farm, no home and no way to start over.

Three years ago the United Nations human rights office in Phnom Penh said at least 59 land concessions totaling almost 1 million hectares had been granted to private companies for agriculture projects. It said that impoverished rural residents generally have lost out in such deals.

Government figures show it has approved 33 more projects since the U.N. report was released.

That does not include land concession granted to other countries. Qatar, Kuwait and South Korea have been pursuing concession deals here.

Matthieu Pellerin works on land rights for Cambodia human rights organization Licadho. He says corruption means that not only are the poor unprotected, the investors themselves may be at risk.

"Well-established system of corruption; a lack of checks and balances to ensure that poor communities, indigenous communities are not victimized by any kind of major agro-industry deals where sizable pieces of land are sold to private companies; the collusion of all state actors from the village up to the national level. All of these factors just make it very, very, very difficult if not impossible to abide by the book. I think that if one wants to really abide by the book, Cambodia in 2010 is not the place to come," he said.

BKK Partners' Costello says the investors plan to give five percent of the cash generated by the land deal to social projects in Cambodia.

But Pellerin says that may not benefit the poor, unless there is adequate oversight to make sure the money goes to community needs and not politician's pockets.

Opposition politician Son Chhay says if the BKK deal is done properly, it could mark a welcome change from past agreements with Chinese and Vietnamese agriculture companies. He says they do not invest in the country's people.

However, Son Chhay says it can be difficult to get information about land agreements. Until 2008 he headed parliament's foreign affairs committee, and he says members of parliament are blocked from examining contracts on such deals. "It's still the case that we are not able to get our hands on investment documents, and that's a cause for great concern," he said.

He says BKK must make the details of the deal public to ensure that rural poor do not lose out.

The issue of land seizures in Cambodia has drawn the attention of the U.N.'s special rapporteur on human rights. Surya Subedi on a recent visit asked the government to suspend land evictions until it put in place proper legal safeguards. But the government refused, saying to do so would hold up development.

Subedi says a new law on government land seizures is too vague. "For example, what do we mean by public interest? If land can be acquired in the public interest, how do you define it? Who defines it?," said Subedi.

Opposition politicians and activists for the poor say the risk is that the government will simply seize any land it wants, and those farming the land will have no legal protection.

Massive relocation diplaces Phnom Penh's poor

February 27, 2009
ABC Radio Australia

As the price of land has soared in Cambodia in recent years, tens of thousands of urban and rural poor have been evicted from their land and their homes.

Human rights groups and civil society say that - despite the passing of a Land Law in 2001 - the situation continues to worsen as the powerful indulge in a scramble for land at the expense of the poor.

Robert Carmichael
Speakers: "Channy", Village Six evictee; Kek Galabru, founder of human rights group Licadho; Peter Jipp, land special with the World Bank in Phnom Penh

Click here to listen to the audio program in English (Windows Media)

CARMICHAEL: Phnom Penh has changed markedly over the past decade. Where there were once large slums providing homes and work for tens of thousands of people in central locations, there are now tracts of fenced off, empty land, or freshly-painted modern buildings. It's all part of what the municipality calls its 'beautification' programme - but it has come at a price, often paid by the poorest. I am standing at Village Six in the north of Phnom Penh. It's part of the latest threatened area - a low to middle-income suburb surrounding the city's Boeung Kak Lake. Last year, in a multi-million dollar land deal that local human rights groups say was crafted illegally, a powerful politician was granted the right to fill in the lake and develop the land on and around it.

The Boeung Kak lake development will see 30,000 people evicted in the coming months in what will be one of South-East Asia's largest land evictions in decades. Some families have lived in the area since the Khmer Rouge were driven out of power in 1979. One of the residents faced with eviction is Channy. She is using a false name for fear of retribution. Channy moved here in 1990 and has raised a family in her home - a respectable two-storey building, tiled and well maintained. She says the municipality and the company haven't bothered to come and discuss the development with residents. Instead, they heard about it through the media.

She is angry that the compensation offered is so meagre - around eight thousand US dollars per house, no matter what its real value. Channy says that residents aren't being greedy - they simply want a fair deal.

CHANNY: What we can accept is this: We have to get the price that our houses are worth on the open market. The government and the company have to do this exchange for a reasonable price so we can buy another house in the city, not twenty kilometres outside the city in the countryside.

CARMICHAEL: Amnesty International says at least 150,000 people are at risk of eviction in Cambodia - that's 1 per cent of the population. Dr Kek Galabru is the founder of human rights group Licadho. She says the Boeung Kak Lake case is the latest in a long line of land grabs and evictions that generally target the poor and powerless.

She says the problem is getting worse.

GALABRU: I don't think this is better - we don't see the sign. Because we see the number of the victims that come to us, come from the province. Everywhere.

CARMICHAEL: The World Bank is involved in a program to issue land title documents. The Bank's land specialist, Peter Jipp, says almost 1 million land title documents have already been distributed to people across the country. The target is to issue 1.5 million land titles before the program closes at the end of this year.

JIPP: This is really the first time since the Khmer Rouge that formal titles are being issued. And there have already been almost a million titles that have been issued to land owners in Cambodia under the program. I would have to say that this is a very significant step for Cambodians to have formal title. This is a long process and with almost a million titles having been issued there still are another 11 million parcels out there that need to be titled, so there is still a long way to go.

CARMICHAEL: But while legal title may be important, the courts that were specially-created to hear land disputes are widely seen to have failed. Licadho's Dr Kek Galabru.

GALABRU: It didn't work because most of the people who are in the conflicts - you know, the ones that want to grab the land of the poor - they have power. And in Cambodia if you have power and you have money, you always win.

CARMICHAEL: For its part the government denies accusations that it is working against its own poverty alleviation strategy. Information Minister Khieu Kanharith acknowledges there have been high-profile cases where things have gone wrong, but maintains that the situation is not as bad as is sometimes painted. That is cold comfort to Channy and her neighbours at Village Six - they stand little chance of resisting eviction in the coming months.

The only certainty is that Channy and her family will soon be forced to leave their home, which will then be demolished to make way for offices and expensive houses. At that point she will become just the latest in a long line of powerless Cambodians who have been evicted in the country's unending scramble for land.