World Bank keeps pushing Cambodia over land evictions but stops short of punishment

Monday, May 16, 2011
Associated Press

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — The World Bank is pushing Cambodia to resolve a standoff involving thousands of poor landowners facing eviction from their homes but stopped short of punishing the country Monday after it missed a deadline set by the bank to end the dispute.

A bank statement said landowners are still trying to negotiate a deal with the government over valuable land around Phnom Penh’s Boeung Kak Lake. But the bank did not follow through on an ultimatum it had issued to the government.

A seven-year, $24 million bank program designed to strengthen property rights backfired for landowners at the lake, where it facilitated evictions without adequate compensation.

The fate of the estimated 2,000 families at the lake, many living in slum-like conditions, has pitted the Washington-based development giant against Cambodia’s aid-dependent, but increasingly authoritarian and corrupt government.

The Great Asian Land Grab

How a World Bank program helped displace tens of thousands of urban poor.

MAY 13, 2011
BY MIKE ECKEL
Foreign Policy

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia-The murky waters of Phnom Penh's largest lake were once visible out the back window of Cham Pothisak's tin-roof-and-plywood shack. Today, a manmade sand dune taller than the home itself menaces like an ocean wave, filling up his crawlspace basement with putrid water and his family's life with clouds of mosquitos.

It's squalid shelter at best, but in Cambodia, where 80 percent of the population depends on agriculture, logging, or fishing for their survival, land is wealth, and Cham said he has documents proving ownership to the 60-square-meter plot he bought 11 years ago. But now, along with thousands of others, he faces eviction in what may be the largest forced relocation of Cambodians since 1975, when the Khmer Rouge emptied virtually the entire capital. This time once again, it's the arbitrary power of the state at work: The government turned over some of Phnom Penh's priciest real estate, including Cham's land, to a close associate of Prime Minister Hun Sen. Developers are already moving in, pouring sand into Boeung Kak lake to fill it up, flood out shantytown homes, and prepare the site for construction. "It's like they're coming to kill us. They're taking our lives," Cham said. "We're angry but we can't do anything against them. It's like the Khmer Rouge all over again. We're helpless."

It wasn't supposed to be this way. About a decade ago, the World Bank began a program to codify property rights, with the goal of building system akin to what landowners enjoy in the West. The program was meant to make sure that people like Cham could defend their property from arbitrary expropriation. But the initiative has backfired. Instead of helping landowners, it has in many cases actually contributed to their displacement, forcing out residents who may well have had legitimate, longstanding claims to their lands and homes.

Justice for Boeung Kak is justice for all Cambodians!

Lao Meng Khin, Hun Xen's crony and land-grabber in Boeung Kak Lake

Cambodians denounce World Bank-funded land grab

5 April 2011
League of Boeung Kak Women Struggling for Housing Rights
Bretton Woods Project

Excerpt of a February letter to the World Bank President from the League of Boeung Kak Women Struggling for Housing Rights

We are the residents of Boeung Kak in Sras Choc commune, Phnom Penh, Cambodia who submitted a complaint to the World Bank Inspection Panel in September 2009. Our land rights, including our right to register our land, were unfairly denied by the World Bank-financed land-titling project. Instead our land has been leased to a private company and we are being forcibly evicted from our homes. We know that we have the right to be protected from forced eviction under the World Bank policy on involuntary resettlement. However, this policy is not being respected. …

In Cambodia today, land-grabbing by powerful people is increasing all the time. … We are losing our land, our homes and our livelihoods. Our children are forced to drop out of school. We have no food security and our mental health is deteriorating. We cannot find justice at the courts, which only work for the rich and the powerful. When we try to protest, we are threatened, arrested, beaten and abused.

Cambodia and the limits of World Bank accountability

Drowned out in Beoung Kak Lake (Photo: Tin Zakariya, RFA)

5 April 2011
David Pred and Natalie Bugalski
Bertton Woods Project

The World Bank Inspection Panel released an investigation report in March, which found that the Bank breached its operational policies by failing to properly design and supervise the Cambodia Land Management and Administration Project (LMAP), contributing to “grave harm” to affected families. The Bank’s Inspection Panel found that the Bank’s failures contributed to the forced eviction of some 20,000 people living around Phnom Penh’s Boeung Kak Lake. Residents were wrongly denied the right to register their land ownership under the $28.8 million Bank-financed land titling project shortly before the government leased the area to a private developer and began a campaign of intimidation to force more than 4,000 affected families to sell their property for a fraction of its market value.

The project was established with the stated aim of developing the land market and improving security of tenure for the poor by systematically registering land and issuing titles across the country. However, the Panel found that many poor and vulnerable households have been arbitrarily excluded from the titling process, denying them an opportunity to claim and formalise their land rights. The Panel attributed this failing to non-compliance with the Bank’s operational policies and procedures on project appraisal and supervision.

World Bank Failed Lake Residents: Complaint

Homes being dismantled on Boeung Kak Lake (Photo: Nicolas Axelrod, The Phnom Penh Post)

By Men Kimseng, VOA Khmer
Original report from Washington
19 March 2010

Click here to listen to the audio program in Khmer

A multi-million-dollar World Bank land project failed to help residents in an impoverished community in Phnom Penh establish legal land titles, allowing their ouster and leaving them in limbo, a US rights group says in an official complaint.

The World Bank’s Land Management and Administrative project failed to protect the people of Beoung Kak lake in northern Phnom Penh, who were pushed out to make way for a lucrative real estate development, the Center on Housing Rights and Evictions says in a Sept. 4, 2009, complaint.

“As Boeung Kak residents were unable to transfer their customary rights into formalized land titles under LMAP, the project not only failed to formalize their tenure but in effect also degraded their pre-existing tenure status,” the Minnesota-based COHRE said in the complaint, a copy of which was obtained by VOA Khmer.

The $28.83 million land management project was initiated in June 2002 and implemented by the Ministry of Land Management but was terminated by the government in September 2009, just a few months before its final date, for having too many conditions.

Local residents said that in 2006, Sras Chak commune, which includes the Boeung Kak community, was declared an adjudication zone, but when they asked to register their land, they were denied and told they lived in a development zone.

“They don’t have a land title, but they have purchasing documents that some of the new residents bought from older ones, and authorities have recognized them,” said Eang Vuthy, a legal education officer of the Bridges Across Borders Southeast Asia, which operates in alliance with COHRE.

“The reason why they don’t have a legalized land title was that in 2006 or 2007 the LMAP declared that Sras Chak commune would be an adjudication zone, but the Phnom Penh municipality stopped the registration process,” he said. “They don’t have a land title, only customary rights.”

Vuthy said that according to the Cambodian land law those who live more than five years on uncontested land are the rightful owners.

There are more than 4,000 families of Boeung Kak residents, some of which have been living there for almost 20 years. Most of them are poor people, while some have guesthouse businesses. Many were evicted after the government decided in 2007 to lease the land to Shukaku, Inc., a developer.

According to the Development Credit Agreement for the LMAP, in order to mitigate the potential harm of evictions from state property, an application of the Environment and Social Guidelines, including the Resettlement Policy Framework is required, COHRE said.

However, the framework was not applied in the case of Boeung Kak. Therefore, in addition to the “weakening of the customary land rights of Boeung Kak residents, the protections that the DCA required have not been implemented by the government,” COHRE said.

More than 900 families have so far been evicted from the Boeung Kak area. Some have been relocated to Damnak Troyeung, some 20 kilometers outside of Phnom Penh, while others received a lump sum of $8,500 in compensation.

“We, the Boeung Kak residents, don’t know where else to seek intervention because three countries have announced registration of our land, but now the government says the land is still in dispute and cannot be registered,” said Thai Nary, a local resident who claimed to have settled in Village 22 since 1993. “I am so hopeless hearing that. I cannot even fix my leaking roof. I almost cry every day and cannot stand up anymore. If I raise my roof a bit higher, I am scared that the company will besiege and stop me.”

Thai Nary and other residents have asked for onsite development.

The residents have asked COHRE for assistance, and the case has so far been brought to the attention of the World Bank’s Inspection Panel, according to COHRE documents.

Officials at the World Bank in Washington declined to comment, referring VOA Khmer to see documents posted on its Web site.

An Inspection Panel’s report dated Dec. 2, 2009, posted on the bank’s site, concludes that in order to make an independent assessment for management compliance, “Bank policies and procedures and related issues of harm in the context of the project, the Panel would need to conduct an appropriate review of all relevant facts and applicable policies and procedure.”

The Panel, however, asked the World Bank’s Board of Executive Directors to refrain from issuing any recommendation pending a management meeting with the government.

“The Panel, as it has done in similar situations in the past with Board approval, will not take a position at this time on whether the issues of non-compliance and harm raised in the Requester merit an investigation,” the Panel concluded.

After COHRE’s request for an investigation, on Dec. 17, 2009, the World Bank’s Cambodia manager, Annette Dixon, issued a statement saying the bank was ready to support Cambodia to improve living conditions of people who have been resettled or are facing settlement from land facing development.

An initiative for negotiations between the government and the Bank is underway, sources told VOA Khmer.

City's poor unable to hold land

Thursday, 16 July 2009
SEBASTIAN STRANGIO AND MAY TITTHARA

In a March 4 letter from the CLEC to World Bank Country Director Annette Dixon, a copy of which has been obtained by the Post, lawyers noted that Group 78 had received several "illegal" eviction notices and its applications for land title were rejected by city authorities.

The Phnom Penh Post

Activists say govt's titling scheme ignores its most vulnerable citizens.

Photo by: HENG CHIVOAN
Group 78 residents protest at Canadia Bank’s head office Wednesday as part of a last-ditch effort to avoid eviction.

THE impending eviction of the city's Group 78 community is the latest example of the failure of a World Bank-funded land-titling programme intended to improve tenure security for the urban poor, housing rights activists say.

Since 2002, the World Bank has funded a large part of the government's $38.4 million Land Management and Administration Project (LMAP), which was designed to establish an "efficient and transparent land administration system" in Cambodia by 2007, according to an early project appraisal.

The project, which also receives funding from the German, Finnish and Canadian governments, was recently extended through the end of this year.

But rights groups say that for besieged urban communities such as Group 78, which faces eviction from its Bassac riverfront site Friday, LMAP's efforts have so far done little good.

"The ineffectiveness of LMAP in securing [the] land rights of the urban poor is laid bare in the case of Group 78," said Natalie Bugalski, a legal officer at the Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions.

"Households had clear evidence of possession rights but were denied access to the titling programme," she said, adding that the dispute had yet to be resolved "in accordance with the law".

Man Vuthy, a legal coordinator at the Community Legal Education Centre (CLEC), which represents Group 78, said that if the World Bank does not take action after the eviction of Group 78 residents, LMAP will have "failed".

He said that World Bank officials had met several times with CLEC lawyers to discuss land issues, but that they had neglected poor urban communities involved in land disputes in an effort to maintain a stable relationship with the government.

"We know the World Bank works peacefully with the authorities, but this is the last chance for the community," he said.

"The mechanisms don't work well, and it is only the World Bank that can help them."

On Tuesday, the Court of Appeal upheld a Friday eviction deadline for Group 78 after lawyers attempted to halt an April 20 eviction notice.

The government says residents are illegally squatting on land belonging to the state and to Sour Srun Enterprises, a local developer.

But Group 78 claims ownership of its Tonle Bassac commune site under Article 30 of the Kingdom's 2001 Land Law, which allows individuals to claim title over land if they have been in peaceful possession of it for five years prior to 2001. Many residents claim they have lived at the site since the mid-1980s.

Some say the strength of the community's claim only underlines the failures of the LMAP program.

In a March 4 letter from the CLEC to World Bank Country Director Annette Dixon, a copy of which has been obtained by the Post, lawyers noted that Group 78 had received several "illegal" eviction notices and its applications for land title were rejected by city authorities.

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The group 78 case is ... an important test case for the implementation of the lmap and the rule of law...

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"The Group 78 case is therefore an important test case for the implementation of the LMAP and the rule of law in Cambodia," the letter stated.

On April 30, Dixon wrote to Minister of Economy and Finance Keat Chhon to inform him that evictions could "damage the reputation of the Government as it moves to undertake important reforms in the land sector".

Dixon added: "We would suggest that a temporary moratorium on evictions be declared until such a legal and policy framework is in place, which would send a positive signal."

The LMAP project's appraisal document sets out contingencies to be followed regarding land dispute cases.

The document states the project "includes support for strengthening mechanisms of dispute resolution". It adds that the project would be "scaled back if [government] commitment to a fair process of dispute resolution is inadequate".

Housing rights activists say there has been a marked lack of progress on the ground.

David Pred, director of Bridges Across Borders Southeast Asia (BAB), said that while LMAP set out to "improve tenure security" for urban and rural land-holders and "reduce land conflict and land-grabbing", the opposite trend was evident.

"We have witnessed a significant increase in land disputes, land-grabbing and forced evictions over the past seven years," he said.

He added: "We have observed that the communities in Phnom Penh who are most vulnerable to displacement, like the residents of Group 78 ...
have been denied access to the land titling and dispute resolution systems established by LMAP."

Mark Grimsditch, a BAB legal adviser, said that just 38,502 out of a projected 198,000 titles had been distributed by LMAP in Phnom Penh since 2002.

He said a number of eligible cases - including communities facing eviction at Boeung Kak lake - had been adjudicated but fell "at the final hurdle" after being arbitrarily denied their title certificates.

Though she described supervision by LMAP's donors as "inadequate", Bugalski said most of the blame fell on local authorities.

"The primary responsibility to ensure tenure security and protect against forced evictions lies with the Cambodian government," she said.

Criticisms of LMAP came as Group 78 representatives met with World Bank officials Wednesday in a last-ditch attempt to delay their scheduled eviction by city authorities.

Earlier, they protested outside Canadia Bank, which they claimed is in charge of a plan to build a bridge over the Tonle Bassac. The bridge project prompted the city to claim portions of the community's land, where it plans to build a road.

But Rath Kumnith, a legal adviser to Canadia Bank, said the bank was only providing a loan to the project and was not directly involved in it.

The World Bank was contacted for comment Thursday but had not responded as of press time.