Yesterday was International Day of indigenous peoples.

In Cambodia, the exact population of the country’s indigenous citizens is still unknown. The last official measure was a 1998 census that recognized 17 different groups numbering about 101,0000, but more recent research conducted by the International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs suggested there were almost 200,0000 indigenous peoples living in Cambodia in 2007.


Most indigenous people live in the country’s less densely populated north and northeastern provinces of Mondulkiri, Ratanakiri, Stung Treng and Kratie. Many of their communities straddle the borders of Vietnam and Laos, areas that have been hard hit by development projects. But groups like the Kuy are also present in Kampong Thom and others even as far south as Kampong Speu and Sihanoukville.

http://www.khmertimeskh.com/news/28270/ ... rotection/

PHNOM PENH - Cambodia plans to co-sponsor the 15th National Day of Indigenous Peoples on the 9th of August, 2019, with the theme this year being the preservation of indigenous languages; according to a UNESCO study, every two weeks there is a language that dies. Cambodia is also at risk of losing the indigenous languages, because until now minorities have been discouraged from speaking their language by central government and many indigenous people are ashamed of their culture, or feel they need to hide their traditions.

2019 is the first year that the Ministry of Rural Development has been developing a new policy to promote the conservation and development of indigenous peoples in Cambodia, and the new policy will promote the preservation of ethnic cultural traditions as well as improving living standards.

Respect for indigenous rights should include consultation with indigenous communities before making decisions that will impact their environment, in particular the water supplies.

Indigenous knowledge, which could be key in making smart decisions about water, is being left out, an indigenous expert warns
By Adela Suliman

STOCKHOLM, Aug 30 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Indigenous peoples from the Amazon to the Arctic are being left out of the global conversation on water property rights, a United Nations' indigenous rights expert warned this week.

Speaking on the sidelines of an international conference on water in Stockholm, special rapporteur Victoria Tauli-Corpuz said indigenous people needed to be better "consulted and involved" with water projects to help stem the impacts of climate change.

Indigenous groups, for instance, have been affected by dams along the Mekong River in Cambodia, which have caused water shortages downstream, and by water pollution in the western Huehuetenango region of Guatemala, she said, but rarely consulted about projects.

"Indigenous peoples are the ones who are left behind," Tauli-Corpuz, who became the U.N.'s special rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples in 2014, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation during an interview.

Such groups often have ancient knowledge about water systems which could help improve decision making, she said at annual World Water Week in Stockholm, which ends Friday.

"The way indigenous people deal with water is something that has been developed through thousands of years so they have very, very sustainable systems of managing water," she said.

"If indigenous peoples are not included then the contributions and their knowledge will also not be taken into account and that is a loss for society."
http://news.trust.org/item/20190830095954-jq9ky

Article on the different cultures of Kuy, Tampuan, Phnong, and Cham minorities in Cambodia.

People out of time
Losing their forests, languages and cultures, Southeast Asia’s minorities are becoming strangers in their own homes
By Antonio Graceffo, Bruno Deniel-Laurent, P. Brisby
Editor’s note: Across the region, indigenous groups are relentlessly pushed to the margins of society as traditions of communal land and shifting agriculture give way to private property and environmental degradation at the hands of the ethnic majority. In October 2007, Southeast Asia Globe explored the fading worlds of the tribal groups who have called Southeast Asia home for centuries. Now, for the first time, you can read their stories online.

In Cambodia’s Ratanakiri province, a village headman is made very drunk by a group of Chinese and Khmer businessmen. He likes his new friends so much and appreciates the money they ‘donated’ to him, that he signs the document that will allow an indigenous Tampuan family to sell their land. Strictly speaking, the transaction is illegal under Cambodian law, but with the signature of the village headman, no questions will be asked. With the money they get from the land sale, the Tampuan family will most likely buy a used motorcycle, and then starve.
Full article: https://southeastasiaglobe.com/the-fadi ... al-groups/

October 11, 2019
More funds sought to support ethnic community
The Rural Development Ministry has requested additional funding from all sectors to support the process of conservation and development of indigenous peoples and cultures in the Kingdom.

Nuon Daniel, a ministry secretary of state, yesterday said the government has paid high attention to the fundamental rights and provision of full equal rights to all citizens. These include the promotion of value, language, ethics, culture, tradition and rights of indigenous peoples.

Mr Daniel was speaking at the National Consultative Workshop on Strategic Plan for Indigenous People Development and Conservation in Cambodia held in the capital.

“Indigenous people, as well as other Cambodian people, have full and equal rights under the law, including freedom of expression, the right to vote, the right to stand [in elections] for others to vote, and other rights,” he said.

However, Mr Daniel noted that despite efforts by the government, relevant ministries, institutions and civil society organisations to promote the rights and development of indigenous people, there are still some challenges that need to be addressed.

He said these included the process of certifying the identities of indigenous communities which is still slow because some have not been registered yet.

Mr Daniel also said there are also no culture centres and model villages, while educational programmes are limited and funding is lacking.

“The ministry has previously requested for a budget increase as well as funding for the development and conservation of indigenous peoples,” he said. “However, we recognize that budget allocation is limited, so we hope that partner organisations and stakeholders will help by raising more funds to ensure efficient and sustainable development and conservation of indigenous peoples.”

Mr Daniel also urged all stakeholders to help find ways to accelerate the community identification, legal registration and also land registration of indigenous communities.

Tep Tim, a representative of the Kuoy minority from Preah Vihear province, said at the event that indigenous people still face some challenges in pursuing their ways of life, such as the loss of land, natural resources and spiritual forests due to development by economic land concession companies. Ms Tim said there are also other challenges indigenous peoples face, such as lack of toilets, inadequate access to public services, lack of infrastructure in their areas and slow registration process of indigenous community lands.

“What we need is the legal registration of indigenous communities’ land to prevent wealthy and high-ranking officials from taking the land from us,” she said. “Therefore, we also ask the government as well as partner organisations to help increase more funding for the development of our indigenous peoples, especially for land registration and in the health and education sectors.”

“Losing land is just like losing life for indigenous people because we don’t want to be labourers hired by others or to migrate to find jobs,” Ms Tim noted. “We want to farm our land and have our traditional businesses like in the past.”
https://www.khmertimeskh.com/50650023/m ... community/

Land-grabbing in Asia displaces indigenous people: UN expert
Published: 09 Sep 2020
UN Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Francisco Cali-Tzay
The Business Standard | 8 September 2020

Land-grabbing in Asia displaces indigenous people: UN expert

Large-scale development projects, including dams, mining, monocrop plantations and logging are increasing in the region causing serious human rights violations as indigenous people lose their traditional lands and resources

Indigenous people in Asia are facing massive displacement, destruction of their environment and rising poverty due to land-grabbing, says a UN human rights expert.

"Large-scale development projects, including dams, mining, monocrop plantations and logging are increasing in the region causing serious human rights violations as indigenous people lose their traditional lands and resources," said Special Rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples Francisco Cali-Tzay referring to a regional consultation organised by his predecessor in Bangkok.

It will be presented to the Human Rights Council in September, said a media release issued from Geneva on Tuesday.

"States must take measures to prevent violence and the criminalisation of indigenous peoples arising from the exercise of their rights and the defence of their lands and territories. Strengthening the regulation of private companies is essential."

Indigenous people lack legal recognition of their status and there is widespread failure to protect their lands and respect their rights to participate and to be consulted in decisions affecting them.

Across the region, indigenous people, in particular women and persons with disabilities, continue to be discriminated against and marginalised.

For States to put into action their development pledge of leaving no one behind, the obligations towards indigenous peoples must be at the forefront and reflected in policy measures and in the allocation of resources.

"The promotion of the rights of indigenous people and their traditional practices, are key to achieve sustainable development, combat climate change and the conservation of biodiversity," the Special Rapporteur said.
Original source: TBS
https://www.farmlandgrab.org/post/view/ ... -un-expert

Indigenous people receive clearer rules for land titles
Long Kimmarita | Publication date 27 October 2020 | 21:57 ICT

Relevant ministries and several civil society organisations (CSO) on October 26 introduced a new set of internal rules to make it easier and more economical for indigenous people to receive communal land titles in Cambodia.

The announcement was made during an event entitled “Workshop on Launching and Disseminating New Format on Internal Rules and By-law for Indigenous People, Communal Land Title in Cambodia”.

Attended by 100 participants including representatives of indigenous people, CSO and government officials, the workshop was a result of a working group spending nearly a year revising the internal rules.

Tek Vannara, executive director of the NGO Forum on Cambodia, said at the event that indigenous people had requested the government to revise its procedures for them to obtain communal land titles.

Sao Vansey, the executive director of the Indigenous Community Support Organisation, said the old rules had posed obstacles to communities of indigenous people in the country.

According to the NGO Forum on Cambodia, as of the end of 2019, there were 501 communities of indigenous people in the Kingdom. Of the number, 150 were recognised by the rural development ministry. Another 150 communities were listed as legal entities at the Ministry of Interior and 30 communities had received communal land titles from the Ministry of Land Management, Urban Planning and Construction.

There are 24 groups of indigenous people living throughout Cambodia and they account for 1.34 per cent of the population.
https://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/ ... and-titles

A (worthwhile) long read from Mongabay for anyone interested in indigenous land rights in Cambodia:

Cambodia puts its arduous titling process for Indigenous land up for review
by Danielle Keeton-Olsen on 15 April 2021

Since 2009, Cambodia has had a legal process by which Indigenous communities can obtain legal title to their traditional land.
Of around 455 Indigenous communities in Cambodia, 33 have been granted land titles.
People who have engaged in the Indigenous land titling process say it is time-consuming and arduous, and that even successful claimants are often granted title to just a fraction of their customary land.
This year, Cambodia has launched a review of its communal land titling process. Even people involved in the review are unsure what prompted it or what impacts the review might have.

Ethnic Kui Indigenous people have for generations mined the mountains and streams of Cambodia’s Romtom commune for their livelihoods. But those traditions shifted as Delcom, a Malaysian-owned gold-mining company, began digging up the land in the early 2010s and confronting artisanal miners with armed guards. Miners at that time said their peers had gone abroad to seek new jobs, while those who remained were broke.

Several years later, the community faced new pressure from Delcom. The company began stretching itself further, eating into farmland, and again choking the Kui communities’ livelihoods. With renewed frustrations, residents spoke to environmental activists; during the interviews one woman named a person she was told was in charge of the area, without knowing that the man is a powerful general named in several notorious land disputes.

Unbeknown to the residents living around it, the Delcom gold mine had been transferred from a Malaysian conglomerate to Chinese owners, a transaction whose details remain scant.

Under Cambodian law, a mechanism exists that should allow the Kui to make a case to own and use land they have been occupying for generations. However, as of late 2020, the Kui residents are still fighting for the rights to their land, and, like most of Cambodia’s Indigenous communities, have not successfully made a legal claim.

In reality, Cambodia’s strong laws for protecting Indigenous land are bogged down by a time-consuming process and blocked by land concessions.

This year, as land prices surge and the country is extracting private land from protected areas, the Cambodian government is reviewing its Indigenous communal land titling application process, and Indigenous land use in general. What motivated the reevaluation, and how Indigenous land rights might change as a result, is still opaque. But Indigenous NGOs and advocates say that truly protecting Indigenous cultures and their ties to Cambodia’s forests would require fundamental changes to the process of registering and protecting Indigenous land rights.
Rainforest stream with waterfall in Cambodia. Image by Rhett A. Butler/Mongabay.

The process for Indigenous land titling

Cambodia agreed to the U.N.’s declaration on Indigenous rights in 2007, which explicitly grants Indigenous groups authority over land they’ve held “by reason of traditional ownership,” to use or develop as they please. Two years later, the government enshrined the right of Indigenous groups to hold their traditional land, and the procedure for doing so, into its laws.

Since then, 33 communities have received land rights, or just 7% of the total 455 Indigenous communities known in Cambodia, according to data compiled by Cambodian nonprofit network NGO Forum.

The process is arduous. Before an Indigenous village and the NGO assisting it can begin surveying land to claim ownership, an individual Indigenous community has to gain recognition from its provincial authorities and Cambodia’s Rural Development Ministry, and then register legally with the Interior Ministry. About a third of Cambodia’s Indigenous communities have done so, according to NGO Forum data.

The next step is mapping and designating areas for homes, rotational farmland, ancestral burial grounds, and spirit forests and mountains. Usually a local NGO steps in to assist with GPS coordinates and creating the map. They then present the map to the Land Ministry, which confirms the area, ensures it doesn’t overlap with other land users, and finally issues the title.

Indigenous land titles also come with a condition to protect a piece of the forest, usually tied to the community as ancestral burial sites and spaces of spiritual significance.

Currently, 86 communities have applications in the works, while an additional 33 have received land titles in the end, according to NGO Forum data.
Full article: https://news.mongabay.com/2021/04/cambo ... or-review/

How far back on the tree do you have to go before you are indigenous of somewhere?

Pseudonomdeplume wrote: ↑Sat Apr 17, 2021 12:48 am How far back on the tree do you have to go before you are indigenous of somewhere?

What they call "indigenous Cambodians" are usually minority tribes living in the "highlands" of Cambodia. They have their own laws, languages, and codes which are not always respected by the Khmer majority. They are often seen as more primitive by Khmer, but these tribal people have a great respect for nature and the forests, because they depend on the bush to survive.
Frankly, I would be more inclined to entrust the local "indigenous" communities with the safe-guarding of their forests than the various ministries.
They have every reason to preserve the forest because it's their livelihood and their home.