Take from the poor to give to the poor

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Rutiger
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Take from the poor to give to the poor

Post by Rutiger »

Seemed like a good plan on paper. Legally purchase land for the poorest, landless Cambodians with donated money so they can farm and be self-sufficient. Hmmm, but first we need to evict the poor, Cambodians who are already there farming that same land.
World Bank Project in Trouble Before It Starts
FEBRUARY 19, 2016

Between 2008 and 2015, the World Bank and German aid agency GIZ spent $13 million setting up eight social land concessions for thousands of the poorest Cambodians, doling out small farms they could use to pull themselves out of poverty and, after a few years, own outright.

Soon, the Bank hopes to start spending another $25 million on phase two, building up the eight sites—plus five others set up with help from Japan—and adding a new site in the north of Kompong Thom province.


The original eight social land concessions set up during the first phase of the Land Allocation for Social and Economic Development project are shown in green. A new concession for the proposed second phase of the project would be located about 20 km northwest of the Tipo 1 concession, in the top left corner of the map. (Licadho)

The original eight social land concessions set up during the first phase of the Land Allocation for Social and Economic Development project are shown in green. A new concession for the proposed second phase of the project would be located about 20 km northwest of the Tipo 1 concession, in the top left corner of the map. (Licadho)
The trouble is, the swath of land picked out for the new site is already packed with hundreds of working farms. That’s raising ques­tions about how the Bank can turn it into a viable concessions for new arrivals—and more doubts that the project itself can be turned into the kind of replicable model for poor families that the Bank wants it to be.

“It’s not hard to predict the problems that are coming. We’ve seen them already, and so has the government and the World Bank,” said Naly Pilorge, director of rightsgroup Licadho, which has studied the Land Allocation for Social and Economic Development (LASED) project.

“The first LASED project faced several problems because…recipients received land that was al­ready occupied,” she said. “In some cases, landlessness was simply transferred as poor families were forced to make way for other poor families. In other cases, land recipients remain un­able to use the land giv­en to them due to ongoing disputes with oth­er families or powerful actors. The World Bank never acknowledged or addressed these problems the first time around and now appears set to repeat the same flawed process.”

The Bank noted, as early as Sep­tember 2014, the site’s possible overlap with local indigenous communities—it later decided the concern was unfounded—and the potential need to force some people to move for necessary infra­struc­ture as part of a second phase of the project. The Bank has since moved several steps closer to approval.
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“A fundamental problem with distributing farmland to poor families through SLCs is that there is hardly any vacant, suitable land avail­able in Cambodia,” she said. “Instead of investing time and much money in a project certain to lead to more land disputes, the gov­ernment should focus on en­suring land tenure security for poor families where those families already occupy land.”
https://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/worl ... ts-108700/
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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