Social Issues – The Voices of Indigenous Peoples in Cambodia

Why the SDGs Should Be Revised to Meet the Needs of Indigenous Peoples

The United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals consist of 17 targets that were set in 2015 as successors of the Millennium Development Goals. They represent an ambitious call to action for global partnership and apply to all U.N. members, with the aim of creating a just world, protecting the planet, ending poverty, and ensuring prosperity for all by 2030. The hope is that individual countries take ownership of these goals and establish policies at the national level to achieve them.

At the halfway point of the 2030 deadline, the United Nations admits that progress on the SDGs has been slow. More than 50 percent of the targets have seen weak or insufficient progress, while progress on a further 30 percent has stalled completely or gone into reverse. The U.N. says that efforts have been interrupted and undermined by a combination of the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which has affected global supply chains and has driven up food and gas prices, according to the Sustainable Development Goals Report 2023.

Notably, the report also emphasized that the world’s indigenous communities in particular are among those who bear the brunt of many of these setbacks and failures to address the targets.

An analysis conducted by Dominic O’Sullivan, a professor at Charles Sturt University in Australia, which centers the perspective of indigenous peoples, found that the SDGs compromise the notion of indigenous self-determination and ignore the cultural and political context of indigenous communities. O’Sullivan’s book, “Indigeneity, Culture, and the UN Sustainable Development Goals” went so far as to call for the goals to be revised to more closely follow the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP).

Indigenous peoples continue to be the poorest among the poor, even as poverty and extreme poverty in the Asia and Pacific regions have substantially declined. This demonstrates that indigenous peoples receive less attention and the goals themselves are broad and ambiguous, which hinders the public, policymakers, and government from identifying needs and gaps, keeping track of indigenous development progress, and delivering services that are appropriate to their cultural context, livelihoods, and traditional governance systems.

Speaking on what is missing from the SDGs, O’Sullivan has argued “I critique how effectively the SDGs contribute to indigenous people being among those who are ‘not left behind’ and suggest ways in which the SDGs and their indicators could be revised to support self-determination.” He further argues that UNDRIP provides a framework for revising the goals.

Therefore, the SDGs must be revised to add a separate standalone goal for indigenous peoples, one that is appropriate to their cultural practices, livelihoods, and governance systems. Otherwise, the 2030 goals will not be achieved.

Indigenous peoples, communities, and nations are those that have historical continuity with pre-invasion and pre-colonial society, have their own development strategies for their own territories, and consider themselves distinct from other sectors of society. These communities hold a non-dominant position in society and are determined to preserve and develop their ancestral territories, cultural patterns, ethnic identity, and governance systems and to be able pass these assets on to future generations. The phrase “indigenous peoples” is used differently in individual countries according to the context, ranging from “hill tribes” and “indigenous nationalities” to “indigenous communities,” “ethnic minorities,” “natives,” and more. These people often have unique development needs compared with other groups.

There are 476 million indigenous peoples living in 90 countries across the world and belonging to more than 5,000 different groups. Asia represents more than 70 percent of indigenous peoples, followed by Africa with 16 percent, Latin America with 11 percent, and Canada and the United States with 6 percent.

To make the SDGs more relevant to the unique contexts of indigenous communities, perhaps it would be useful to consider what indigenous people-specific SDG targets might look like.

First, a target that addresses indigenous peoples’ rights to free, prior, and informed consent and public participation is vital not just to protect indigenous ways of life, but also to protect the world’s biodiversity.

The majority of indigenous peoples depend on natural resources and land for their livelihoods, which include hunting, fishing, shifting cultivation, and the harvesting of non-timber forest products. These practices are important factors for maintaining their culture and promoting sustainable development. Multiple studies have shown that these ancestral practices and governance systems have enabled indigenous communities to enhance and to protect the world’s environment and biodiversity.

Currently, nearly 80 percent of the world’s remaining biodiversity is being protected by indigenous peoples, an undeniable testament to their ecological knowledge and spiritual relationship with their lands, forests, and natural resources.

However, around the world indigenous culture, traditional forest stewardship, and governance systems are all at risk, as their rights have not been strongly protected by their respective national governments, as well as their historic exclusion from the development decision-making processes in their territories.

Research by the International Labour Organization on the rights of indigenous peoples in Asia found that prior consultation and public participation regarding development projects that affect them are the cornerstones of UNDRIP and the Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention, and incorporating these rights as targets of an indigenous-specific SDG would enable them to protect their land, forests, and traditional systems and so continue to protect the environment.

Second, when it comes to enabling the environment and sustainable development in indigenous territories, it is also undeniable that we must have an SDG target which specifically recognizes indigenous rights to self-determination, which means allowing indigenous peoples to decide their own priorities for political, social, and economic development that might affect their beliefs, customs, culture, and traditional livelihoods.

Finally, while there is a much-needed specific SDG for women’s political representation, no specific target exists for indigenous peoples and their rights to be fully and equally represented by their national governments. Without full and effective participation and equal opportunities for leadership at all levels of decision-making in political, economic, and public life, indigenous peoples around the world will continue to be excluded from the policy processes that determine their futures.

Incorporating indigenous peoples more directly in the SDGs would also facilitate and encourage the collection of better data, both quantitative and qualitative, which can contribute to addressing the concerns of indigenous peoples by assessing their actual needs. Official data collection on indigenous peoples is not widely available at either the national or global levels. Adding to collective knowledge about indigenous communities is crucial in that it enhances the ability to monitor the development progress of these communities on the part of the public, civil society, and national governments, and especially allows policymakers who are interested in indigenous issues to be able to identify gaps for development policies.

Rithy Bun is a young research fellow at Future Forum who has many years of experience working with Indigenous communities.

Op-Ed: Indigenous Communities Lose Land at Perilous Rate Due to Predatory Loan Industry

A microfinance credit officer in Ratanakiri recently told me he thought Cambodia’s Indigenous communities would be landless in the next 10 years, as they sell off their land to pay off loans. His worrying prediction comes in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, when financial instability pushed even more people in the country to take on debt. Many local community members, including Indigenous communities, have borrowed money from banks and microfinance institutions to buy land, pay for medical expenses, build houses, fund farms, carry out religious ceremonies and pay school tuition. But many of these communities are struggling to pay back their debt.

As of 2022, there were 185 banks and microfinance institutions that were members of the Credit Bureau of Cambodia, including leasing companies and rural credit operators, providing loans to 4.8 million borrowers. The vast majority of the microloans issued in the country are held by just 10 institutions. In 2020, the average microloan in Cambodia was around $4,000 while the GDP per capita was about $1,500 that same year. Cambodians have more than $16 billion in microloan debt.

In Ratanakiri province, Indigenous community members are seriously concerned about the impact of the debt on the community, fearing the loss of land and the uncertain futures of their children. Around 80% of Indigenous families in Kam and Kres villages in O’chum district are indebted to microfinance institutions, with an average loan size of $1,000 in 2021, which has since grown.

The purported purpose of microfinance loans is to assist small-scale business start-ups, to support poor people in rural areas, to relieve families of financial burdens, and especially to advance the livelihoods of poor and subsistence-based farmers. However, many of these institutions have become profit-oriented and have implemented policies that violate human rights, including policies which result in pressured land sales.

Cambodia’s Pathway to Microfinance

In the 1990’s, in the aftermath of the long civil war, Cambodia started to rebuild its economy by launching economic reform policies. The financial sector played a key role in this process by fueling economic activities through loans, particularly loans given to people in rural areas. The banking system and microfinance institutions thus began having an increased role in the country’s development process. Many of these microfinance institutions evolved out of NGOs that provided microloans to fill in the gaps in the banking sector.

In 1999, the Law on Banking and Financial Institutions went into effect, allowing microfinance institutions to transform themselves into commercial institutions regulated by the National Bank of Cambodia. The Royal Government of Cambodia proclaimed 2006 as “a year of microfinance in Cambodia,” highlighting the role that banks and finance institutions play in alleviating poverty in rural areas and ensuring economic sustainability. Since then, the Cambodian microfinance sector has ballooned.

As of 2020, there were 10 financial institutions actively operating in Kam and Kres villages. The NGOs Licadho and Equitable Cambodia filed a complaint against six microfinance institutions funded by the International Finance Corporation (IFC), a member of the World Bank Group. The complaint was filed to the IFC’s watchdog, the Compliance Advisor Ombudsman. The watchdog is currently conducting its investigation, but its initial assessment found “preliminary indications of harm” to borrowers and violations of the IFC environmental and social standards.

Right to Relief, a report conducted by Licadho and EC, found that 90% of the Kreung Indigenous community members living in the two villages have fallen into heavy loan debt. These communities are dependent on traditional rotational agriculture, the cultivation of seasonal vegetables and cashew trees, and access to non-timber forest products for their daily livelihoods. On individual loans, community members use their housing and farming land titles as collateral.

Not only are there loan debt issues, but these Kreung communities have also been impacted by an ongoing land conflict with Hoang Anh Gia Lai, a Vietnamese rubber company. The company took over their farmland, spiritual forests and burial grounds starting in 2010 without prior consultation, which cut these communities off from their main sources of income, according to the NGO Inclusive Development International.

These issues have had negative consequences for Indigenous Kreung communities. Residents reported having trouble sleeping, not having enough food to eat and selling possessions and land to pay off loans. Residents have migrated to find work, and some locals report that children are working to support their families. In addition, the behavior of credit officers has been reported to be aggressive during their loan collection practices. According to the NGO Licadho, loan collectors have pressured community members to borrow money from private lenders and threatened them with arrest or legal complaints if they continue to delay payments.

“When I was five days late, the [credit officer] came to my house and said, ‘if you can’t find money, you will have to sleep at the police station.’ I was afraid because my child is only one year old,” one member of the community told the researchers involved in the Right to Relief report.

The report also notes that about seven families in Kam village had to sell their land to repay microfinance debt during Covid-19. According to a 2022 study funded by the German government, about 167,000 Cambodian households across the country sold their lands to repay loan debts over the five previous years.

Besides land sales, economic stress from over-indebtedness may be one cause of illegal logging activities within the community-protected area in Ratanakiri. CamboJA News reported that at least 527 Jarai families in Lom village, Pok Nhai commune, Oyadav district have borrowed money from financial institutions, with average loans ranging from $5,000 to $20,000. Residents reported resorting to cutting down trees to sell timber goods to customers across the border in Vietnam in order to repay their debts.

Potential Interventions for the Microfinance Industry

Without adequate attention to these issues and policies that can help to alleviate the loan debts, Indigenous communities will continue falling into debt traps and will face increasing landlessness. There are steps that national financial institutions, the government and international lenders can take to relieve heavy loan debts or to prevent individuals from undertaking debt which will harm them in the long-term.

First, banks and microfinance institutions should provide microloans to residents without them using land titles as collateral. The bank policies for these loans should be designed to meet the needs of the poor by providing a very small amount of money with a low interest rate. This system would assist Indigenous community members in improving their livelihoods, which often rely on natural resources, while still ensuring they can pass along their land to their children. With this approach, financial institutions should clearly define the eligibility criteria, such as very simple income-generating activities with outlined financial management plans.

Second, more training should be offered to microfinance institutions about ethical loan practices, with a specific focus on the issues facing Indigenous residents. The government should implement training programs that discourage predatory behaviors by credit officers, such as pressuring community members to take out loans or threatening people late on payments with legal action. As many Indigenous communities and Cambodian people in rural areas are illiterate and may lack financial education, the government, in particular the National Bank of Cambodia, could also initiate financial classes that inform the public on personal finance, business skills and risk management.

In addition, the government should consider implementing a debt moratorium for a certain period of time to relieve those who are heavily indebted. Thailand’s cabinet approved a suspension of principal and interest payments for three years for farmers last September, and Cambodia should watch the results of this measure closely to determine how such debt alleviation might work in Cambodia.

Finally, international lenders, such as the World Bank’s IFC, Germany’s DEG, and the Netherlands’ FMO, should strengthen their policies to protect human rights and the environment by conducting further research into this sector. Their policies must ensure that their loan recipients respect their performance standards and the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, and include strong due diligence processes.

Indigenous communities are some of the most marginalized populations in the country, and they deserve special attention and consideration when it comes to debt. They maintain traditions through management of forests, land and natural resources to make a living, and these practices have been handed down from generation to generation. Without a reexamination of the policies related to credit and debt repayment, they are at risk of losing their cultures, identities and livelihoods, along with their land.

Rithy Bun is a young research fellow at Future Forum who has many years of experience working with Indigenous communities.

Restored Indigenous Rights Will Lead to Better-Conserved Forests

Many of the Indigenous communities in Cambodia are primarily concentrated in the northeastern region of the country, areas which were previously covered by dense forest.

These Indigenous peoples identify as descendants of forest caretakers and have lived on their ancestral lands for thousands of years. Throughout this time, Indigenous communities have maintained strong ties with the forests in which they live through vibrant spiritual and cultural practices.

These Indigenous peoples have traditionally managed almost 4 million hectares of land and still rely heavily on traditional methods for hunting forest animals, harvesting non-timber forest products, including collecting honey and resin, and conventional rotational slash-and-burn rice farming methods.

Indigenous communities engage in a non-capitalist and non-competitive economy. Indigenous food production and livelihood maintenance methods have gone hand in hand with protecting the forests, mountains, lakes, and rivers that these communities honour as spirit gods and sacred places.

A group of Indigenous youth in a tree-ordaining ceremony

When it comes to the future of Cambodia’s forest management strategies, we should look to Indigenous-led, community-based methods, not just because these methods are suitable for the well-being of these communities, but also because these methods have proven time and time again to be better for the health of our forests.

The status quo

Over the past decades, Cambodia has adopted a range of national laws that relate to land management and recognition of Indigenous communities, including the 2001 Land Law, the 2002 Law on Forestry, the 2008 Protected Area Law, the 2009 Sub-decree No 83 on procedures of registration of land of Indigenous communities, and other international conventions that Cambodia has ratified as well as voting in favour of supporting the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples .

Nevertheless, at the same time, under these legal frameworks, much of Cambodia’s forested areas have been carved up by economic land concessions (ELCs) granted by the government to foreign and domestically-owned private companies in various sectors. Under the 2001 land law, these companies could lease up to 10,000 hectares for up to 99 years. Human rights monitor Licadho states that at least 297 local and international agri-business companies have been granted ELCs covering more than 2.1 million hectares of land.

The companies that have obtained ELCs have used the land for a variety of purposes: for agriculture, for hydropower construction, for mining operations and more. Many of these projects have been carried out in traditional Indigenous territories and natural resource hubs, including sites considered culturally significant and sacred by these communities.

Research found that these ELCs have had an outsized impact on deforestation. Although ELCs contained roughly 16 percent of Cambodia’s forest cover as of 2016, forest loss within ELC boundaries accounted for nearly 30 percent of the country’s total forest loss.

The loss of this land has had negative consequences for these Indigenous communities, threatening Indigenous sources of income, causing landlessness and, perhaps most significantly, leading to the loss of religious practices.

In 2012, Prime Minister Hun Sen issued an immediate and indefinite moratorium on new land concessions and promised a full review of existing ELCs.

Despite this moratorium, new ELCs have been granted as of 2022, one to a local tycoon’s company for 4,000 hectares and another that appears to comprise more than 9,000 hectares to Korean company Horizon Agriculture Development Co. in Steung Treng province. While it is still being determined what company oversees this land, satellite imagery shows that large chunks of forest in this ELC have been cleared since the land was signed over.

Forest and rights advocates have long argued that these ELCs are not just damaging in terms of their impact on the livelihoods and ways of life for local communities and in terms of the conflict they create but that they do not deliver on their economic development promises, not generating nearly enough financial benefit to offset the environmental and social costs they generate.

There is a better way.

It is still possible to restore the rights of Indigenous communities while saving this land’s biodiversity, ecosystems, and forests. The best path forward is to expedite communal land registration for Indigenous peoples and to enforce these rights on the ground. These significant steps will also pave the way for the Kingdom to move closer towards reducing greenhouse gas emissions, limiting global warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius as stated in the Paris Climate Accords (2015) and enabling Cambodia to reach the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030.

Communal land tenure works

Communal land recognition is of the utmost importance for the health and well-being of Indigenous peoples. This system forms a significant part of what enables these communities to keep their cultures alive.

Nevertheless, it is also crucial to note that Indigenous land management systems have the potential to be transformational when it comes to protecting this country’s forests. Research around the globe has found that this type of forest management—decentralized and in the hands of local communities—has been incredibly successful at enabling forests to thrive.

For instance, research from Columbia, cited by the UN’s FAO, shows that forests collectively managed by Indigenous and tribal communities have been conserved better than other forests.

There are various reasons why this type of forest management is particularly effective. Indigenous cultural and ecological knowledge is central to these reasons, rooted and intertwined with Indigenous religious practices. This knowledge translates to better outcomes for forests.

“Indigenous and tribal peoples’ traditional knowledge about fauna and flora and their uses, pests and diseases, fire, climate, and soils, and how these elements respond to human practices, contribute greatly to forest management, use, restoration, and monitoring, and adaptation to new situations,” FAO explains.

Alternatively, even more simply, “People who spend more time in the forest and know how to get greater benefits from them take care of them better.”

Community management of forests elsewhere has also proved successful. Recently released research in Nepal, made possible by remote sensing technology from NASA [U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration], found that a 1993 legislation that handed over management and user rights of forests to community forest groups has since led to a near-doubling of forest cover in the country, from 26 percent to 45 percent.

“Once communities started actively managing the forests, they grew back mainly due to natural regeneration,” said Jefferson Fox, the principal investigator of the NASA Land Cover Land Use Change project.

As of 2021, 34 percent of Nepal’s forests were managed by more than 22,000 community-forest user groups. Under the rules set out by Nepal’s legislation, local forest rangers work with community groups to develop plans to manage the forests. Local communities have created projects that allowed the extraction of resources from the forests, like fruits and traditional medicines, and allowed the sale of non-timber forest products. Community members were also empowered to protect forests through local forest patrols.

At the same time, Nepal has shown that natural forest protection can be parlayed into significant economic outcomes, partly through financing initiatives tied to the health of the country’s forests. One project linked to sustainable forestry in Nepal has the potential for up to $45 million in support and another $24 million.

Strengthen Law Enforcement on the Ground

In Cambodia, Indigenous community members have long been participating in and advocating for greater control over forests to carry out their vision of sustainable forest management. However, so far, Indigenous-led forest protection initiatives have often had to take place in an unofficial capacity.

For example, Indigenous community members participate in unofficial patrols of their home forests to prevent illegal logging and fire.

Ruos Lim, a Kuy Indigenous leader from Chom Penh forest, part of the 242,500-hectare Beng Per Wildlife Sanctuary, told Mongabay, “Day and night, we will lead our children and grandchildren to protect our livelihoods from all intruders,” adding later in the conversation, that “[i]n reality, we are the only active patrollers here.”

While Indigenous communities technically have access to legal, communal land titles through the 2009 Sub-decree No. 83 on registration procedures of indigenous communities, in reality, it is not that simple. The road to the collective land registration process can be complex, lengthy and expensive. From 2011 to 2021, only 33 communal land titles have been granted to 33 indigenous communities of a total of 458 Indigenous communities.

It is also important to note that the Indigenous communities are not the only groups impacted by land and forest loss. Aid groups estimate that more than 770,000 people have been involved in land conflicts between 2000 and 2014 alone. This estimate may not even include communities struggling with long-standing land disputes, such as those in Mondulkiri, Ratanakiri and Preah Vihear provinces.

Cambodian laws and the court system have provided few opportunities for relief, causing Indigenous communities to lose hope in judiciary-based and state-based solutions. “We cannot depend on the law; it is too slow,” says Kuy Indigenous leader Ruos Lim.

To guide Cambodia on a more sustainable track, the Ministry of Land Management, Urban Planning, and Construction should expedite collective land registration for Indigenous communities and act in accordance with Prime Minister Hun’s recommendations made in December 2022 during the Ministry of Land Management’s annual meeting regarding a complete land registration system.

Second, the Ministry of Environment should expand the protected areas in Indigenous territories and allocate more funding to support the protection of these forests. The Royal Government of Cambodia should incorporate culture, ecological knowledge and spiritual belief into law, policies and decentralized forest control with communal land managed by indigenous communities.

Finally, legal systems must strictly adhere to court procedures and ensure that the Land Law and ELCs Sub-degree are used to deliver justice and compensation for Indigenous communities. By doing so, Cambodia’s forests will flourish, Cambodia will be less vulnerable to climate change, and Indigenous peoples will have access to prosperity, happiness, and forest stability for generations to come.

Rithy Bun is a research fellow at Future Forum and has many years of experiences working with indigenous communities

Discover How Land Defends the Lifeline of Indigenous Communities

Today, there are an estimated 470 million indigenous peoples who live across ninety countries in the world. It makes up less than five percent of the world’s population. There are more than 7,000 languages and five thousand diverse cultures among indigenous groups.

According to NRDSESIP Data, Cambodia is one nation that has almost twenty-two groups of indigenous peoples, equal to 1.34% of the Cambodian population, which covers sixteen provinces in this country.^[1]

The livelihood systems of Indigenous communities predominantly hinge upon the utilization of land, forests, and various other natural resources. The practice of shifting cultivation, also known as rotational farming, holds significant cultural and economic importance for the community. Unfortunately, this traditional livelihood system has been steadily declining due to various factors. Among these factors, the denial of their rights to access and utilize land, particularly their ancestral land, which serves as their primary resource, stands out as a significant contributor.

Why is land important to Indigenous peoples?

Indigenous lands refer to territories that have been historically inhabited or used by indigenous peoples, often characterized by their cultural, spiritual, and economic connections to the land. These lands hold immense significance as they are not just physical spaces but also repositories of ancestral knowledge, traditions, and sustainable practices that have been passed down through generations, fostering a deep sense of identity and belonging for indigenous communities.

Indigenous communities safeguard 80% of the world’s remaining biodiversity, and forests on their land are better maintained. 36% of the world’s remaining intact forests are on indigenous Peoples’ lands, according to the World Bank’s article. (Fiji’s Emalu Tribal Chief, Lemeki Toutou., 2023.)

How do Indigenous peoples connect to their land?

The connection between indigenous communities and their land is deeply rooted in their cultural, social, and spiritual identity. “Land is most important to indigenous life because it is connected to land and forests, especially our collective land, which our ancestors remained on for us,” Community’s Committee Chair Choeut Chhorn says.

Land and Economic Development: Land provides them with diverse resources for their livelihood and needs. It is the traditional way that land brings them opportunities for hunting, fishing, and agriculture. According to the Asian Development Bank, most indigenous farmers in the northeast are based on agriculture production, wetland rice cultivation, pig and gathering food from the forest, hunting, and fishing.^[2] All of these are helping them do their farming so they can survive their lives.

Land links to culture: Land holds significant value for humans, especially indigenous peoples, for many reasons. Land has a deep impact on their cultural and spiritual identity in their community. Indigenous peoples recognize their land as the main resource of value in the environment. The land provides material resources like food and also supports the mind and spirit of the community. ^[3] Moreover, their beliefs, cultural systems, and ways of living are linked to their own land.^[4]

Land toward sustainable development: Land systems are the heart of many global sustainability challenges, from carbon emissions to biodiversity loss and wealth inequality. Indigenous peoples have a deep understanding of the land and ecosystems. They are practicing sustainable land management and conservation techniques that help protect biodiversity and mitigate climate change.

Additionally, land is meaningful to indigenous life due to the fact that land and forest are identities to protect their self-determination, cultures, and relationships between indigenous groups and land, which are complex and multifaceted. Land forest protection is really important to maintain biodiversity, mitigate climate change, and preserve human lives on the planet.

What are the challenges of land protection?

When indigenous peoples lose their lands or forests, they will face numerous challenges that impact their communities and ways of life. Losing land can mean losing lives, Laura Notess’s article posted in 2018.

Mrs. Pleuk Phearom expresses a valid concern about the potential consequences of losing land. For indigenous peoples, the loss of land is not just the loss of a physical space; it signifies the loss of their way of life, traditions, and collective heritage. Without land, indigenous communities face the risk of losing their identities and cultural practices that have been passed down through generations. The phrase “No Land, No Life” powerfully encapsulates the sentiment that the survival and well-being of indigenous peoples are intrinsically tied to the land they inhabit.

Therefore, if the indigenous peoples lose their land, it can have negative effects on their livelihoods, increase conflicts, loss of self-determination, loss of identity and custom, and almost loss of biodiversity and climate change to the world as well.^[5] Losing land is like losing everything to them, as well as their traditional knowledge and practice of their belief in forests and ancestors.

Development and Investment: Indigenous peoples in Cambodia have lived on their ancestral land for thousands of years. However, their land conflict and land loss emerged because most of their lands were granted to private industrial agriculture companies by the government. Based on LICADHO, the government has since granted these economic land concessions (ELCs) to 297 local and international companies involving more than 2,1 million hectares for large-scale industrial agriculture, while the majority of these granted lands are home to indigenous peoples whose human rights are deeply ingrained in lands.^[6]

The loss of the mountain is akin to losing their faith, beliefs, and indigenous identity. When indigenous communities lose their identity, it is a loss to the Cambodian national heritage. The next generation might not know what their identity is, Heng, a Community Representative of Bunong people said.^[7]

Collective Land Title Challenges: RGC’s Forest Law of 2002 and Land Law of 2001 recognize indigenous peoples’ traditional use of land, and the latter allows indigenous peoples to apply for community land titling (CLT). However, the process for obtaining these titles is burdensome and slow. This has left many Indigenous communities without certainty and security for many years. There are 458 Indigenous communities in Cambodia, but only 40 have received titles.^[8] Besides, the process still has complicated requirements for obtaining CLTs due to the limitations on the size of the land enshrined in law.^[9]

Amendment to Law related to Indigenous Peoples: Even though the Cambodian government has made a commitment to law and policy related to indigenous peoples, it has currently drafted an amendment that removes mention of Indigenous Peoples and changes it to “Local Communities,” an alteration that denies them their rights under the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP). More than this, the government failed to strategically involve Indigenous people in the amendment process.

How to ensure the protection of indigenous forests and land

The consideration of legal and policy measures is crucial to ensuring the protection of Indigenous forests and land.

It is imperative that the laws and policies in place incorporate provisions for the acknowledgment and integration of Indigenous traditional knowledge in the preservation and conservation of biodiversity within forested areas and land. Furthermore, it is crucial to acknowledge the significant economic advantages that can be obtained through the sustainable management of indigenous forests and land.

Indigenous representatives from different provinces read the statement on their concerns regarding IPs-related laws at the National Consultative Workshop in Siem Reap (Photo by CIPA)

Ratification of international conventions and agreements is one of the effective protection measures to which the government should pay attention.

These agreements and conventions, such as the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and the Convention on Biological Diversity, serve as important frameworks for recognizing the unique cultural and ecological contributions of Indigenous Peoples and ensuring their voices are heard in decision-making processes. By upholding these international commitments and working closely with Indigenous communities, we can work towards a more inclusive and sustainable approach to environmental governance that respects and preserves the rights and knowledge of Indigenous Peoples.

The need for strong legislation and enforcement is crucial in order to effectively protect the rights and knowledge of Indigenous Peoples. Without robust legal frameworks, there is a risk of their rights being overlooked or violated, and their valuable contributions to cultural heritage and environmental stewardship being undermined. Additionally, enforcement mechanisms are necessary to hold accountable those who disregard the rights and knowledge of Indigenous Peoples, ensuring that their voices are not only heard but also respected and acted upon in decision-making processes in adherence to the Free, Prior, and Informed Consent (FPIC) principle in all processes of development and other matters relating to them.

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References:

^[1] MOI/MRD. (2021) “National Report on Demographic and Socio-Economic Status of Ips in Cambodia.” Retrieved from: CIPO

^[2] Hean Sokhom, Tiann Monie. (June 2002) “Indigenous Peoples/Ethnic Minorities and Poverty Reduction.” Retrieved from: https://www.adb.org/sites/default/files/publication/28021/indigenous-peoples-cambodia.pdf

^[3] Jesse Pirini, Stephen Cummings, Abby Litchfield, Maya Fischhoff. (August 11, 2023) “Indigenous Economic Development Sustainable Economic Development.” Retrieved from: https://nbs.net/indigenous-economic-development-is-sustainable-economic-development/

^[4] Hean Sokhom, Tiann Monie. (June 2002) “Indigenous Peoples/Ethnic Minorities and Poverty Reduction, focus on Cambodia’s Indigenous Community .”

^[5] Laura Notess. (May 31, 2018) “Forest. For Indigenous Peoples, Losing Land Can Mean Losing Lives.” Retrieved: World Resources Institute

^[6] Bunly Soeng. (11 Aug 2022, New Mandala) “Campaigns, criminalisation and concessions: Indigenous land rights in Cambodia, focus on Economic land concessions (ELCs).” Website: https://www.newmandala.org/campaigns-criminalisation-and-concessions-indigenous-land-rights-in-cambodia/

^[7] Try Thaney, Eung Sea. (CaboJA news, 7 December 2023) “Return Our Sacred Mountain’s Punong Natives Continue Four Year Fight For Land Sold Illegally.” Retrieved from: ‘Return Our Sacred Mountain’ – Punong Natives in Mondulkiri Continue Four-Year Fight For Land Sold Illegally | CamboJA News

^[8] Emiel de Lange, Sushil Raj, Yun Mane. ( Mongabay, 1 December 2023) “Indigenous land rights are key to conservation in Cambodia.” Commentary

^[9] iwgia. (written on 29 March 2023) “THe Indigenous World 2023: Cambodia.” Website: Collective land titles