Cambodia, By Global witness

For the majority of Cambodias people, life is short and tough. Nearly 70 percent of the population
subsists on less than US$2 a day and one in three children under five are underweight for their age.
International aid has propped up basic services in Cambodia for over 15 years and currently provides the
equivalent of half the government budget.

Yet Cambodia is rich in timber, minerals and petroleum and over the past 15 years, the Government has
leased 45 percent of the countrys land to private investors. What happened to these natural resources
and where has all the money gone?



Since 1995 Global Witness has exposed how Cambodias political and business leaders have exploited
the countrys natural resources for personal profit and to shore up their own positions of power. Instead
of harnessing these state assets to kick-start sustainable economic growth, their mismanagement has
fuelled conflict, corruption and human rights abuses. Meanwhile Cambodias international donors have
turned a blind eye and continued to finance essential state services such as infrastructure, healthcare
and education.

In the aftermath of Cambodias civil war both the Khmer Rouge and the Phnom Penh government used
logging to fund military campaigns. The war ended in 1998, but the destruction of Cambodias forests
through illegal logging and associated corruption continues. Global Witness has exposed how the
countrys most powerful logging syndicate is led by relatives of Prime Minister Hun Sen and other senior
officials.

Since 2008, these timber barons have diversified their interests, buying up vast tracts of land for
plantations growing export crops like rubber and sugar. A sudden wave of land grabbing has gripped the
country, with 2.6 million hectares of land roughly 14 per cent of Cambodias total land mass
transferred largely from small-scale farmers to agricultural companies. Half of this total has been leased
out in just the last three years.

In May 2013, our report and video Rubber Barons revealed for the first time how rubber is a key driver
of this problem. Vast amounts of land have been acquired for rubber plantations in Laos and Cambodia
by two of Vietnams biggest largest companies, Hoang Anh Gia Lai (HAGL) and the Vietnam Rubber
Group (VRG). These rubber barons are financed by international investors including Deutsche Bank and
the International Finance Corporation (IFC) the private lending arm of the World Bank.

The consequences for those who live in the way of the land grabbers are devastating. Since 2003, at
least 400,000 people have been forced off their land, usually without consultation or compensation.
Repression and violence against those who speak out is increasingly severe, as shown by the murder of
activist Chut Wutty in April 2012 and the shooting of a 14 year old girl in a land eviction a month later.

Global Witness Cambodia campaign exposes the corruption that underpins the countrys land crisis. It
seeks to protect the land rights of local communities by challenging the culture of secrecy currently
shrouding land investments and pushing for an end to the persecution of those who dare to speak out.
The international community must push the Cambodian government to suspend all new land
investments and implement reforms that will ensure that land is managed in a way that finally benefits
the Cambodian people rather than a small, corrupt elite.

Land Deals
Franais