Michael Kirk (1996):
The Dynamics of Land Tenure and Land Management in Cambodia:

2. Current Dynamics of Land Tenure in Urban and Rural Areas

3. The extent of the current dynamics in the process of the appropriation of property and land by various interest groups, and through the setting down of rights of ownership or possession in towns and in rural areas can be set out using the following indicators:

4. In the capital, Phnom Penh, an active land market has arisen with price differentiation dependent on the position of the property, with speculative price rises because of expected profits from land to be used for development (e.g. airport extension), and a very high number of land transactions since the beginning of the UNO Mission, the number of which is not exactly known.

5. Powerful interest groups put strong pressure on the municipal Registry Office in order to push the registration of titles and completed land transfers quickly forward. In doing so, they take advantage of the legal uncertainties and existing inconsistencies in the current valid legislation.

6. Conflicts over land of varying kinds are breaking out, not only in towns, but also especially in rural areas. They are evidently based in many ways in land restitution to families in the '80s by Commune and District Administrations without having made any differentiation according to yield potentials, the position of the fields, or family structure. Boarder conflicts exist between villages or communes, and restitution demands made by people forced to relocate and who have now returned to their villages are either blocking solutions, or making them more difficult.

7. These conflicts either become politically instrumentalized or further inflamed by local politicians and officials close to the government as well as by Khmer Rouge groups. The latter use open land questions, problems of agricultural land distribution, and the legal insecurity of the population as a lever for creating political instability in the villages. Government officials make use of the concept of an enemy of the Khmer Rouge by re-allocating land, and suppressing those who lose claims and start to protest.

8. The national administration, but especially also the administration at subordinate levels (province, district, commune) are only able to react inadequately and hesitantly to the dynamics of this situation: framework legislation (such as the Code Civil or an analogous bill) which sidestep the much criticized Land Law (1992), and which protect land transfers legally, consistently regulate the line of succession or the responsibility of regional legislative bodies; the legislator remains at fault. The "wild", unplanned appropriation of land is not responsible to any legally anchored land-use, regional or urban planning. The provinces have little hold on the identification of land for settlement, business zoning or farming. They also have little hold on the supervision of the observance of the required land use pattern.

9. The mechanisms of coordination between ministers responsible have thus far been too weak to be able to connect land registration adequately with land use and sector planning. The communication between the various regional levels and the regional legislative bodies is inadequate.

10. Accordingly, accelerated land registration and the reconstruction, or rather reform, of a nationwide registry in municipal and rural areas receive highest priority in official announcements. This could be seen for example in the introductory statements made by the Minister of Justice, or by the advisory staff of the two Prime Ministers in the Council of Ministers, or as well in the weight given to the land question in the daily press (see Annex).

11. The decision of the Council of Ministers as the central governmental set-up, to remove the "Land Titling Department" from the Ministry of Agriculture - likewise the municipal Registry Office of the City of Phnom Penh - and to assign it directly to the Council as an executive unit, indicates its desire to solve the current land tenure problems. But this step underlines conversely the extreme political explosiveness of the continuation of land registration in Cambodia, "...and the challenge for the project to make a contribution to increasing legal security about the possession of land, and to create better planning and administration for that land" (core objective of the project).