News on Land

A series of land complaints were filed with the Mondulkiri Provincial Court on Monday by residents of Lames and Pou Lu villages who claim two community leaders stole land to sell.

The four indigenous plaintiffs also filed a complaint against an environment official for not preventing the offences and against a couple – Kek Than and his wife Oeu – for land grabbing offences.

From forced displacement to conflict over resources, the coronavirus pandemic has created a “perfect storm” for land rights abuses - and the situation is likely to worsen, researchers and activists warned on Thursday.

The migration of men to rural areas due to lockdowns and job losses has increased competition over land, with a disproportionate impact on woman, said organisers of a land rights webinar.

he successful integration of a number of artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) operations in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has been driven by cooperation with large-scale miners (LSMs), refiners, traders and the embedding of traceability measures, says natural resource transformation nongovernmental and nonprofit organisation IMPACT.

The Lands Department is looking at providing affordable housing for public servants as well as taxpayers.

Minister John Rosso made their intention known during a recent press brieng in Port Moresby.

Creating aordable housing in PNG’s urban centres is a complicated and daunting task considering the large number of squatters on State land, land ownership issues, the connection of utilities and reticulation on the land itself.

A review by an anti-fraud taskforce has revealed massive corruption in the DRC involving employees of the UN and international NGOs. Lack of oversight on how aid to the DRC’s vulnerable populations is dispersed has allowed bribery to flourish in one of the world’s most mineral-rich and conflict-prone countries.

Main photo: land to be taken for the Vientiane Expressway in Laos is shown in a 2020 photo (RFA)

Residents of the Lao capital Vientiane are resisting seizure of their land by a Lao-China joint venture building an expressway, saying they had been promised earlier their land would not be taken, and calling offers of compensation unacceptably low, Lao sources say.

Koh Kong provincial authorities said they would not approve the sale and purchase of land in protected areas without proper paperwork.

They vowed to weed out land corruption following a July 3 Facebook post by Prime Minister Hun Sen calling for the return of land to locals living in protected areas.

In an announcement on Tuesday, officials said land transactions are taking place in protected areas around villages and communes, especially in Botum Sakor, Kiri Sakor and Thma Bang districts.

Concession to extract timber from 148,000 hectares in upper Baram was granted despite repeated objections from local communities.

Main photo: Communities like Long Tungan are working hard to find a way to protect their lands and save some of the most valuable carbon and biodiversity stocks we have left. Photo courtesy of The Borneo Project.

About 52,257 hectares of degraded land has been recovered in Northern Ghana for agriculture activities through the implementation of the Sustainable Land and Water Management Project (SLWMP).

Mr Asher Nkegbe, the Upper East Regional Director of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), who is also the Head of the Technical Coordination Office (TCO) of the project, said this at the second 2020 Local Steering Committee Meeting of the SLWMP held in Bolgatanga, Upper East Region.

Nearly 100 families living on a public sidewalk in Boeung Keng Kang district’s Tomnop Teuk commune in Phnom Penh were recently given plots of land by the government in Khasch Kandal district’s Vihear Suor commune in Kandal province to encourage them to move.

Eng Phearith, 24, moved from the sidewalk to one of the plots and told The Post on Sunday that it was a win-win solution for citizens and the administration orchestrated by Prime Minister Hun Sen.