UN expert calls on Cambodia to implement national action plan on indigenous rights News
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UN expert calls on Cambodia to implement national action plan on indigenous rights

An independent United Nations (UN) expert on Friday called on the Cambodian government to implement a national action plan to execute and safeguard the interests of the country’s indigenous communities.

Professor Vitit Muntarbhorn was appointed as a special rapporteur to oversee and report on the human rights situation in Cambodia in March 2021. While commending Cambodia for implementing laws to safeguard some rights of indigenous communities of the country, he underlined the inefficiency of the enforcement machinery in executing those rights. He stated:

There should be a one stop-service to help these communities in their quest for indigenous rights … I urge Cambodia to comply with international human rights law and work towards more non-custodial and community-based measures, coupled with reform of the law enforcement system, and improved quality of the judiciary and related law enforcers.

Muntarbhorn condemned the state’s actions against its critics, including human rights and environmental activists. He highlighted the ongoing detention of these individuals, who are imprisoned based on vague charges of incitement and similar offenses. He added that the detained individuals were merely performing their “right to freedom of expression, peaceful assembly and their quest for justice.”

Muntarbhorn also called on the Cambodian government to repeal the infamous law on associations and non-governmental organizations (LANGO) implemented in 2015. The law regulates and curtails the freedom of national and international NGOs to work freely in the country, and critics argue it provides the government unfettered and arbitrary powers in regulating and shutting down NGOs while criminalizing those unregistered. The law led to heavy criticism against the Cambodian government during its enactment, with international organizations like Human Rights Watch claiming the act was inexplicably in contravention of international human rights law. 

The indigenous communities of Cambodia consist of approximately 1.4 percent of the total population. The Cambodian government established the Land Law in 2001, which granted land rights to the indigenous communities of the country along with public and private land rights. The Land Law recognized the rights of 24 indigenous communities, but critics claim the rights’ enforcement machinery and its procedures are too ambiguous, complicated, costly and technical for their rights to be finally executed.

 

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