Women suffering as land disputes rage on in Cambodia

By Lauren Crothers

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia

Nearly half of the women embroiled in land disputes in Cambodia have considered ending their lives, and 61 percent said incidents of domestic violence increased after such land conflicts began, according to new research.

A report released Tuesday by the Cambodian Centre for Human Rights (CHHR) found that while some women felt compelled to take up activism in order to protect their homes and families, that activism also made them vulnerable to instability in the home.

At least 700,000 people in Cambodia are estimated to have been negatively impacted by land disputes, with many of these arising on the back of economic land concessions given out to companies and developers.

For the most part, Cambodian society toes a traditionally binary gender line; women are expected to carry out “duties that can only be performed where there is a security of tenure, such as providing shelter and food for the family”.

But where that security is threatened, the psychological impacts can be “alarming”, CHHR found.

“[Ninety-eight] percent of women reported that their mental health had been affected as a result of the land conflict; a staggering 46.2 percent of women had considered ending their own life; and 18.1 percent had attempted suicide.

Moreover, 35 percent of women responded that they still harboured suicidal thoughts,” CCHR said.

With that security, research has shown increases in household income, shared decision-making and reductions in cases of domestic violence.

But when researchers spoke to 612 women across Cambodia, they found that 52 percent of respondents felt their tenure was insecure.

Eighty percent fear eviction and 89 percent of those already evicted were not given proper notice or compensation.

In Phnom Penh, one of the most prominent land-conflict communities is Boeung Kak, where around 3,000 families were evicted en masse and a huge lake filled in in 2008 to make way for a large-scale mixed residential-commercial project that has yet to take shape.

A small group of women have emerged at the forefront of the activism in that community, but their refusal to stop protesting has seen a number of them targeted by the courts.

Just last week, four of the women were convicted over a five-year-old protest. One of them is already in jail awaiting trial on a separate protesting charge.

Officials at the Ministry of Women’s Affairs could not be reached Wednesday.