Officials to Map Bunong Land for Communal Titles This Month

Officials to Map Bunong Land for Communal Titles This Month

February 10, 2013
By Ben Woods and Aun Pheap
The Cambodia Daily

Efforts to map the ancestral land of five ethnic Bunong communities that have long sought collective property titles in Mondolkiri prov­ince’s Pech Chreada district will fi­nally begin later this month, with funding for the project coming from the U.N., officials said on Thursday.

“We are working in collaboration with the U.N. human rights…program to help with the communal titling project in Bosra commune,” said Em Sopheak, provincial coordinator for theCommunity Legal Education Cen­ter, which will cooperate with land management officials and local authorities to demarcate and measure the land using GPS technology.

“The U.N. has already approved the budget for the new mapping, which will begin by the end of Feb­­ruary or early next month,” Mr. Sopheak added.

James Heenan, representative for the U.N. human rights office in Cambodia, confirmed that the U.N.’s Office of the High Commis­sioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) will be funding the project. “OHCHR is contributing costs for mapping of land for [the] five villages,” Mr. Heenan said in an email.

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