UN expert calls on Cambodia to implement national action plan for indigenous rights – JURIST

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

Professor Vitit Muntarbhorn was appointed Special Rapporteur in March 2021 to monitor and report on the human rights situation in Cambodia. While praising Cambodia for implementing laws to protect certain rights of indigenous communities in the country, he underlined the inefficiency of the enforcement mechanism in implementing those rights. He stated:

There should be a one-stop service to assist 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 enforcement personnel.

Muntarbhorn condemned the state’s actions against critics, including human rights and environmental activists. He highlighted the continued detention of these individuals, who are jailed on vague charges of sedition and similar offenses. He added that the detained individuals were merely “right to freedom of expression, peaceful assembly and the pursuit of justice.”

Muntarbhorn also called on the Cambodian government to abolish the infamous law on Associations and Non-Governmental Organizations (LANGO) law was implemented in 2015. The law regulates and restricts the freedom of national and international NGOs to operate freely in the country, with critics claiming it gives the government unlimited and arbitrary powers to regulate and close down NGOs while criminalizing those that are not registered. The law drew heavy criticism of the Cambodian government during its implementation, with international organizations such as Human Rights Watch claiming that the law was inexplicably inconsistent with international human rights law.

Cambodia’s indigenous communities make up about 1.4 percent of the total population. The Cambodian government enacted the Land Law in 2001, which granted land rights to the country’s indigenous communities, along with public and private land rights. The Land Law recognized the rights of 24 indigenous communities, but critics argue that the rights enforcement mechanisms and procedures are too ambiguous, complex, costly, and technical to definitively implement their rights.