Cambodia

Goal: Support the efforts of the Royal Government of Cambodia and civil society groups to strengthen land rights for millions of land-insecure households.

Creating opportunity for Cambodia’s rural households.

More than three-quarters of Cambodia’s 16 million people live in rural areas, and nearly half of the country’s workforce is employed in agriculture, making land essential to the livelihoods of the majority of Cambodians. The Government of Cambodia is carrying out a land allocation and formalization program, empowering farmers with a tool to grow a future free of poverty. The first families receiving titles to plots of land saw large increases in agricultural income. In 2023, with a national mandate to accelerate land title registration across the country, these land allocation efforts picked up speed.

Landesa supports the Government of Cambodia to help bring this land allocation program to scale and in alignment with the rights and interests of Cambodia’s smallholders, Indigenous Peoples, and women who rely on access to land. Landesa also works to build the capacity of local civil society organizations to implement land titling programs equitably and effectively. Together, these efforts have the potential to help strengthen the land rights of three million rural households.

Our work

National Legal Reform

In 2024, Cambodia’s national government invited civil society, including Landesa, into the revision process of the new Land Law. After prior years of sharing field research findings with ministries and training parliamentary commissions on key land rights issues, Landesa is now part of a coalition of local partners working to incorporate protections for smallholders, Indigenous Peoples, and women. Such improvements to the law would ultimately strengthen the land rights of three million families who earn their living in Cambodia’s rural areas.

Indigenous Communal Land Titling

Landesa supports 68 Indigenous communities in three upland provinces as they work to certify their more than 100,000 acres of traditional forestland vital to their traditions and livelihoods. Together with government and civil society partners, Landesa conducts training for communities to complete each of the steps to formal certification, which include applying for a title, developing internal by-laws, and mapping their ancestral land.

Provincial Land Allocation

Following two years of effort by Landesa and local partner People’s Center for Development and Peace, the Governor of Siem Reap Province passed a 2023 sub-decree that opened the way for 50,000 families to formally register their lands and securely invest in their future. This policy serves as a model for tens of thousands more families to receive title in Siem Reap’s neighboring provinces of Battambang, Pursat, and Kampong Chhnang, and adds momentum for similar efforts in other provinces. As of 2025, titling efforts led by a local government partnership with a Land Tenure Network of 100 members supported by Landesa have reached nearly 200,000 people in western Cambodia.

Provincial Fishery Policy

In Preah Sihanouk and Kampot Provinces, Landesa supports the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries to improve community fishery policy. Through a newly formed government Technical Working Group, Landesa advises on the zoning of 26,991 acres of coast to better protect thousands of acres of mangrove forest and the livelihoods of the many thousands of people who depend on these nurseries of the sea. Landesa now seeks to expand these efforts to two additional coastal provinces in Cambodia.