Women's Land Rights and Agrarian Change: Evidence from Indigenous
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WOMEN’S LAND RIGHTS AND AGRARIAN CHANGE: EVIDENCE FROM INDIGENOUS COMMUNITIES IN CAMBODIA Required citation: FAO, 2019. Women’s land rights and agrarian change: evidence from indigenous communities in Cambodia. Phnom Penh, FAO. 56 pp. Licence: CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 IGO. The designations employed and the presentation of material in this information product do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) concerning the legal or development status of any country, territory, city or area or of its authorities, or concerning the delimitation of its frontiers or boundaries. The mention of specific companies or products of manufacturers, whether or not these have been patented, does not imply that these have been endorsed or recommended by FAO in preference to others of a similar nature that are not mentioned. 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Maffii WOMEN’S LAND RIGHTS AND AGRARIAN CHANGE: EVIDENCE FROM INDIGENOUS COMMUNITIES IN CAMBODIA Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations Bangkok, 2019 © Shutterstock Alarax CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS v ACRONYMS AND ABBREVIATIONS v EXECUTIVE SUMMARY vii INTRODUCTION 1 Research objectives and methodology 1 Research questions 2 Selection of research sites 2 Research methods 3 STRUCTURE OF THE STUDY 7 PART 1: LITERATURE REVIEW AND OVERVIEW OF INDIGENOUS GROUPS IN RATANAKIRI 9 Gender, land and customary rights: a literature review 9 Indigenous groups in Cambodia 11 Kinship and inheritance 13 Indigenous land tenure and agrarian systems 15 PART 2: FIELDWORK IN SEVEN COMMUNITIES IN RATANAKIRI PROVINCE 19 Research sites and key land issues 19 Common trends in land use 26 Community land allocation: a system in transition 29 Women, men and land inheritance 30 Evidence from Kreung villages: persistence of bilateral rules 31 Evidence from Tampouan communities: a matrilineal system in transition 31 Evidence from Jarai communities: a polarized context 33 Land deals in cases of divorce and widowhood 34 Women, men and intra-household decision-making 36 Women’s agency 37 CONCLUSIONS 38 RECOMMENDATIONS 40 REFERENCES 42 © Shutterstock Rawpixel WOMEN’S LAND RIGHTS AND AGRARIAN CHANGE: iv EVIDENCE FROM INDIGENOUS COMMUNITIES IN CAMBODIA ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The study was conducted by Margherita Maffii, independent Gender Specialist, under the technical supervision of Clara Mi Young Park, Gender Officer and Marianna Bicchieri, Land Tenure Officer in the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific. The draft benefitted from technical inputs and comments by Clara Mi Young Park, Marianna Bicchieri and Bettina Gatt in FAO. Editorial support was provided by Christina Schiavoni. FAO is grateful to all the people and institutions who supported the development of this study, in particular, the experts, researchers and community activists that have contributed with their meaningful suggestions and comments to the study, including Jeremy Ironside, Gordon Paderson, Nun Sokunthea, Phon Sotheara, Khiev Sotha, Fong Chompey and Sotha Junior. FAO also wishes to thank members and representatives of the indigenous people’s organizations Highlanders Association and Cambodia Indigenous People Organization for their availability and their valuable insight; and the communities of Kalai 2, Sway, L’eun Chon, Lapo and Lon, Kachok and Tangmlu for their welcoming, hospitality and willingness to share and discuss issues concerning their resources, customs and family life. The author is also particularly grateful to all the facilitators that contributed to the study with their translation and valuable support, including Papo Polloni, David Ford and Ruud Corsel. ACRONYMS AND ABBREVIATIONS CEDAW Convention for the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women CLT communal land title Directive 01BB Royal Cambodia Government – Measures Reinforcing and Increasing the Efficiency of the Management of Economic Land Concessions – Policy expediting the issuing of land titles in economic land concession areas ELC Economic Land Concession NGO non-governmental organization WOMEN’S LAND RIGHTS AND AGRARIAN CHANGE: EVIDENCE FROM INDIGENOUS COMMUNITIES IN CAMBODIA v © Shutterstock Gail Palethorpe WOMEN’S LAND RIGHTS AND AGRARIAN CHANGE: vi EVIDENCE FROM INDIGENOUS COMMUNITIES IN CAMBODIA EXECUTIVE SUMMARY This research analyses the ways in which current Indigenous groups inhabiting Ratanakiri province are changes in land tenure, agrarian and socio-economic part of the multiethnic fabric of Cambodian society, systems are reshaping resource allocations and which includes groups that identify themselves as transfers within households in indigenous communities indigenous, as well as other minorities. Their farming in Ratanakiri Province, Cambodia. While other system, centred on shifting cultivation, was more gendered aspects of the transformations occurring in than a simple agricultural practice. It constituted the indigenous societies have received more attention in cultural, spatial and ritual environment of indigenous recent years, the changes occurring in the customary communities. Their traditional land tenure system laws that determine land access, ownership and was ordered and articulated through different levels, inheritance alongside gender, as well as generational connecting the invisible world of the spirits governing lines, have not been explored. the territory, the ancestors who first cleared the land, and living people with their need to access productive Customary laws derive their legitimacy from social resources for themselves and their descendants. systems that are context specific and change with Based on land usufruct and not ownership, the time. This determines their ambiguous character as system guaranteed everybody in the community instruments for resistance and self-determination as access to land, either ancestral plots or new ones, as well as generators of unequal social relations in rural long as compliance with customary rules, rituals and communities. The experiences from other continents taboos was maintained. The indigenous groups at and countries have shown the contradictory and the centre of this study, Kreung, Tampouan and Jarai, often conflicting linkage between customary systems are characterized by bilateral or matrilineal kinships and women’s rights to land. In some areas of the structures. Inheritance and intergenerational transfer world, customary land rights, grounded within kinship of assets situate women at the core of households’ systems, have evolved. These are shaped by their ownership and the circulation of goods. Land, historical socio-economic and political context in ways traditionally not conceived as an individual property that limit women’s access to land, which is mediated or but as a common good, was not encompassed among sometimes impaired by male kinship. This also occurs the assets transferable from one generation to the in areas of the world where indigenous people’s other following the kinship inheritance rules. Now that collective land tenure systems are recognized, but land