The Need in Cambodia

THE KINGDOM OF CAMBODIA, located in the heart of Southeast Asia, is an ancient land with a young population. The median age of its people is 21 years. Regardless of their age, Cambodians are often poor. According to the 2006 Human Development Report published by the United Nations, about 34 percent of Cambodian population lives on less than US$1 a day in 2004.

After the fall of the communist Khmer Rouge regime in 1979, there was an influx of migrants from the rural areas to the capital Phnom Penh. About 250,000 people, or 20 percent of the city’s population, live in squatter settlements, slums and other poor urban communities. They lack secure tenure or basic services as they settle in every conceivable empty space, from courtyards and rooftops, to the sides of railway tracks, river banks and swamps.
The oft-claimed “uncertain legal status” of settlements is actually a misnomer: recent land laws tend to favor the poor. The barriers are largely administrative, capacity, and resource issues. The largest problem is that powerful private and local interests routinely circumvent or flaunt the law and evict families from choice sites, often using violence meted out by local thugs