Right to Relief

Kam and Kres are two indigenous communities in Ratanakiri’s Ou Chom district. Residents are primarily farmers, and none work in factories or migrate abroad, though some move to the nearby provincial town for work. People grow crops, such as rice, rubber, cassava, cashews, bananas and beans; raise animals, like cows, buffalo, pigs, chickens and ducks; gather NTFP; and work various jobs in the provincial capital town. Both communities have communal land, and Kres has a collective land title recognised by the Ministry of Interior.

Both communities were affected by the Hoang Anh Gia Lai (HAGL) rubber firm, which in 2011 began to clear and seize land, including community land, such as community forests, lakes and canals; religious sites, such as mountains where Arak spirit lives and spirit forests; Chrob and Chrab (land for collecting vegetables, fish, and meat); burial forests; and other sacred spaces and communal land. Following the clearing of one spiritually significant area, one villager died from a lightning strike, a communal building was hit by lightning, a community leader died in his sleep, and a previous village leader lost consciousness. Some of the land lost to the company was rotational farmland, and community members are concerned if they lose that land, that they will not have land to give to their children.

Microfinance debt is common in both Kam and Kres. Between 70% to 90% of families have borrowed a microloan, many of those collateralized with land titles. In Kam, about half of loans are group loans, which do not require land titles for collateral. At least 6 families have sold land to repay debt, and community members suspect there were more cases. Credit officers often used aggressive collection practices, including threatening to call the police to arrest borrowers and encouraging the use of private lenders if borrowers are a few days late on their repayments. Many community members were confused and frustrated over fees collected by the MFIs, including late fees, and the lack of relief given to borrowers during Covid-19.

• Community members said coerced land sales were a normal practice for COs when a borrower couldn’t repay.
• Some borrowers had been threatened by COs with lawsuits or arrest by police.
• MFIs sometimes gave loans for borrowers to repay other MFI loans.

• Community members expressed fear over losing all of their land and not being able to pass anything down to their children.
• There was also fear of going to prison, or of having to migrate and thus losing connection to the spiritual and cultural aspects of the community.

The Right to Relief

Microloan providers and their international investors, including many of Europe’s and the United States’ largest development banks, have a moral obligation to address human rights abuses and provide proper remedy and redress. Cambodian borrowers must have the right to relief, or else they will continue to face debt-driven hunger, child labour, migration, coerced land sales, and many other human rights abuses raised as part of this project.

Research Background

Who We Are

Equitable Cambodia (EC) and the Cambodian League for the Promotion and Defense of Human Rights (LICADHO) are human rights NGOs registered in Cambodia. Both organisations are dedicated to amplifying the voices of grassroots communities and highlighting human rights abuses perpetrated by private and public actors in Cambodia.

What We Did

This project is based on the principles of community-based research, where community members play an active role in producing knowledge and act as co-researchers. Information was gathered from both focus-group discussions with community members as well as individual interviews. All the information in this report comes from discussions with community members and was verified with community representatives. This project is not meant as the only true source of information about microloans, but rather is meant to accurately reflect the lived experiences of community members. Many of these issues have been raised before in previous reports issued by human rights NGOs in Cambodia.

Why We Did It

Many Cambodians are drowning in microloan debt, which is leading to drastic and serious human rights violations across the country, and many people are suffering in silence. To quote one community representative who participated in this project: “I’m happy that our sadness is finally being publicised. We have kept it hidden for so long. The way [the MFIs] act is the opposite of the way they speak. Debt is the biggest problem faced by communities across the country.”

Publications