Cambodia is a multi-ethnic society with a large majority of ethnic Khmer. The indigenous populations constitute close to one percent of the total population and are often called hill tribes or highlanders (Khmer Loeu) because most of these peoples live in the four northeastern provinces of Mondulkiri, Ratanakiri, Stung Treng and Kratie, which are considered upland areas.
The scarce of population studies makes it difficult to quantify the population number of ethnic groups in Cambodia. The National Population Census 1998 identified 17 indigenous groups in Cambodia based on their spoken language. According to this source, the total number of indigenous peoples was about 101,000 or 0.9% of the then total population of 11.4 million.1
The livelihood strategy of indigenous peoples is based on agricultural production: shifting cultivation, wetland rice cultivation, pig and chicken raising, gathering food from the forest, hunting and fishing. Traditionally indigenous communities have managed and used a wide range of natural resources including forest lands, agricultural land and water resources. However, today most of them face the loss of land and a decreasing access to land that they had farmed for generations.
PRO 169 has been implementing a national project to promote a rights-based approach to indigenous peoples’ development since April 2005. Within the framework of this project, the main activities have focussed on promoting and facilitating the registration of indigenous communities’ land rights within the framework of the 2001 Land Law of Cambodia, including training for indigenous communities in this regard; and on capacity building for national and provincial government officials on the rights of indigenous peoples.
In addition, the project has undertaken research on indigenous peoples’ priorities for poverty reduction, and this will be followed up within the context of a project aiming to integrate the concerns of indigenous peoples into national poverty reduction efforts. Another objective of PRO 169 is capacity building: since 2005 a series of trainings has been conducted on indigenous rights for various actors at national, provincial and local levels.