Sokhan Oum
Land Rights Activist, Cambodia
It is an extremely traumatic experience to have your community and house forcibly taken from you, Sokhan - a survivor and a champion of land rights in Cambodia. Rising from the grave injustice done to her in 2007, when a business tycoon deprived her of her community and her house on the Boeung Kok Lake in Phnom Penh, she began to advocate for land eviction and land grabbing. She joined and supported numerous demonstrations against the Phnom Penh authorities. She confronted the police force and security bodyguard in order to prevent land grabbing and house destruction in the Boeung Kok Lake community. She mobilised community members and questioned the mechanism of granting compensation to the households and the accountability and transparency of stakeholders such as the government and the companies. An active promoter of women’s issues and housing rights, she has been an advocate for land titling, and prevention of state violence on women for nine years.
“I have been fighting for land rights in my community in Boeung Kok Lake in Phnom Penh since 2007. Out of all the families residing there, 600 families have received titles for their land while 40 families continue their fight. I join them in this journey to protect this ancestral land of ours, the struggle, the fight to protect our rights and our children.”
Having participated in several capacity building sessions on human rights, and CEDAW and attending national conferences on women’s access to justice, she has advised strategies and facilitated discourse on ways through which land dispute between local communities, authorities and the business sector can be resolved.