After more than 20 years, Germany is ending its work with the Land Management Ministry on land rights projects in frustration over the government’s slow reforms—another black eye for a sector at the center of some of the country’s most pressing human right issues.

Once Germany finishes phasing out its land rights work in June, it will leave Cambodia without a single international partner directly sup­porting the government in the sector, having already lost the help in recent years of Canada, Denmark, Finland and the World Bank.

“It has not been possible to find a consensus on certain major issues. This means that, to our mind, a number of important conditions al­lowing us to continue working suc­cessfully in this area are not in place,” Friedrich Kitschelt, a state sec­retary at Germany’s Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, wrote in a September 29 letter to Land Management Min­ister Im Chhun Lim.

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Source : farmlandgrab