The UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGP BHR) outline how States and business can protect and promote human rights through three central pillars: 1. the State duty to protect against human rights abuses; 2. the corporate responsibility to respect human rights; and, 3. access to remedy, which requires States and businesses to provide access for victims of business-related human rights abuses to effective judicial and non-judicial remedies (CCHR, 2016). Knowledge of these three pillars of the BHR framework is crucial in Cambodia today, as corporate actors continue to violate the rights of thousands of Cambodians in different forms. The most vulnerable in society, including the poor, women, and indigenous peoples and their communities, are most often the primary victims of business-related human rights abuses, for they are often uneducated about their legal rights and have fewer resources to contest and seek remedy for these violations. Even if the BHR principles are not yet on the agenda of the Cambodian Human Rights Committee (CHRC) as well as the Government,2 the Constitution of Cambodia already provides a legal framework for the protection of BHR-related rights of all Cambodians. The Constitution states that citizens have the right to form and join trade unions and stipulates that the organization and operation of trade unions shall be determined by law (Article 36). It also protects workers’ right to strike and to engage in non-violent demonstrations (Article 37). In addition, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) are all enshrined in the Constitution. The Constitution also protects individual and communal rights to property. The law also provides that any person who possesses the land peacefully, known by the public, with no claim or contest from any other person, for up to or more than five (5) years enjoys rights to land ownership as such (Article 30 and 31, Land Law 2001). Since the Land Law was promulgated in 2001, the titling process has been applied to 4,881,582 out of an estimated seven million land plots (Ministry of Land Management, Urban Planning, and Construction Website, 2 Response from the Department Director of CHRC, he said the CHRC does not cover this topic today 38 Upholding Land Rights amidst the Land Rush

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