Mediation masquerade for a land conflict resolution case in Northeastern Cambodia

In the Mekong sub-region, governments rely on foreign direct investment for promoting national economic development. These external funding sources have contributed to numerous land grabs and forced evictions during the last two decades. In 2009, an open clash erupted between a foreign agro-industrial Company and eleven villages, mostly inhabited by indigenous communities, located in the north-eastern province of the Kingdom. Their moral economy, corresponding to their perception of economic justice and to their concrete definition of what they mean by exploitation, has been violated. But three years after, rather than enduring a strenuous confrontation or launching improbable legal proceedings against the incriminated Company, a group of supporting NGOs encouraged the affected populations to adopt a so-called alternative strategy based on a fair-minded mediation. This institutionalized initiative, the first ever implemented in Cambodia, relied on existing mechanisms associated with international law regulations and bank procedures. This ended in an apolitical and technical intervention, upheld by the World Bank, which, predictably, turned to the disadvantage of already deprived villagers confronted, among other shortcomings, by structural impairment and limited autonomous advocacy