The real housewives of Cambodia.

Housewives in Cambodia have turned into tenacious activists as they campaign against forced evictions from their homes in the face of mass development, writes Dr Katherine Brickell.

This week has seen the gaze of Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Vice President Joe Biden fall on a group of ordinary Cambodian women who have entered the media spotlight as human rights defenders confronting forced evictions. At the gala event held in Washington DC on Tuesday evening, a Vital Voices Global Leadership Award was presented to Tep Vanny, a foremost activist who has campaigned for more than five years against the devastating losses of home being felt in the Southeast Asian country.

The women housewives-cum-activists who Vanny unofficially leads, come from the Boeung Kak area of Phnom Penh, a community quite literally sunk by a phony vision of progress, and captured in an upcoming film. In 2007 municipal authorities granted a 99-year lease to the lake and surrounding area to Shukaku Inc. The government-backed real estate developer proceeded to fill the lake with sand, forcibly evicting and involuntarily relocating thousands of residents with little to no compensation.

Stood looking over the sunken homes of Boeung Kak, the capital city reeks of inequality. From the new build housing development ‘Elite Town’ to billboard advertising for ‘five star’ homes in Singapore-style high-rises, the pursuit of ‘development’ has become toxic for the average Cambodian. And it is a toxin that is being felt from continent to continent. As Vital Voices notes: "Anyone who has worked in a developing country in the last decade will have heard a similar story. Developers seize a valuable piece of land, throw the existing community out, and after protests ebb away, a new development arises: apartments, a mall, restaurants and stores for the newly wealthy."

But the protests have not all ebbed away, in large part because of the Cambodian women activists who are continuing to wage their non-violent campaign against forced evictions. While feelings of depression and hopelessness are undeniably present, their determination has remained resolute. Srey Pov, a founding member of the group told me, "I have been told that villagers are eggs, and those powerful are rocks, that we cannot win against them. But I don’t think that way. We have to clash against the rocks even though we might be crushed."

By engaging support from NGOs and taking to the city’s streets, the women have publically highlighted the profound impacts that forced evictions are having on peoples’ lives, robbing women in particular, of their right to care for their homes and children. A dedicated United Nations mission to Cambodia in 2012 highlighted "that the human cost of such concessions has been high".

Write by Khmer 2days