Cambodia: Microfinance Lending Harming Indigenous Groups

(Bangkok, September 25, 2025) – Predatory lending by microfinance institutions in Cambodia is driving land dispossession and human rights abuses against Indigenous communities, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. The financial backers of the Cambodian lenders implicated in these harms include private investors, state development banks, and the International Finance Corporation, the World Bank’s private investment arm. The XX-page report, “Debt Traps: Predatory Microfinance Loans and the Exploitation of Cambodia’s Indigenous Peoples,” documents that over-indebtedness among Indigenous communities in Cambodia’s northeastern provinces has led to coerced land sales, debt-driven suicides, food insecurity, and loss of access to health care and education. Cambodian microfinance institutions (MFIs) have routinely issued loans to Indigenous borrowers through credit officers and loan documents using Khmer, a language many Indigenous people do not understand, for amounts far exceeding their ability to repay.