These dwellings built on stilts over stagnant, swampy ground adjacent to the Tonle Sap River in ...

These dwellings built on stilts over stagnant, swampy ground adjacent to the Tonle Sap River in Phnom Penh are typical of the conditions in which many thousands of Khmer families are forced to live. A small girl squats on a makeshift walkway that services the huts, which are made from saplings, woven rattan and roofed with palm leaves. Subject to annual inundation from monsoon flooding, none of these homes have access to any services such as electricity, running water, sewerage or toilets. Thousands of landless families squat in poverty on whatever land or buildings they find available, having returned under the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC)'s Repatriation scheme after years of exile in the Thai border camps to discover their former homes were already 'owned' and occupied. Many other families have been displaced by fighting, landmines and rural poverty and are drawn to the city where the prospect of jobs appears brighter, further compounding an already spiralling housing crisis, but many fall victim to high rates of disease, violence and social dysfunction.