Refugees International has a long history of working with the Bunong [a revised transliteration of Phnong] people in Mondulkiri Province in eastern Cambodia. Three decades ago, RI assisted a group of Bunong to resettle into their native area in Mondulkiri after they returned from Thailand, where they had been forcibly marched by the Khmer Rouge when they fled the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia in December 1978.

Since the return of the Bunong, RI has helped to fund a local organization to support them, established a weaving program to help them earn additional money, and generated food shipments from the World Food Program during times of shortage. RI has also provided funding to support the education of a woman community leader, Mane Yun, who is on track to become the first Bunong to graduate from the University of Phnom Penh with a law degree.

The Bunong are a semi-nomadic group who practice slash and burn farming on their ancestral lands while supplementing their food supply by hunting. The Bunong’s traditional way of life is being threatened by rapid economic development of Mondulkiri province, which is enticing more and more lowland Khmer to the province, and the sale of their land to Chinese timber companies by the Cambodian government.

RI’s president emeritus Lionel Rosenblatt and Consultant Gene Carlson are currently in Cambodia to meet with Bunong communites in Mondulkiri and to assess the progress of RI funded programs in the region.