This paper investigates the relationship between land laws and the exclusion of informal communities in Phnom Penh, the capital city of Cambodia. The series of land reforms that began after the Cambodian civil war set a pathway for reorganizing the ownership of rights and granting land titles to those who were eligible. However, despite the legal reform, the city has forcibly displaced numerous informal communities with weak tenure security to the periphery to make way for construction and urban development projects. By reviewing the relevant literature and two case studies, this paper argues that the post-civil war Cambodian land laws included provisions to exclude the vulnerable population and are being implemented by the political and economic elites as they seek to classify and demarcate land boundaries for their convenience.