Cambodia’s fragmented opposition parties are promising to work together, rather than compete against each other for votes in the next election. All it took was another crushing victory at the polls by the country’s ruling party.

Few expected the governing Cambodian People’s Party, with Prime Minister Hun Sen at its helm, to lose in nationwide local elections held here Jun. 3. Yet the way in which it won – securing 97 percent of commune chief seats nationwide – was particularly decisive.

If the election was a barometer to gauge the political climate ahead of key parliamentary elections scheduled for 2013, then it showed that a great deal of work lies ahead for what is still a divided opposition.

Just as troubling for the opposition here is that more Cambodians than in previous elections are choosing not to vote. Election monitors say the June election drew roughly 60 percent of registered voters. This suggests a trend of declining voter turnout, from the 67 percent that voted in the previous commune elections in 2007, and the 87 percent who turned up a decade ago.

The sagging numbers could be hurting the opposition more than the ruling CPP. “The CPP know how to motivate their supporters to come to vote,” says Thun Saray, president of Adhoc, a local rights group. “They try to facilitate everything for the voters to come to vote.”

While the CPP has controlled the political landscape in Cambodia for the better part of two decades, the two largest opposition groups – the Sam Rainsy Party and the Human Rights Party – run separate campaigns even though both promote a similar social justice agenda.

Saray says sympathetic would-be voters may be choosing to stay home, unable to see a viable alternative to the ruling party in a divided opposition.

“If they are separate, if they are divided among themselves like this, the voters don’t expect to have political change through the election because they already see the results,” Saray says. “One big party competes with the two small parties. You see the results.”

Those results saw the Sam Rainsy Party lose ground this month, even in areas where it is traditionally strong, such as the capital, Phnom Penh. At the same time, the Human Rights Party, competing in its first commune elections, walked away with almost as many commune chief seats as the more established SRP.

Ou Virak, president of the Cambodian Centre for Human Rights, says both parties were expecting a larger return at the polls, eager for momentum before next year’s important parliamentary elections. Rather than the opposition gaining ground, however, the CPP merely cemented its dominance.

Virak says the results should come as a wake-up call to the opposition. He says the parties should join forces or merge if they have any hope of mounting a significant challenge to the CPP next year.

“Smart politicians will definitely consider that and look at that option,” Virak says. “That’s probably the best option for them now.”

The parties have floated the idea of a merger before , but failed to hammer out a deal before the election. The HRP’s performance this month may give it an added bargaining chip.

In an interview, party president Kem Sokha said the low voter turnout this election is a concern. He says the two opposition parties need to cooperate “for the sake of the Cambodian people.”

“For us, we want to merge into one political party,” Sokha says. “Because if we remain separate, with separate voter lists, different political parties, we cannot combine our votes together against the ruling party.”

The SRP, for several years the clearest opposition to CPP rule in Cambodia, appears to be more amenable to the idea than in the past. Party leader Sam Rainsy remains in self-exile in Europe after fleeing prosecution for incitement that was widely seen as politically motivated. In a telephone interview after the election, Rainsy said his goal is to “unite all the opposition forces”.

The two parties plan to meet for discussions in July. But whether all the personalities can co-exist is a question mark. Rainsy, for his part, appears eager to remain the opposition figurehead.

“I don’t say if. I say when I return, inevitably in the near future, the potential of the SRP will come back,” Rainsy says. “If some voters were demotivated because of my being absent, when I return, my name is going to mobilise people.”

This remains to be seen. But before the opposition can mount a united campaign going into next year’s elections, it will have to find a compromise among its own ranks. That, says the CCHR’s Ou Virak, will be no less of a challenge.

“It’s so difficult to get these two parties to be strategic,” Virak says. “Most of them believe they’d rather see the other parties, the other politicians, just vanish, and not participate … I don’t see them being able to actually overcome this. I think it’s going to be very difficult.”

Either way, much would have to change in the next 13 months for the CPP to relinquish its dominance over Cambodian politics.

In the June election, opposition parties attempted to exploit growing discontent around controversial land evictions. A series of violent publicised evictions before the vote left the government open to criticism.

Yet while the SRP and HRP’s social justice platforms may speak to human rights concerns and the increasing number of Cambodians affected by land disputes, the election results showed that many more Cambodians are just as willing to park their votes with a government that has overseen steady economic growth and relative stability following years of war. And that may be something even a united opposition will have difficulty overcoming.

By - - and Irwin Loy
PHNOM PENH, Mar 28 2012 (IPS)

For four years, Wan Preung toiled in the fields under the Khmer Rouge, unable to speak his mind. But after the regime fell in 1979, there was still one sensitive subject the teacher could seldom broach with his students: the Khmer Rouge.

History teachers in Phnom Penh learning lessons to teach about the Khmer Rouge. Credit: Irwin Loy

When students asked, Preung would tell them about his own experiences living under a regime responsible for the deaths of an estimated one-quarter of the population. But for years, Cambodian history textbooks contained only a brief mention of the Khmer Rouge. The country’s political future was still uncertain in the aftermath of the regime, and the facts of the Khmer Rouge rule were obscured by the politics of the era.

“We couldn’t talk much,” Preung says. “It was so political, so we didn’t want to say much about it.” Khmer Rouge was the name given to followers of the Communist Party, that was held responsible for mass killing of perceived opponents during its rule 1975-1979.

But more than three decades after the Khmer Rouge collapsed, the mood is changing.

In 2009, Cambodia approved its first ever textbook on Khmer Rouge history. It’s now a part of the school curriculum. Before instructors can teach their students about the past, however, Cambodia’s history teachers must learn it themselves.

In classrooms throughout the country, teachers like Wan Preung are going back to school to learn the facts of the Khmer Rouge years.

Vanthan Peoudara is deputy director of the Documentation Centre of Cambodia, which is holding the training sessions. “The history hasn’t yet widely reached the young generation,” he says. “Many do not have a full understanding of the history. So this is a good time to teach, to share the knowledge with them in order to prevent this from ever happening again.”

Initially, the Khmer Rouge had targeted intellectuals and the educated in a bid to create its version of an agrarian society. Teachers were among the classes of people who were rounded up and executed. Now, it is the country’s teachers who have the responsibility of spreading the lessons of the Khmer Rouge years to a generation that never had to live under the regime.

“Teachers, as well as engineers, intellectuals, were killed by the Khmer Rouge,” Peoudara says. “It is a good time for us to train them to equip them with the knowledge of the teaching of the history.”

So far, more than 3,000 teachers have undergone the training. The intensive sessions start by introducing basic material – who were the Khmer Rouge, how they came to power, and about the leader, Pol Pot. Further sessions touch on victims’ experiences, the policies of the regime, and teaching strategies for Khmer Rouge history.

The teachers also learn about the current efforts to bring former senior leaders in the regime to justice.

After years of impunity, a joint Cambodian and United Nations war crimes tribunal, known as the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), is putting former Khmer Rouge figures on trial. In 2010, the regime’s chief jailer, Kaing Guek Eav, known as Duch, was convicted of committing crimes against humanity and eventually sentenced to life in prison.

The court is now in the early stages of a trial against three former Khmer Rouge leaders: former head of state Khieu Samphan, its chief ideologue, Nuon Chea, and its one-time foreign affairs minister, Ieng Sary.

Yet the court itself has been marred by controversy. Questions over funding and accusations of political interference have dogged the tribunal since its inception.

The latest controversy erupted this month, when a key judge in the court’s investigative branch quit, citing “serious irregularities and dysfunctional situations” within the tribunal, stemming from the government’s long-standing opposition to trials against additional Khmer Rouge suspects. The situation has deteriorated to the point that some critics are urging the UN to consider pulling out of the tribunal altogether.

With the recent troubles continuing to simmer within the court, the efforts to leave a lasting positive legacy outside its walls are becoming increasingly vital.

For 54-year-old Tang Khim, such a legacy includes proper recognition of what she and her country endured under the Khmer Rouge. During a recent teacher training session, Khim explained that she was raped by a Khmer Rouge soldier.

In the past, she says, she grew frustrated with people who openly doubted her when she described what life was like during the regime. Khim hopes her country’s new generation of teachers will ensure that today’s students acknowledge the truth.

“I only know that if I tell my story, the teachers will know what happened during the Pol Pot times,” Khim says. “I don’t know what the teachers will do with this. But if they want to meet me, if they want me to tell my story and ask me questions, then I will tell them.”

Teacher Sa Rom wants to be a part of that process. He says he often talks to his students about his own experiences living under the Khmer Rouge.

“I tell them about how difficult it was for everyone,” he says. “They have a lot of questions to ask me. Why did they control the country like that?”

But more than 30 years after the Khmer Rouge, he worries the opportunity to see justice delivered may be slipping away.

“I really want the court to do its work quickly,” he says. “The Khmer Rouge leaders are growing older. I want to see them prosecuted while they’re still alive.”

Excerpt:

By - - and Irwin Loy
PHNOM PENH, Nov 22 2011 (IPS)

Kim Vuthy has walked inside this courtroom on the outskirts of Phnom Penh three times. But it never gets any easier looking at the men she holds responsible for the deaths in her family.

“I feel so much anger because of them,” Vuthy said, standing outside the packed courtroom where prosecutors began to lay out their cases Monday against three former senior leaders of the Khmer Rouge regime.

When the Khmer Rouge came to power in 1975 and evacuated the capital, there were 11 people in Vuthy’s family. When she returned to the city a few years later, only four were left alive.

“If (the Khmer Rouge leaders) were standing before me right now, I would take my shoes off and hit them over the head,” she said.

Such is the frustration still felt by many in this country, a generation after the Khmer Rouge collapsed. One-quarter of the population is believed to have died from starvation or disease to outright executions ordered by a regime that grew paranoid of dissent.

Chea Leang, one of two lead prosecutors in the hybrid tribunal, where international legal officers are matched with their Cambodian counterparts, says the court will hear how the Khmer Rouge turned the country into “a massive slave camp.”

“The forced evacuation of Cambodia’s cities, the enslavement of millions of people in forced labour camps, the smashing of hundreds of thousands of lives in notorious security centres and the killing fields, the extermination of minorities, the countless deaths from disease, extortion, abuse and starvation. These crimes, ordered and orchestrated by the accused, were among the worst horrors inflicted on any nation in modern history,” Leang told the court as part of her opening statements.

Facing trial are the last surviving senior leaders of the regime: the former Khmer Rouge head of state, Khieu Samphan, its chief ideologue, Nuon Chea, and its foreign minister, Ieng Sary.

A fourth person, the former social affairs minister, Ieng Thirith, was last week declared mentally unfit to stand trial, and could be released. This has underscored the urgency many people here feel about pushing forward with this case; all of the accused are elderly and say they have significant health problems.

Leang said the trial should not be about revenge but “the ascertainment of truth and the determination of guilt.”

The tribunal’s larger legacy, she said, should be a message to perpetrators of human rights atrocities around the world.

“We will send this message: justice never forgets,” she said. “Most importantly, we will ensure that the truth is told and that justice prevails.”

Yet in a country where every citizen is touched by the horrors of the Khmer Rouge, justice has many meanings.

The court has been besieged by controversy in the lead-up to this week’s opening statements. Legal observers and rights groups have accused the court’s investigating chamber of incompetence, and of bowing to political pressure from a government that has publicly opposed further cases beyond the current one.

And the court has faced criticism from some victims, who say they aren’t being given a voice in this case.

In a first for a United Nations-backed war crimes tribunal of its scope, the court was set up to allow victims, known as civil parties, to participate as equals in the legal proceedings.

But on the eve of the trial’s opening, Cambodian-American Theary Seng, whose parents were killed by the regime, denounced the court as “a sham” and withdrew her civil party status.

“For me, it’s an issue of having enough…of this farce that is very much political theatre,” she said. “I no longer want my name, the memories of my parents, of my family to be soiled in this process that is no longer legitimate.”

Other Cambodians say they’re grateful for the opportunity for at least some sense of justice, even if it comes decades late.

“Real justice,” said Hun Chim, who lost two brothers during the Khmer Rouge regime, “will be when the court prosecutes the Khmer Rouge leaders, and sentences them for their crimes.”

Without the court, he says, no Khmer Rouge leaders would face any consequences for the crimes of the regime.

But others also worry that justice may still take too long.

Given the complexity of the trial and the advanced ages of the accused, observers say some of the former leaders may not live to see the trial’s completion.

But in his submissions, international co-prosecutor Andrew Cayley warned tribunal judges not to feel sympathy for the accused former leaders merely because of their age.

“Their advanced years may tempt within you feelings of sympathy and compassion. But let us not for a moment forget the catastrophic legacy that these three elders represent,” Cayley said.

Cayley charged that the scope of the violence unleashed by the Khmer Rouge, with the three remaining accused at the helm, was unparalleled in modern history. And, the prosecution contends, the three accused were among the top leaders of a regime that knowingly enacted the policies that devastated the country.

“As senior leaders … Nuon Chea, Ieng Sary, and Khieu Samphan conceived and implemented criminal polices that enslaved an entire nation, caused the death of two million people, and subjected the remainder of the Cambodian people to conditions of the most degrading in humanity.”

The tribunal is expected to begin hearing from witnesses in early December. But the trial itself is expected to last at least two years.

Excerpt:

By Irwin Loy
PHNOM PENH, Oct 12 2011 (IPS)

The United Nations must address a “crisis of confidence” at the beleaguered Khmer Rouge war crimes tribunal in Cambodia following the resignation of a controversial judge, critics say.

News this week that Siegfried Blunk, one of two investigating judges at the UN-backed tribunal, resigned citing political interference is raising questions about the legacy of the court itself.

Critics say the high-profile departure shows significant moves must be taken to ensure the integrity of the tribunal, known officially as the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, or ECCC.

“This should not be a case of business as usual,” James Goldston, executive director of the New York- based Open Society Justice Initiative, said in a statement.

Goldston and other critics say the UN must secure public guarantees from senior Cambodian officials that they will fully cooperate with the four cases currently before the ECCC.

“If those guarantees are not forthcoming,” Goldston said, “the UN should reassess its commitment to the court.”

Since last December, Blunk has been one of two investigating judges at the hybrid tribunal, which pairs international legal officers with their Cambodian counterparts.

But he became the target of critics this year when he and Cambodian Judge You Bunleng announced they had shut down their investigations into a file known here as Case 003 even though they had not interviewed either of the two former mid-level Khmer Rouge commanders who were suspects in the case. Critics accused the judges of incompetence, and of bowing to political pressure from a Cambodian government that has been vocally opposed to future prosecutions against any Khmer Rouge figures beyond four former leaders currently indicted.

In announcing his resignation this week, Blunk himself cited repeated public statements by senior Cambodian officials. Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen has warned the country would slide back into civil war if the court pursues further charges. Last October, he told UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon that the current prosecution of the four former leaders would be the tribunal’s last.

While Blunk maintained he hasn’t let such statements influence him, he said his “ability to withstand pressure by government officials and to perform his duties independently could always be called in doubt, and this would also call in doubt the integrity of the whole proceedings” in future cases.

Clair Duffy, an OSJI court monitor based in Phnom Penh, said Blunk’s resignation must force the UN to confront the problem of political interference.

“They can’t just appoint another judge and expect that person will suddenly have the power to investigate massive atrocities without Cambodian cooperation,” Duffy said. “The UN must demand that the Cambodian government absolutely butts out of all judicial and prosecutorial decision-making in the court and let it perform independently, but not just through empty statements about the importance of independence. There need to be substantive guarantees by the government.”

But the UN response in the wake of Blunk’s departure has done little to assuage its critics. A spokesperson for Secretary General Ban Ki-moon told reporters this week the priority is to push ahead with replacing Blunk.

“The United Nations has noted the reason stated by Judge Blunk for his resignation,” the spokesperson said. “As we have consistently emphasised, the ECCC must be permitted to proceed with its work without interference from any entity, including the Royal Government of Cambodia, donor states or civil society. We will continue to monitor the situation at the ECCC closely, including in consultation with the Royal Government.”

But the court is tainted by “widespread perceptions of corruption” within Blunk’s office, critics say. “The court is already seen as compromised,” said Youk Chhang, the executive director of the Documentation Centre of Cambodia, which has provided thousands of documents used as evidence in court investigations.

He’s calling for a full investigation into the entire office of the investigating judges. “The public is losing hope,” Chhang said. “Without a proper investigation, the UN undermines the public support and shows disrespect to those who have died and those who survived the Khmer Rouge. The UN must fix this immediately.”

The questions raised by this week’s news comes at an inopportune time for the tribunal, which has been besieged by lengthy delays to what is meant to be its centrepiece case.

The prosecution of four former senior Khmer Rouge leaders – chief ideologue Nuon Chea, head of state Khieu Samphan, foreign affairs minister Ieng Sary and social affairs minister Ieng Thirith was supposed to be under way this year. But it’s still mired in legal arguments and some observers question whether the elderly defendants will live long enough to hear a verdict.

“Unfortunately, by letting this situation fester, I do think it’s worsened the situation for all branches of the court,” Duffy, the OSJI monitor, told IPS.

Already, Blunk’s resignation has provided fodder for defence lawyers in the case, who have repeatedly raised questions over judicial independence throughout the tribunal. This week, lawyers for Nuon Chea appealed to the tribunal’s highest chamber. They cited Blunk’s resignation in urging an investigation into “all outstanding allegations of … interference”.

“That so much of the (government) meddling has taken place in plain view suggests the significant probability of far more insidious interference behind the scenes,” the lawyers wrote in their submission, noting that while the Cambodian government has opposed future cases, it has been publicly supportive of the case against their client.

Excerpt:

By Irwin Loy
BANGKOK, Jul 5 2011 (IPS)

Civil society groups say they want to have a stronger voice in setting the development agenda ahead of a key global summit on aid effectiveness later this year.

Civil society organisations, or CSOs, gathered in Siem Reap, Cambodia in late June in what was the conclusion of a two-year consultation process to develop principles on how such groups can take a larger role in making development meaningful. The Global Assembly of the Open Forum for CSO Development Effectiveness aimed to consolidate the position of civil society groups ahead of high-level international aid meetings in Busan, South Korea, later this year.

“There is an increasing recognition of civil society as an essential actor in healthy and vibrant development agendas,” said Lun Borithy, executive director of the Cooperation Committee for Cambodia, which co-hosted June’s CSO meeting. “There is an increasing self-realisation that we as civil society must also hold ourselves to be ever more responsive, effective and accountable if we are to help bring positive and lasting change to our world.”

Borithy said civil society groups have an essential role to play in their countries’ development. “CSOs are indeed concerned about assuring development that achieves positive and sustainable changes for the poor and vulnerable people,” Borithy explained. “And this concern requires CSOs as well as donors, government and aid recipients to work efficiently and collaboratively.”

Until recently, major donors and governments in developing countries have largely dominated high- level consultations on aid effectiveness. CSOs say they want to play a more robust role. The upcoming summit, dubbed the Fourth High-Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness, marks the first time CSOs will come to the table as equal partners with government ministers, donors and other players, advocates say.

During the June consultations in Cambodia, CSOs finalised a key document that will be used to guide civil society groups working in development. The ‘International Framework for CSO Development Effectiveness’ sets out a human rights approach aimed at defining guidelines for what it means for civil society groups to be effective development actors. The framework also embodies principles of gender equality, environmental sustainability, and organisational transparency. CSOs plan to use the finalised framework as the basis of a “collective voice” for engaging with donors and governments in Busan.

Caroline McCausland, country director for the group ActionAid in Cambodia, attended the June meetings. She said the final framework document represents a definitive statement for CSOs – one that takes a more principled approach to development effectiveness than what donors themselves have committed to.

“It is the first time that CSOs have come together and developed a global framework with principles that will hold them accountable,” McCausland said.

The framework for CSO development effectiveness represents an attempt to move development away from a welfare or charity approach, to something that more closely aligns with a human rights-based perspective.

In the past, McCausland said, a group like ActionAid may have jumped into income generation projects that were effective initially, but were ultimately unsustainable over the long term. Such strategies carry the danger of fostering an over-dependency on NGOs. That perspective has changed to one where the emphasis is placed on organising aid recipients to demand – for themselves – that authorities fulfil their responsibilities in financing services.

“For example, we have helped to build and support campaigns to increase the education budget, remove school fees and train more teachers so that all poor children – not just ones who are lucky enough to live in an area supported by an international NGO – can get a decent quality basic education,” McCausland said. “This approach is not a quick fix, but in the long run it has a far bigger and deeper impact.”

But preparations for Busan may be leaning heavily on donors’ needs and giving short shrift to CSOs. Early drafts of outcome documents for Busan, McCausland said, “lend an ear only to donors’ needs.”

Such attitudes are arguably reflected on the ground in countries like Cambodia, where some CSOs say they must have a stronger voice. In Cambodia, where donor money makes up roughly half the government’s national budget, ensuring that civil society is included in development policy is still a challenge.

“There is a need for CSOs to continue to call for space for meaningful dialogue in the design, implementation and monitoring of national strategic development strategies and plans, and to be fully recognised as development actors in our own rights,” McCausland said.

Yet Cambodia’s widely criticised plans for a broad law governing non-governmental organisations – which critics claim will tighten control over civil society – are still underway.

Empowering civil society groups rather than restricting them will be key to the long-term sustainability of development efforts in countries like Cambodia, McCausland explained.

“Cambodia continues to be dependent on aid and it is likely that the Royal Government will also continue to be more accountable to donors rather than citizens,” she said. “There is a need to reverse this trend through development of exit strategies which put increased emphasis on domestic solutions such as taxation and promote domestic businesses and enterprises, rather than on foreign aid and tax holidays to attract foreign investment.”

However, advocates have also praised Cambodia for endorsing the Istanbul CSO Development Effectiveness Principles, guidelines that formed the basis of the framework that emerged from June’s meetings in Siem Reap.

The Fourth High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness is scheduled to take place from Nov. 29 to Dec. 1 in Busan.

Excerpt:

By Irwin Loy
PHNOM PENH, May 12 2011 (IPS)

There are no publicly named suspects, no defence lawyers and no official victims. And soon, court observers in Cambodia fear, there will be no further Khmer Rouge trials.

Prisoners held at S-21, the Khmer Rouge regime's main torture centre, on display at what is now a genocide museum in Phnom Penh. Credit: Irwin Loy/IPS

The move, court observers say, is another sign the tribunal will not proceed with what has become a politically charged case.

“It seems like they were trying to get the least amount of attention on this move as possible,” said Clair Duffy, a court monitor with the Open Society Justice Initiative.

“What has been happening (with the investigation) was a sham outside of the public view,” said outspoken advocate Theary Seng, whose parents were killed by the Khmer Rouge. “It’s an affront to the memories of those who passed away.”

Seng’s parents were among the estimated 1.7 million people who died when the Khmer Rouge ruled Cambodia from 1975 to 1979. Pol Pot, the leader of the ultra-Maoist movement, died in 1998 without ever facing trial

Seng ruffled feathers at the court last month when she applied for civil party status in Case 003 and publicly named suspects she believed to be under investigation. A court spokesman at the time called the move “reckless.” Seng says her application has been rejected.

She says she was trying to bring the investigation under public scrutiny. “The court has been hiding and using confidentiality as a pretext,” she said. “They’re failing in their responsibility.”

So far, only one Khmer Rouge figure has ever been tried and convicted by the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, or ECCC, as the tribunal is officially known. The tribunal trumpeted the July 2010 conviction of Kaing Guek Eav, known as Duch, as a triumph of justice after years of impunity. Duch was a Khmer Rouge prison chief responsible for the torture and death of some 14,000 Cambodians.

In addition, four senior leaders of the regime have been indicted and their trial, referred to as Case 002, is expected to proceed sometime this year, though the court has not announced a start date. In both cases, the tribunal has been quick to release public updates about the proceedings and has made significant efforts to engage survivors of the regime, as well as former Khmer Rouge cadres, in the legal process.

But Case 003 is different. The court has chosen not to release details of its investigation, leaving potential victims in the dark. The tribunal allows qualified victims or their families to directly participate in trial proceedings as civil parties.

“We have basically heard next to nothing about this case for 20 months,” Duffy said. “It literally couldn’t be more different to the Case 002 investigation and how much information was made available. The fact that civil parties were never given even the most basic information to be able to participate is another indicator. All of this tends to show that the judges wanted this issue to quietly slip away.”

The court has been hampered by accusations of political interference. The government has repeatedly stated that it believes the tribunal should stop its work after the long-awaited second trial has ended, arguing that further prosecutions would destabilise a country that is still healing more than three decades after the Khmer Rouge were toppled from power.

Opinions on whether to proceed with the third and fourth cases have been split even among court officials at the hybrid tribunal, which is composed of Cambodian legal officials as well as their international counterparts.

That rift was further exposed this week, when the international and Cambodian co-prosecutors issued conflicting press statements about the third case.

International co-prosecutor Andrew Cayley said he would urge the investigating judges to reopen the inquiry because “the crimes alleged … have not been fully investigated.”

“[Cayley] has the legal obligation … to identify and request all reasonable investigative actions which should be taken by the co-investigating judges before a decision is made as to whether or not any individuals should be indicted and sent for trial,” his statement read.

The prosecutor also revealed new information about crime sites where he alleges the offences under investigation took place. In addition, he urged the court to grant potential victims more time to apply for civil party status. Under court rules, the current deadline to apply is May 18.

The next day, Cayley’s Cambodian counterpart, Chea Leang, issued a statement opposing further trials.

“The national co-prosecutor thoroughly examined and maintained that the suspects mentioned [in] the Case File 003 were not either senior leaders or those who were most responsible during the period of Democratic Kampuchea,” Leang’s statement read.

For now, the future of any further trials beyond the upcoming second case remains unresolved. The court’s co-investigating judges must decide this month whether to comply with or to reject the prosecution’s request to re-open the investigation.

If the request is rejected, the co-prosecutors can appeal the decision. After that, the co-prosecutors will evaluate the finalised case file. They could then urge the judge to indict the suspects and send the case to trial, or to drop the case outright.

Excerpt:

By Irwin Loy
PHNOM PENH, May 10 2011 (IPS)

The rains were kind to Cambodian farmer Tep Van last year, when the monsoon season doused his land with enough water to soak his fields and grow his precious rice crop. But he’s not sure he can count on the same luck this year.

Rice fields outside the Cambodian capital. Credit: Irwin Loy/IPS

A few seasons ago, the rains were scarce. His parched crop withered without the moisture; nearly one-third of his seedlings didn’t make it to harvest.

Such patterns of irregular, unpredictable weather are what many climate scientists believe to be the effects of climate change. One season, there might be drought when rains should have fallen. The next, there could be more rain than the fields could handle.

Across the highway, farmer Yu Sok said people in his village have heard about climate change, but not all comprehend what it implies.

“Many people don’t understand climate change, but they understand the weather,” he said. “In the past, Cambodian farmers always planted rice according to the weather. But now the weather changes from year to year.”

New research released this week suggests such opinions are widespread in this South-east Asian country. The national study, which aims to quantify public perceptions of climate change in Cambodia, suggests that the majority believe it is affecting the country today, but do not necessarily understand the phenomenon.

The release of the climate change study comes as world leaders gather this week in Istanbul for a United Nations conference on least developed countries (LDCs), the first major summit of its kind in 10 years. Climate change is seen as a growing barrier to development in the world’s poorest countries.

Cambodia is one of the 48 LDCs recognised by the U.N. as “the poorest and weakest segment of the international community.”

Roughly 80 per cent of the population here lives in rural areas, and the majority of them rely on agriculture for their livelihoods.

Ninety-five per cent of respondents to the survey reported that weather changes had “affected” or “badly affected” their lives.

“Cambodians say that their weather and environment are changing and that they are feeling the effects,” the study concluded. “They report that extreme weather events, particularly drought, are more frequent and more intense than they once were and that temperatures have increased.”

Proponents of the study see it as a baseline assessment of where the country is in terms of climate change knowledge and where future efforts must be directed.

Yet most have a poor understanding of what’s causing it and, more crucially, how to adapt to its potential consequences.

“There were a lot of misunderstandings and gaps about climate change,” said Charles Hamilton, country director for the BBC World Service Trust, which implemented the survey for the country’s Environment Ministry. “It is a relatively new concept for Cambodia.”

For example, many respondents in the study also believed climate change to be a local issue caused by deforestation, as opposed to a global problem. And many appeared unsure about how to respond to the resulting consequences.

When asked what could be done to reduce climate change impacts on their livelihoods, one-quarter of the respondents said they did not know. Other common responses included “ask for donations” and “get air-conditioning.”

But the question of how to adapt to the effects of climate change could be one of the most crucial issues facing Cambodia over the long-term.

Recent studies have called Cambodia one of the countries in the world most vulnerable to the effects of climate change—it relies heavily on agriculture and inland fisheries to drive its economy and food supply, and has a low capacity to adjust if there are sudden changes to these sectors.

Cambodia has one of the lowest rice yields in the region. In 2009, the most recent year for which comparative statistics are available, Cambodian farmers produced an average of 2,836 kilograms of rice per hectare, according to the Food and Agriculture Organisation. In comparison, Vietnam produced almost double, at 5,228 kilograms.

If climate change, as some researchers have predicted, reduces crop yields in Cambodia, the country would be far less prepared than its neighbours to absorb the losses.

That’s why knowing where and how to target strategies to adapt to climate change is crucial, says Brian Lund, the East Asia regional director for Oxfam in Cambodia, which helped fund the national survey.

“The largest part of the community here are farmers, and they need to be able to adapt their farming systems so that as we see changes in climate, their systems are changing and keeping pace with the changes and then they can continue to farm effectively,” Lund said.

“If we don’t tell them, if there’s no information provided, then suddenly their systems start to fail and then you’ve got a major issue for the country. So from an LDC’s point of view, it’s about getting that capacity up so that you can properly respond.”

Lund says the international community should contribute more to help LDCs address the issue of climate change.

“We make the argument practically every six months or so. There’s a major meeting of heads (of state) around the world and we argue very strongly that at least 100 billion dollars should be made available to climate change adaptation,” Lund said. “The big piece is that development partners around the world are not contributing enough.”

A 2010 World Bank study estimating how much money developing countries would need to adapt to climate change pegged the figure at between 70 and 100 billion dollars a year, an amount comparable to the total yearly foreign aid budget of the world’s developed countries today, the report stated.

Excerpt:

By Irwin Loy
PHNOM PENH, Apr 23 2011 (IPS)

A proposed law governing NGOs in Cambodia will impose severe restrictions on civil society groups and tighten control over public discourse, critics in this South-east Asian country say.

International analysts and local groups have widely condemned Cambodia’s draft Law on associations and non-governmental organisations, arguing the proposed rules foist unnecessary restrictions on freedom of expression.

Groups such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and Global Witness have all called the law deeply flawed. At a donor conference in Phnom Penh this week, a U.S. official took the unusual step of publicly linking government restrictions on civil society to valuable aid funds from one of the country’s largest donors.

“In these times of fiscal constraint, justifying increased assistance to Cambodia will become very difficult in the face of shrinking space for civil society to function,” Flynn Fuller, the Cambodia mission director of the American development arm, USAID, said at a meeting between donors and government.

That summit was a private affair, but a copy of his speech was distributed to reporters by the U.S. embassy in Phnom Penh. Fuller warned that “an excessively restrictive” law could hurt the effectiveness of U.S. aid money.

“USAID remains concerned about the necessity of the draft NGO law and the related implications for civil society organisations to operate freely in Cambodia…we strongly urge the Royal Government of Cambodia to reconsider the necessity of the draft NGO law, and if so, to adopt a law consistent with a commitment to expand, rather than restrict, the freedom of civil society organisations to operate.”

Critics say the proposed law will give the government too much arbitrary control over who can form an NGO. A briefing paper released this month by the International Centre for Not-for-Profit Law (ICNL) noted that the draft law would make it mandatory for NGOs to register and would thus ban unregistered groups.

“This means that every group of individuals who gather together with a differing level of frequency and perform the broadest variety of imaginable activities, from trekking and football fans, to chess and silk weaving groups, will be acting in violation of law,” the briefing stated.

At the same time, few protections are in place that would allow denied groups a chance to appeal, meaning the draft law could make it easier for authorities to arbitrarily shut down its critics. “The absence of safeguards could have a disproportionate impact on groups that engage in advocacy, support unpopular causes, or are critical of the government.”

Rights groups say recent years have seen the government grow increasingly intolerant of criticism. Leading politicians with the opposition party have been stripped of their parliamentary immunity and sued in court; opposition leader Sam Rainsy hasn’t set foot in the country in more than a year after fleeing into self-imposed exile.

United Nations officials have also come under fire over the last year. The government publicly lashed out at a senior rights representative, who they accused of siding with the opposition. At one point, authorities threatened to expel the U.N.’s highest-ranking delegate to the country after he urged the government to show restraint in proceeding with a separate controversial law.

Since then, critical statements from U.N. agencies have become a rarity. Earlier this year, the U.N. granted the prime minister’s wife the unusual role of National Champion for Women’s and Children’s Health – a move some observers saw as an olive branch to the Cambodian leader.

This week’s U.S. statement on the draft NGO law was welcomed by some civil society groups, who have urged international donors to take a stronger position with the government.

“I think it’s smart for donors to take a very clear stance,” Ou Virak, president of the Cambodian Centre for Human Rights told IPS.

Aid money represents roughly half of Cambodia’s national budget; last year, donors pledged a record 1.1 billion dollars in funding. But it’s unclear whether donors such as the U.S. would follow through should the government eventually pass its NGO law without major changes.

“They have enough power to influence the government’s decisions. The question is what is in their interest. Where will they draw the line? What is the value of human rights over the other forms of cooperation they’re looking for,” Virak said.

“The Americans’ number one concern is terrorism. They need cooperation from the Cambodian government. If you look at all these priorities, you question whether human rights is up there. The answer has always been that human rights hasn’t been number one and I doubt that it will be number one for most of the donor countries.”

For their part, Cambodian authorities say the draft NGO law is necessary to make such organisations accountable.

“We want the NGO law to comply with accountability and transparency for the NGOs,” said Phay Siphan, a government spokesman. “We understand the NGOs help Cambodia a lot as a nation. We need these people. But the NGOs also have to be protected under the law.”

Khieu Sopheak, spokesman for the Interior Ministry, which would have oversight over NGO registration, said critics of the draft law should be patient.

“We’re finishing the draft. It hasn’t already passed and become the law yet,” he said. “It will go through many stages. So I think we have more time.”

Excerpt:

By Irwin Loy
PHNOM PENH, Apr 19 2011 (IPS)

Countries around the lower Mekong have failed to reach a consensus on a controversial proposal that could see Laos build the first hydropower dam on this part of the vital river.

Fishermen's boats on the Mekong River in northern Laos. Credit: Irwin Loy/IPS

A meeting in Vientiane Tuesday was to have marked the end of a mandatory six-month consultation process involving Laos and its neighbours. Under the multilateral Mekong River Commission (MRC), which the four countries formed in 1995 as a means of promoting sustainable development on the shared waterway, any country building projects on the mainstream river must hold consultations in affected countries.

The issue has exposed rifts between Laos and Vietnam, traditionally close allies. Vietnamese officials have warned that the dam, planned for Xayaburi province in northern Laos, could have significant impacts downstream.

In a statement issued by the MRC following Tuesday’s meeting, Vietnamese officials said they had “deep and serious concerns” about the project. Le Duc Trung, director general of Vietnam’s National Mekong Committee, said Laos’s assessments of the dam’s far-reaching effects have been inadequate. He called for all dam proposals for the lower Mekong, including Xayaburi, to be shelved for 10 years.

“The deferment would enable the country to secure better understanding and the confidence of the public and local communities,” he was quoted as saying.

In their official responses, both Cambodia and Thailand called for the current consultation process to be extended. Cambodia said there was a need to study how mainstream dams would affect the environment beyond Laos’s borders and that mitigation measures needed to be more clearly developed.

Though it stands to be on the receiving end of the power the 1260-megawatt Xayaburi project would generate, Thailand said the six-month consultation process has been insufficient and that it was worried how people who depend on the river will be affected.

“We would like to see that public views and concerns are well taken into consideration,” Jatuporn Buruspat, director general of the Thai Department of Water Resources, said as part of Thailand’s official response.

Laos itself argued against formally extending the consultation process, saying that any new studies would take much longer than six months.

“We appreciate all comments, but we will consider to accommodate all concerns,” Viraphonh Viravong, head of the Lao delegation to the consultations, said in a statement issued by the MRC.

In the statement, the Lao official suggested the project would comply with MRC’s design guidelines and conform to international standards.

“Major impacts on navigation, fish passage, sediment, water quality and aquatic ecology and dam safety can be mitigated at acceptable levels,” the statement read.

However, a series of reports have called such assurances into question.

Several expert working groups the MRC put together to examine the Xayaburi proposal have highlighted problems with elements of the plan.

An MRC summary of the concerns noted that the current project design does not in fact meet international best practices or even the MRC’s own guidelines for water quality and ecosystem health.

And a loss of sediment caused by the dam’s reservoir, the report stated, could see it lose 60 percent of its capacity solely due to sedimentation within 30 years. The Laos government has awarded a 29-year concession to a Thai firm to build and operate the dam. That means the dam’s production could be significantly reduced by the time Lao authorities take control.

An analysis released by the conservation group WWF this month called Laos’s original environmental impact assessment and feasibility study for the project “substandard”.

The analysis said the EIA only identified five migratory species in the Mekong when there are more than 200 species that use parts of the river for their spawning grounds, including 70 migratory species. The EIA also doesn’t take into account how the loss of fish abundance will affect communities living downstream of the dam, the analysis stated.

And the project’s proposed “fish passage facilities” – mitigation measures meant to ensure species can bypass the dam on their migratory routes – meet only four out of 30 of the MRC’s basic design guidelines for the lower Mekong region, the WWF report said.

“The gaps of the assessment lead to the conclusion that the Xayaburi EIA does not meet the international standards for environmental impact assessments,” the WWF analysis stated.

“The Xayaburi EIA does not answer questions about the nature, magnitude and extent of possible impacts of the project, or concludes without evidence that these impacts would be insignificant.”

The MRC has not specified a new timeframe for reaching a final decision. But conservationists campaigning against the proposed dam nonetheless welcomed Tuesday’s non-decision.

“Today the Mekong River has gotten a much-needed but temporary reprieve,” Ame Trandem, the Mekong campaigner for the group International Rivers said in a statement. “The Mekong River is a valuable shared resource and the Xayaburi dam’s trans-boundary impacts require agreement between the region’s governments and the public.”

But even though the six-month consultation that was to have ended Tuesday was mandatory, it is not legally binding. That means Laos could still proceed with its plans for the Xayaburi dam even if its neighbours are vehemently opposed to it.

An MRC spokeswoman said the issue must now be put before the MRC council, the Commission’s highest level body which meets once a year. Its next scheduled meeting is not until October or November, she said. And there are no guidelines stipulating that Laos cannot begin construction of the dam before then.

Already this week, media reports suggested Lao authorities have already begun construction around the dam site, even though the consultation process was still under way. The Bangkok Post reported observing major roads to the area under construction as well as villagers who were anticipating relocating to make way for the dam.

The planned Xayaburi project is the first of 11 dams Mekong countries have proposed for the lower portion of the river, which winds its way from China’s Yunan province, alongside Burma and Thailand, through Laos and Cambodia before emptying into Vietnam’s Mekong Delta.

Excerpt:

By Irwin Loy
PHNOM PENH, Mar 28 2011 (IPS)

The only Khmer Rouge figure to be prosecuted by a United Nations-backed war crimes tribunal here is arguing that his conviction should be overturned.

Tourists look at photos of prisoners held at the Khmer Rouge detention centre, S-21. Credit: Irwin Loy/IPS

“Duch certainly had enough responsibility to be in charge of Tuol Sleng and be there when almost 14,000 people were killed,” Anne Heindel, a legal advisor to the Documentation Centre of Cambodia, an NGO, told IPS. “Just because he had people above him giving him orders isn’t going to get him out of it.”

“Duch was just a minor secretary who had no real authority to make decisions or to do anything contradictory to the orders from the upper echelons,” said Kar Savuth, one of Duch’s two co-counsels. “Therefore, he could not be considered among the most responsible persons.”

Savuth repeatedly asked for Duch to be released, saying that his client could not have violated international humanitarian law because there was no such thing in Cambodia during the Khmer Rouge regime. “There was no court of law,” he said. “And if there was no law, there was no crime.”

The Khmer Rouge are blamed for the deaths of at least 1.7 million people during its almost four-year rule – more than one-fifth of the country’s population at the time. Yet the question of who should be held criminally responsible has plagued this Southeast Asian nation ever since the ultra- Maoist movement was toppled in 1979.

The Khmer Rouge cadres that are still alive are concentrated in areas along the Thai border – a situation that can see perpetrators living and working alongside victims.

Authorities here have urged reconciliation between former Khmer Rouge and their victims, stipulating that only senior leaders and those most culpable would be tried as part of the war crimes tribunal.

Duch, a former schoolteacher, was placed in charge of S-21 (also known as Tuol Sleng) a one-time high school in central Phnom Penh that was converted into a detention centre for perceived enemies of the regime. Duch has admitted to overseeing a facility that interrogated, tortured and ultimately killed thousands.

Yet Duch was not part of the senior leadership of the Khmer Rouge – a point his lawyers have tried to reinforce during appeals proceedings this week, portraying him as a subordinate merely following orders from the regime’s upper brass. Duch’s lawyers questioned why the heads of some 195 other prisons that were reportedly located throughout Cambodia have not been prosecuted.

“What happened to the other 195 prisons? Did those prisoners become millionaires? Why doesn’t the court find justice for them?” Savuth asked.

But court prosecutors say the defence argument is misleading and inadequate. The tribunal is mandated to prosecute “senior leaders” as well as “those most responsible” for the crimes of the Khmer Rouge, prosecutors say. That means, they claim, that the court is well within its rights to pursue other Khmer Rouge figures, if they are implicated as part of the most serious crimes.

Co-prosecutor Chea Leang said S-21 was more important to the party’s leadership than the other prisons scattered around the country. It was here, she noted, where key interrogations were carried out, including those of Khmer Rouge officials suspected of betraying the regime. “S-21 had the greatest power compared to other centres across the nation,” Leang said.

Duch was offered an opportunity to address the court Monday but said little. Dressed in a light-coloured coat over a blue button-down shirt, he stood briefly only to authorise his lawyers to act on his behalf.

The ECCC’s main Trial Chamber found Duch guilty of crimes against humanity last July.

He was sentenced to 35 years in prison, but judges reduced the sentence by five years because he had been illegally detained. Because of time already served, the sentence meant that Duch was to spend 19 more years in prison.

Duch is urging the tribunal to overturn his conviction altogether and release him. For its part, the prosecution is also appealing the original ruling, arguing that the sentence was too low. Civil parties, made up of Khmer Rouge victims, have also appealed. The proceedings are scheduled to last one week, with a decision expected to take months.

Duch was the first Khmer Rouge figure to be convicted by the court. Four other senior leaders have been indicted for crimes against humanity and genocide and are currently awaiting trial as part of the tribunal’s second phase. Court officials say that trial should get underway later this year.

Excerpt:

By Irwin Loy
PHNOM PENH, Mar 18 2011 (IPS)

Cambodia’s fledgling domestic worker export industry continues to come under scrutiny amid allegations that women have been forcibly detained in privately run training centres.

Local media in this Southeast Asian country reported that one woman died this month at a labour recruitment firm in Phnom Penh, while another trainee broke her legs attempting to escape. The firm has denied any wrongdoing in the woman’s death. But the controversy is a sign that the government’s belated efforts to regulate the rapidly expanding industry have fallen short.

“It’s so sad that the problems are still happening,” Moeun Tola, the head of the labour programme at the advocacy group Community Legal Education Centre, told IPS.

The country’s main opposition party is also weighing in on the issue. Parliamentarians with the opposition Sam Rainsy Party visited the training centre in question this month. Member of Parliament Son Chhay said he was alarmed by the tall gates and barbed wire at the facility, which he said gave “the impression of imprisonment”.

“Local authorities and police ignored the law that forbids detention against one’s will,” Chhay wrote in a letter to Malaysia’s ambassador and provided to IPS and other media this week. “There was no sign that the local authorities even attempted to defend the rights of trainees who are detained against their will. There are tremendous pressures on the young women to comply with the rules of the company.”

Abuse claims made by domestic workers began to make waves last July, when stories of women who said they fled training centres hit the local newspapers. In multiple cases, the women reported they had signed up to be trained as domestic workers, but were not permitted to leave the training centres unless they paid large sums of money. Others claimed they escaped from cramped or squalid living conditions.

The headlines shone an uncomfortable spotlight on the industry. The Cambodian Labour Ministry warned recruitment firms to clean up their act and announced new guidelines in August. The guidelines, released ahead of a promise to update the law governing the industry, advised firms not to allow their trainees to fall into debt. The guidelines also contained general statements prohibiting “detention” and “child labour”.

The problem, Tola explains, is enforcing the rules. Multiple agencies have been found to be training girls younger than 18 – the minimum age for such work is 21. But inspections of the training centres are rare and there are few consequences for operators found to be flouting the rules, Tola says.

“I think the authorities know these things are happening, but they just close their eyes,” he added.

Roughly 30 firms are licensed by the country’s Ministry of Labour to train and send domestic workers abroad. The majority of the women are bound for Malaysia, which is struggling to meet voracious demand for live-in maids after Indonesia put a moratorium on its citizens taking such jobs in Malaysia following publicised cases of abuse.

Malaysia has set its sights on countries like Cambodia to fill demand. Malaysia last year issued almost 25,000 work visas to Cambodian domestic workers, according to the Malaysian Embassy here. That’s well above the roughly 5,300 visas granted across all sectors in 2008.

Cambodia has been just as eager to send its citizens abroad. Job options for many low-income women here are in the country’s chief economic driver – its garment-manufacturing sector. But the minimum wage in garment factories is 61 dollars per month, much less than the 200 to 300 dollars per month women are often promised as domestic workers.

As a result, recruitment firms operating in Cambodia have jumped to take advantage of the market.

Several agencies have been known to recruit women in poor rural areas. They offer cash lump-sum payments and bags of rice to families in order to convince them to sign up their daughters – but the money must be repaid.

Tensions between the trainees and their employers surface when women ask to leave their gated facilities – often the companies will refuse or demand money to allow women to leave, afraid they will run away without paying their debts, according to rights advocates and industry representatives.

The government is expected to issue a new law governing recruitment firms this year – replacing the vague existing regulations, which are more than 15 years old.

An Bunhak, director of the Association of Cambodian Recruitment Agencies, said he has advised the government to prohibit companies from offering large loans to its trainees.

Bunhak says stricter rules will help smooth out problems in the industry.

“We think everyone must follow the regulations. Once everybody understands, it will be okay,” Bunhak told IPS. “We want the rules to protect our migrant workers.”

While authorities implement the new regulations, however, this month’s case shows that potential domestic workers continue to face problems even before they leave the country.

Heang Sophara signed up to be trained as a domestic worker last year. “I wasn’t earning much money farming. I hoped that I could make more money in Malaysia to support my family, even if I had to be away from them for two years,” she told IPS.

But when she started hearing stories of mistreatment, she decided to withdraw her application. She claims the agency demanded that she pay 900 dollars to get out of her contract, even though she never received any loans or underwent training. The case remains unresolved.

“I get more scared when I hear about the problems,” Sophara said. “Now I just want to stay home.”

Excerpt:

By Irwin Loy
PHNOM PENH, Mar 17 2011 (IPS)

The World Bank botched the handling of an ambitious multi-million-dollar land- titling project in Cambodia and has done little to protect thousands of people in a lakeside slum from eviction.

Tile floors are all that remain of homes that once stood on the eastern shore of Boeung Kak lake. Credit: Irwin Loy/IPS

“The claims of the Boeung Kak lake community are serious,” Roberto Lenton, the chair of the panel, said in a statement. “The issues raised involve fundamental questions of their land rights and tenure security… the panel found that the evictions took place in violation of the bank policy on involuntary resettlement and resulted in grave harm to the affected families and community.”

In a series of reports and statements the inspection panel ruled that a controversial bank-funded land-titling project failed to protect some 4,000 families living around Phnom Penh’s Boeung Kak lake – a low-income community that had grown in the centre of the capital following the collapse of the brutal Khmer Rouge regime.

In doing so, the bank broke many of its own regulations meant to ensure its programmes would not cause inadvertent harm to local populations.

Many people in this Southeast Asian country still lack basic legal titles to their land, a legacy of the Khmer Rouge, who outlawed private ownership. The bank funded the Land Management and Administration Project, or LMAP, as part of a plan to address Cambodia’s lingering land problems.

LMAP has courted controversy by following the government’s policy to not issue land titles to some 4,000 families around Boeung Kak lake. The government declared the land to be owned by the state, even though many of the residents had lived there for years.

The government later leased the land to a developer. The Chinese-backed developer and local authorities have since told the residents that they must move to make way for a series of office towers and villas on the 133-hectare site.

The World Bank inspection panel ruled that the bank should have followed its safeguards – agreed to by the bank, donor governments and Cambodian authorities at the inception of the project – which would have allowed the residents to argue their cases for land titles. Instead bank management ignored the residents’ claims until it was too late.

“The harm the people have suffered as a result of the evictions and the following displacement… was evident to the panel team,” the panel stated in its investigation report. “The panel found no record that bank management raised this issue with the government or project staff until 2009, when the situation had already deteriorated beyond repair.”

LMAP managed to issue more than one million land titles to mostly rural residents throughout the country before the government abruptly cancelled the programme in 2009, complaining the World Bank had demanded “too many conditions”.

But the situation for the families in Boeung Kak shows how the project struggled with its primary goal: to help the government establish an “efficient and transparent” land administration system.

“The Boeung Kak case highlights the failure of LMAP to establish an equitable, transparent and rule-based process for titling decisions,” said David Pred, executive director of the advocacy group Bridges Across Borders Cambodia. “In the end, like elsewhere in Cambodia, titling decisions have been made based on the interests and direction of the powerful rather than the rule of law.”

In response to the panel report, World Bank management has accepted that LMAP failed to protect the Boeung Kak lake residents, but it says the project itself wasn’t responsible for their evictions. For its part, the government has continued to insist that the lake residents are living illegally on state land, and that LMAP should never have covered the community.

It’s estimated 1,600 families have already moved from the area, accepting a compensation package totalling 8,500 dollars which requires giving up any right to the land – far less, critics say, than the land is worth and not enough to start rebuilding their lives.

The remaining residents may soon follow. Earlier this month, authorities issued eviction letters to many of the households that stayed behind.

Along the dusty lanes that trace the edges of the lake, the signs of change are everywhere.

Many of the homes have been torn to the ground, leaving stark patches of floor tiles where buildings once stood.

“I’ve seen many families taking down their homes and moving,” said Simoni Mao, who runs a shop a few lanes back from the eastern shore of the lake.

Mao says he came here in 1992 as his country was beginning to look past two decades of war. He says he bought the land from a local official at the time, long before the government had any major development plans for the area. “If I had known they were going to do this,” he said, “I would never have bought land here.”

In the meantime, the World Bank has acknowledged that there may be thousands more families facing eviction in areas where LMAP was supposed to be helping. As part of a review of its actions, bank management discovered more than 8,400 other households who could be at risk of eviction.

Excerpt:

By Irwin Loy
PHNOM PENH, Feb 25 2011 (IPS)

A United Nations rights envoy says Cambodia must accelerate the pace of its democratic reforms, but it’s unclear how much sway he holds with a government that has become increasingly resistant to international criticism.

Surya Subedi, the U.N.’s special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Cambodia, says he has seen encouraging developments in the southeast Asian nation. But there remain worrying trends.

Subedi faces a difficult balancing act when it comes to fulfilling his mission in Cambodia: being a vocal critic could risk alienating a government with which he must ultimately work, while underplaying key concerns could render him ineffective.

“He has all the room in the world [to criticise],” said Ou Virak, president of the Cambodian Centre for Human Rights. “But if his objective is not to offend Mr. Hun Sen and the Cambodian government, then he has no room at all.”

Virak said he believes Subedi has managed to balance the two sides so far, though it may well be because a Cambodian government still dependent on international donors realises that it must tolerate his presence.

“I would like to see the government speed up the process of reform and the process of democratisation,” Subedi told reporters Thursday, following a 10- day visit to the country. “If the reform agenda was sped up and if the process of democratisation was accelerated, many people would be able to enjoy their human rights, and the economic development that has been taking place in this country would be beneficial for all.”

Rights groups have frequently criticised the government for its track record on land rights and freedom of speech. Local watchdog Adhoc, for example, counted more than 200 individual land dispute cases affecting more than 25,000 families in 2010.

Key figures with the main opposition party, meanwhile, are facing legal action – the party’s leader has left the country in self-exile, and another prominent member had her parliamentary immunity revoked.

In his comments Thursday, Subedi said he continued to be troubled by such problems.

“I am concerned about the narrowing of space for people to express their views peacefully and without fear, including those belonging to different political parties,” he said.

The visit was Subedi’s fourth official mission here since he was appointed in March 2009.

Subedi’s predecessor, Kenyan legal scholar Yash Ghai, had a stormy relationship with Cambodia’s leaders, who did not take kindly to the envoy’s blunt critiques. By the time Ghai quit in late 2008, Prime Minister Hun Sen had taken to launching personal critiques of the envoy in public speeches.

In recent months the government has accused the U.N.’s top representative in Cambodia of meddling in its internal affairs.

Subedi has taken a more cautious approach during his visits. His criticisms Thursday were tempered by acknowledgement of what he said were positive moves.

The government, he said, recognises that it needs to reform the judiciary. Subedi has recommended that the government take steps to ensure the legal system is free from political influence – rights groups claim the government has often used the courts to silence its harshest critics. The government has also passed new legislation, including a revamped penal code and laws on demonstration and land expropriation.

Subedi said he was focused on taking a different approach than his predecessor. “Rather than looking at individual cases in isolation, I’m looking at the whole structure,” he said. “Institutional approaches, structural approaches, the laws should be reformed, the legal regime should be strengthened and government policy should be improved. That’s the approach I’m taking.”

Even so, the reaction to Subedi has not always been rosy.

Last September, the rights envoy issued a report highlighting what he said was a worrying lack of political independence in the legal system.

“On a number of occasions and especially in high-profile political cases, the judiciary seems to have allowed itself to be used or manipulated for political or purely private purposes,” Subedi wrote in his report to the U.N. Human Rights Council. “The courts are not trusted by the people to provide impartial justice.”

At least one senior lawmaker objected to the findings.

“Based on my observations, Mr. Subedi is not different from Yash Ghai,” parliamentarian Cheam Yeap was quoted as saying in the English-language Phnom Penh Post newspaper.

And when Subedi stated he was “disappointed” he was unable to meet with Hun Sen during a visit last June, the premier – who had called in sick – said the remark was disrespectful.

“He has been pretty diplomatic and critical at the same time,” Virak said. “I think he’s pretty straightforward in his criticism. He’s been outspoken on some core issues that I think most of us in human rights have identified.”

Whether or not that will result in substantial changes, however, remains to be seen.

In 2009, the Human Rights Council’s Universal Periodic Review (UPR) made 91 sweeping recommendations aimed at improving Cambodia’s rights record – including addressing judicial independence, rampant corruption and land evictions. Cambodia later accepted all 91 of the recommendations, though it’s unclear how the government plans to implement them, if at all.

“Is it an indication that Cambodia agrees to all of them? Or is it an indication the Cambodian government doesn’t care about these recommendations and the UPR process,” Virak said. “Whether Subedi’s own concerns will have an impact, I don’t know.”

Excerpt:

By Irwin Loy
PHNOM PENH, Feb 16 2011 (IPS)

Cambodia must ensure it offers a safe haven to asylum seekers, rights groups say, following the government’s closure this week of a United Nations-run refugee centre, home to dozens of Montagnards from Vietnam.

The 75 Montagnards, part of ethnic minority tribes from Vietnam’s Central Highlands, had been housed at the facility in Phnom Penh – some for up to six years. The government had ordered the centre shut late last year, saying that the Montagnards would either need to be resettled or forcibly returned to Vietnam.

The government gave the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) until this week to find new homes for the asylum seekers.

The UNHCR said 55 of the Montagnards had been resettled in Canada or the United States by this week’s deadline. A further ten are awaiting emigration, while the remaining ten were judged not to meet refugee criteria and are to be returned to Vietnam.

But there are still concerns over the safety of future asylum seekers. Human Rights Watch says Cambodia’s recent track record on asylum seekers has been “dismal”. And it says the south-east Asian country’s regulations governing refugees may not ensure their safety.

“It’s very possible that in the future we may see more Montagnard asylum seekers coming in to Cambodia,” said Phil Robertson, deputy director of the Asia division of Human Rights Watch. “And the question is, what sort of reception are they going to receive?”

Rights groups say the Montagnards, who are comprised of a number of highland tribes, face harassment and persecution in Vietnam. The mostly Christian Montagnards are targeted because of their beliefs, HRW says, and because members of the community sided with the United States during the Vietnam War. HRW estimates there are currently 300 Christian Montagnards imprisoned in Vietnam because of religious or political beliefs.

Cambodia is unique among its immediate neighbours in that it is a signatory to the 1951 Refugee Convention, which sets a definition for who can qualify as refugees and obliges States Parties to protect them. However, critics say refugees in Cambodia have not always been treated fairly.

In late 2009, Cambodia issued a sub-decree that effectively gave it the final say in determining refugee status. But HRW believes the new regulations are wide open to interpretation.

“We’re concerned that (future asylum-seekers) might not receive a fair hearing,” Robertson said. “If there’s a political impetus to try to keep refugees out, to try to toe the government line from Vietnam that these people aren’t refugees, we’re worried Phnom Penh will just go along.”

Critics say there is a precedent for such concern. Days after the government passed the sub-decree, it forcibly returned 20 ethnic Uighur asylum seekers to China in a move rights groups widely condemned. At the time, the group’s refugee claims were still being assessed.

Their fates remain unclear today, but China has issued lengthy prison terms or even death sentences to other Uighurs accused of participating in ethnic riots earlier that year. China and Cambodia later announced trade deals worth roughly 1.2 billion dollars.

The government, however, says the Montagnard refugee centre has served its purpose. Koy Kuong, spokesman for Cambodia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said the UN-administered facility has processed the claims of almost 1,000 asylum seekers since it was formed as part of an agreement with the UNHCR in 2005.

“Now we need to close it down,” he said. “We do not want it to stay open any longer. The longer it stays open, the more problems we will face.”

Koy Kuong rejected claims Montagnard asylum seekers would be persecuted in Vietnam.

“Vietnam is a lawful country, not a country of barbarians,” he said. “Millions of people live there and their economy is growing very fast. Vietnam has no civil war right now.”

The group Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS) has worked extensively with Montagnards and other people seeking asylum in Cambodia. Denise Coghlan, JRS’s Cambodia director, said the move to close the Montagnard refugee centre was a positive step; it was an imperfect set-up that essentially saw the claimants confined to the centre, living in limbo as their refugee statuses remained up in the air.

“Some people were in a closed site for six years, so I think it’s very good that it’s now finished,” she said.

Coghlan was among the most vocal critics when Cambodia chose to deport the Uighurs in late 2009. Now, she said, she’s hopeful the government will give due process to future asylum seekers.

“Like most laws, something’s written down and we have to see how it’s implemented,” she said. “I hope it will be implemented in a humane way and according to the principle and spirit of the UN conventions.”

Excerpt:

By Irwin Loy
PHNOM PENH, Jan 31 2011 (IPS)

Standing in an air-conditioned courtroom on the outskirts of the Cambodian capital, an aging former Khmer Rouge figure accused of genocide offered few words as he asked for his release.

“I only have one suggestion,” said Khieu Samphan, “Please abide by the law.”

More than three years after their arrests, three former Khmer Rouge leaders accused of crimes against humanity and genocide asked a United Nations- backed war crimes tribunal Monday to release them ahead of their pending trials.

Lawyers for Khieu Samphan, the regime’s head of state; Nuon Chea, its chief ideologue; and Ieng Thirith, a former cabinet minister, are arguing they should be released after having been kept in pre-trial detention since their arrests in 2007. A fourth co-defendant, former foreign affairs minister Ieng Sary, did not appear in court.

Observers say releasing the accused could ignite public outrage in this Southeast Asian country. The Khmer Rouge movement was responsible for the deaths of an estimated 1.7 million people. But, more than 30 years after the regime was toppled, senior leaders have yet to stand trial.

Lawyers for the accused argued Monday that the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), as the hybrid tribunal is officially called, is bound by its rules to release them in advance of their trials. The court officially indicted the four accused last September. Lawyers claim that any detention exceeding the four months that have since passed is illegal.

Court officials have not specified a date for the trials, but have indicated they are expected to take place this year. Sa Sovan, a lawyer acting for Khieu Samphan, noted the court has extended his client’s detention period numerous times since his 2007 arrest.

“There are no grounds to continue his detention any longer,” he said.

Son Arun, a lawyer for Nuon Chea, said his client has no intention of fleeing the country if released. On the contrary, he argued, he is eager to testify and explain his side of the story.

“Nuon Chea has indicated again and again that he wishes to participate and cooperate with the court,” Arun said. “He would like to live with his family and he does not intend to run away.”

Court prosecutors, however, argued against releasing the accused, suggesting they had many reasons to flee, and that authorities may not be able to guarantee their safety outside the confines of the court complex.

“The passage of time has not diminished the impact of these crimes,” co- prosecutor Andrew Cayley said. “If anything, it has increased the impact of these crimes. There are many members of the Khmer population who are suffering from psychiatric disorders as a result of their experiences during this appalling time.”

The four co-defendants are accused of being part of a leadership group that oversaw egregious crimes committed more than three decades ago. Today, they are aging and frail. The youngest, Ieng Thirith, turns 79 this year. She quietly left the courtroom early on in proceedings Monday. Nuon Chea, 84, sought medical attention after complaining of dizziness.

“She can barely walk,” lawyer Phat Pouv Seang said of Ieng Thirith, “let alone cause any disturbance to the public order.”

In January, co-defendant Ieng Sary asked the court to permit half-day sessions when the trial gets underway, citing his “age and ill health”.

Court observer Panhavuth Long, a programme officer with the Open Society Justice Initiative, said he believed the accused are acting within their rights by asking to be released. Seeing the aged defendants Monday should come as a reminder that the tribunal must not lose momentum in pursuing prosecution.

“The testimony of the accused can shed light on the history,” he said. “It may enable us to understand more about the regime and also to understand the personalities of the accused.”

And for many victims of the regime, it is the testimony of the four accused, as much as any verdict, that will determine what value the tribunal holds.

“We really want the trial to be up and running very soon. If they die, they bring with them the truth,” he said.

If the court were to release the accused before the trial, it would come as a shock to a Cambodian public eager for justice, said another observer.

“If they are released, it would be a stunning moment for the whole nation,” said Youk Chhang, director of the Documentation Centre of Cambodia.

But he said many people here have already come to their own conclusions.

“Each of the survivors has their own judgement, no matter what the court has to say about it,” Youk said. “The truth about [the defendants] is the crimes they have committed against the people of Cambodia. This kind of truth will never set them free.”

The court is expected to rule on the co-defendants’ release bids within 30 days.

The case represents the second trial as part of the court’s mandate. Last July, Kaing Guek Eav, better known as Duch, was sentenced to 35 years in prison for his role as head of the notorious S-21 detention centre, though the sentence was reduced by 16 years because of time already served and illegal detention.

Excerpt:

By Irwin Loy
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia, Dec 14 2010 (IPS)

Every day, twice a day for the last seven years, Men Thol has swallowed a set of pills that gives him the strength to lead a normal life.

Intellectual property provisions could put ARV pills out of the reach of Cambodians who need them. Credit: Irwin Loy/IPS

“They never helped,” he said. “It was so terrible before. I always needed people to help me do things.”

His health became worse and worse. One year, he developed a skin rash over his body and he grew weaker and weaker. Finally in 2003, Men was given a prescription for anti- retroviral (ARV) drugs, which are used to manage HIV. His condition stabilised and since then, he has found a steady job and lives independently.

“My whole life is better than before,” he said. “I have energy and my health is fine. Now I can help my family, instead of the other way around.”

Thol is one of roughly 40,000 people living with HIV in this South-east Asian country who are on life-saving ARV treatment.

However, advocates are warning that a pending trade deal between the European Union and India – a key supplier of ARVs to the developing world – could have a disastrous effect on those who need the drugs the most.

The EU and India are negotiating a free trade agreement. But activists are worried that a pact will include crippling new restrictions on intellectual property rights that, if enforced, will severely restrict access to HIV-related drugs by making it harder and more costly for Indian companies to produce generic medication.

It is no small issue in Cambodia, a country where more than 90 percent of ARVs used are produced in India, according to Heng Phin, a programme manager with Cambodian People Living with HIV/AIDS Network, an advocacy group.

“This will have a big impact for people with HIV in Cambodia,” Phin said. “In Cambodia, we cannot produce ARV drugs. We depend on the global community and developed countries.”

Statistically speaking, Cambodia has taken significant strides in reducing its HIV prevalence rate and boosting the number of people on ARVs over the last 10 years.

The prevalence rate in the adult population has gone from a peak of 2 percent in 1998, to an estimated 0.7 percent this year, reports the country’s National Aids Authority (NAA).

The number of people receiving ARV treatment has exploded over the same period. There were only 71 patients being treated in 2001, says the NAA. That number exceeded 40,000 by the middle of 2010, representing coverage of roughly 86 percent of the people who need access to such treatment.

Advocates say it is no coincidence that over that time frame, the cost of buying ARVs has plummeted thanks to generic medicine produced in India.

“In 2000, it cost 10,000 U.S. dollars per person to produce one year’s worth of ARV treatment. But now, that has been brought down to 80 dollars per person,” Phin said.

“If you think that many people in Cambodia earn under one dollar per day, you can see why we depend on generic medicine from India. If the cost is too high, then the government cannot buy it,” he added.

Cambodia is merely representative of many groups’ concern over the free trade talks.

The group Médecins sans Frontières (MSF) says it depends on cheap generic medication to treat patients in 60 countries and that 80 percent of the HIV drugs it uses originate in India.

A report released last October by Oxfam International and Health Action International charges that the EU is “guilty of double standards”, by fighting to cut the price of medicine for European citizens, but in effect doing the opposite for people living with HIV in developing countries.

“The EU is pushing a range of (intellectual property) measures that would support the commercial interests of the pharmaceutical industry, while damaging the opportunity for innovation and access to medicines in developing countries,” the report argued.

However, the EU says any potential free trade pact will not be aimed at affecting India’s ability to export life- saving medication.

In a 2010 letter to MSF, Karel De Gucht, the European commissioner for trade, said the European Commission (EC) was “fully committed to ensuring that people in the world’s poorest countries can access affordable medicines.”

He said that details over patent terms and data exclusivity were still to be negotiated, but that the EC was “ready to show the necessary flexibility” as discussions take place. “I would like to be very clear that nothing in this agreement will prevent India from using compulsory licensing for manufacture and export of life-saving medicines to other developing countries in need,” De Gucht wrote.

But in a December statement, Anand Grover, the U.N. special rapporteur on the right to health, warned that the potential trade deal “threatens” the production of life- saving medicine.

The free trade agreement in its current form – Grover referenced “leaked texts” of a draft free trade accord in his statement – will ensure that the production of generic medicines in India will be “severely hampered”, he contended.

“Millions in the developing world depend on India for generic medicines at affordable costs,” Grover said. “Restriction of generic drug production in India will have a devastating public health impact around the world and adversely affect the right to health of millions of patients.”

EC and Indian officials say they hope to finalise an agreement by the spring of 2011.

In the meantime, people like Heng Phin worry about trickle-down effects that any pending agreement may have on him.

He is also HIV-positive. And he remembers how ARV treatment turned his life around a few years ago.

“I was very bad,” Phin recalled. “I was living in really bad conditions. My health was so poor. But after I got ARVs, then my health started getting better. I could work again.”

Said Heng: “ARVs are the best. They are like gods that help people like me. The ARVs attack the virus so my health gets better. Now, I eat well. I can do anything.”

Excerpt:

By Irwin Loy
PHNOM PENH, Nov 25 2010 (IPS)

When the European Union slapped crippling anti-dumping duties on Vietnamese bicycle exports in 2006, one factory’s Taiwan- based owner decided enough was enough.

The company closed up shop, shutting its facility in southern Vietnam and with it, cutting 500 jobs.

“(The duties) really closed our factory,” said Jon Edwards, chief executive officer of A&J Worldwide, a bicycle manufacturer. “It made it uncompetitive, so we had no choice but to open a new factory somewhere else.”

But A&J did not have far to look when it came to choosing a location for a new factory. Across the border in neighbouring Cambodia, exporters were benefiting from preferential trade benefits with a key trading partner – Europe – that saw tariffs drastically reduced or eliminated for exports from the world’s poorest countries.

In Vietnam, bicycle exports had been crushed by EU trading restrictions; in Cambodia, the rules were about to offer manufacturers like A&J a distinct advantage over the competition.

Under the EU’s Everything But Arms, or EBA scheme, import tariffs from Least Developed Countries (LDCs), such as Cambodia, can be reduced or entirely waived.

For A&J, the reduced tariffs offered a distinct advantage to manufacturers operating in wealthier Asian countries that have more established export industries.

“Not only did it do away with the dumping duty, but it also removed all the import duties,” Edwards said. “So whereas before we were on a level playing field with the rest of Asia, now we’ve got a duty of zero percent. The overall savings for the customer are tremendous.”

Edwards says the Cambodian government has embraced the business since A&J opened its factory in 2006 in Svay Rieng province – one of this South-east Asian nation’s poorest.

The factory now employs 800 workers, the majority of them locals.

“We could have gone to Malaysia or Thailand and opened the factory much quicker,” Edwards said. “But in Cambodia, the duty-free makes a huge difference for the customer. They’re getting a big savings.” Those savings, Edwards said, have given A&J’s Cambodian factory strong enough margins to focus on mid- to high-end products – a rarity for manufacturers in LDCs, which rely on mass-producing low-quality items at cheap prices.

Now, he says, the factory is operating at 90 percent capacity and exporting roughly 20,000 bicycles every month.

Cambodian exporters are quickly taking advantage of EBA’s benefits. Exports to the EU from Cambodia totalled 751 million euros, or more than one billion U.S. dollars in 2009, according to statistics from the EU Delegation to Cambodia. Almost three-quarters of the total export value qualified under the EBA scheme.

Cambodia’s main exports benefit extensively from EBA rules. The textiles sector was responsible for the bulk of EU exports in 2009 – 526 million euros (704.9 million dollars) – and more than 70 percent of that total fell under EBA. Roughly 97 percent of Cambodia’s footwear exports last year qualified under EBA. Bicycle exports totalled 48 million euros (64.3 million dollars) – 60 percent of which qualified for EBA benefits.

“The benefits are tremendous,” said Edwards. “It encourages foreign investors to come into Cambodia. It’s training the Cambodian workforce and employing thousands of people.”

Other nascent export industries in Cambodia are exploring the possibilities under EBA. “We have a lot of potential,” said Renne Outh, secretary- general of the Small and Medium Industries Association of Cambodia, who also heads a rice export business.

Cambodian long-grain rice represented less than one percent of exports to the EU in 2009. But rice exporters here hope to take advantage of surging demand and EBA benefits to double that figure in 2011.

Renne said any cost savings gained from EBA go a long way to offsetting prohibitively high expenses that have become a characteristic of doing business in Cambodia. Electricity costs are triple here compared to neighbouring Vietnam.

However, rights groups claim the EBA trade scheme has also had disastrous effects on Cambodia’s landless poor. They point a finger at the country’s rapidly expanding sugar industry, which they say has displaced thousands of families from their land.

The non-governmental organisation Bridges Across Borders Cambodia says authorities have awarded more than 100,000 hectares of land to private developers for sugarcane production in the last two years alone. The resulting disputes with villagers living on the land have led to forced evictions, illegal seizures, arrests and violence, the NGO contends.

With EBA offering Cambodian sugar producers attractive conditions to export their products to the EU, the scheme has only fuelled the abuses, says the group’s executive director, David Pred.

“The EU needs to take a hard look at the social and environmental impacts of all of its trade policies and ensure that they are not causing harm,” Pred said. “In a country like Cambodia, which has very poor governance and no effective remedies for individuals and communities whose rights are violated, any expansion of investment in land and natural resources is going to do far more harm than good for the poor.”

EU officials here have met with rights groups and have promised to look into the issue. But at a rights conference earlier this year, chargé d’affaires Rafael Dochao Moreno said he believed any problems should be solved by Cambodian authorities and not by implementing trade sanctions.

Dochao Moreno also defended the EBA scheme. “Years ago, it was impossible to think Cambodia could export products like bicycles, like shoes, like certain textile products to the European Union markets,” he said. “Today, Cambodia is a net exporter of products like bicycles. We’re talking about tens of thousands of Cambodians that are getting jobs thanks to these concessions.”

In the meantime, new regulations governing EBA are about to make it easier for Cambodian goods to qualify under the scheme.

Starting January 2011, the European Commission is relaxing its rules governing what qualifies as products originating in LDCs. This is expected to boost the main engine of Cambodia’s economy, its garment sector, by allowing more products to qualify under the EBA tariff scheme.

Excerpt:

By Irwin Loy
SEKONG, Laos, Nov 15 2010 (IPS)

On a windy morning in southern Laos in November, a team of deminers built a makeshift bunker out of sandbags and piled the barrier around a tiny explosive.

Somphong Chanthavong of the group Norwegian People's Aid in southern Laos shows deadly shrapnel retrieved from exploded cluster submunition. Credit: Irwin Loy/IPS

Years ago, when this region of South-east Asia was engulfed in a simmering war of ideology, this pathway carved out of the hillside was a small part of the Ho Chi Minh Trail. The North Vietnamese army built its supply line through the mountains cutting through Laos, using the route to fuel its operations against the U.S.-backed south.

And so this area became the target of air strikes from the U.S. military. For a decade between 1964 to 1973, U.S. planes rained bombs down on the fields, roads and villages along the way. When the planes dropped cluster munitions, each bomb dispersed hundreds of tiny explosives on to the ground below. By the time the war ended, Laos had become the most heavily bombed country on the planet.

But though the fighting has long been over, the danger lingers. An estimated 30 percent of those cluster submunitions, or bombies, as they are known in Laos, failed to explode. In Laos’s impoverished south, they still litter villages and fields, making them impossible to farm. And each year, more men, women and children here stumble on the bombs, adding to a casualty toll that has already climbed beyond 50,000 in this country alone.

“Three! Two! One!” A deminer shouted a warning in Lao. A button is pressed and the distant bunker exploded, the blast echoing through the surrounding hills.

For Somphong Chanthavong, an operations coordinator for the group Norwegian People’s Aid, the sound represents one fewer bombie that can kill or maim his countrymen.

This remote province is one of the poorest in Laos. It is no coincidence, Somphong says, that it is also heavily contaminated with leftover weapons from a war that ended some 35 years ago.

“It affects the poor people,” the deminer said. “If they have land, they can work. They can grow rice and crops. If the land is contaminated by (unexploded weapons), it is like a booby trap.”

The Ho Chi Minh Trail stretched from North Vietnam into Laos, down to Cambodia and to the south. All three countries felt the effects of the U.S. air strikes and remain among the most contaminated in the world today. But while the supply line connected the three countries then, today, their governments have taken separate diplomatic approaches to the problem.

Laos has been an active proponent of a landmark treaty that bans the use of cluster bombs. On Nov. 9-12, Vientiane hosted the first high-level meeting of the Convention on Cluster Munitions since it came into effect in August.

Meanwhile, Cambodia and Vietnam have so far refused to sign the treaty, frustrating disarmament advocates who had hoped countries most affected by cluster bombs would take on leading roles in the ban.

“It’s countries like Vietnam and Cambodia where people are suffering,” said Thomas Nash, coordinator for the Cluster Munition Coalition (CMC), which has led the civil society push behind the ban.

“This treaty is not designed just to ban the weapon. It’s designed to help people. The whole motivation for the treaty is to end suffering. So it’s countries like Vietnam and Cambodia that count for us,” he added.

Cambodia was an early proponent of the treaty, but backed off when the convention was opened for signing in 2008. Cambodian officials maintain that they are supportive of the convention and intend to sign. But they have also offered various reasons for why they cannot, from border tensions with neighbouring Thailand to a need to assess their current stockpiles following decades of conflict.

Vietnam, too, has expressed support for the convention. But it has also warned that it may not be able to meet the treaty’s deadline to clear contaminated land.

However, both countries may be taking significant risks in not signing the treaty early on, Nash argues.

Advocates say international donor money that funds clearance projects in the region are barely adequate to maintain minimal levels. Officials in all three countries have warned of fluctuating funding levels that threaten clearance targets. But affected countries also have a greater chance of obtaining clearance funds if they are early adopters of such international conventions, Nash says.

“In the early years, the political momentum is the highest, the visibility is strongest and the flow of money and resources from donors to affected countries is probably also going to be highest,” Nash said. “I think Cambodia and Vietnam have every reason to join the convention and, really, no reason not to.”

Early on, at least, it appeared some countries were willing to offer new funding as the spotlight shone on Vientiane in November. By the time the conference ended, Australia, Belgium, Luxembourg, New Zealand and Switzerland had announced new funds for clearance activities in Laos totalling more than 6.7 million U.S. dollars, according to the CMC.

It is not an insignificant amount in a country where clearance operations cost 12 to 14 million dollars each year. The group Legacies of War argues that this figure must be more than doubled for Laos to meet its long-term clearance goals.

In the meantime, countries that have signed on to the cluster bomb treaty emerged from the Vientiane meeting with a clearer idea of how to implement their obligations under the convention.

While it requires countries to destroy stockpiles within eight years, states parties agreed to set individual timelines and budgets for doing so within one year. They must also identify all contaminated areas and develop plans to clear them within that time frame.

Excerpt:

By Irwin Loy
VIENTIANE, Nov 9 2010 (IPS)

Eighteen-year-old Phongsavath Manithong rubbed his eyes with the back of his arms as he described how his life changed forever.

Ta Doangchom beside homemade prosthetic limbs in the Cooperative Orthotic and Prosthetic Enterprise (COPE) National Rehabilitation Centre Credit: Irwin Loy/IPS

Three years ago, Phongsavath stumbled onto a small, metallic sphere buried in the ground near his school.

He had heard stories about the planes that rumbled overhead decades before, dropping fire from the sky. But he had never before seen a bomb, or held one in his hands. “I didn’t know what it was. I didn’t think it would be dangerous. So I tried to open it,” Phongsavath recalled.

That decision changed his life forever. Phongsavath remembers only seeing a flash of light before his world fell dark. When he awoke in a hospital, he was blind. The bomb had robbed him of his eyesight and ripped away both his hands.

The weapon was part of a decades-old cluster bomb that had been dropped on Laos during the U.S. military’s secretive operations in Indochina between 1964 and 1973. The goal of the air strikes had been to destroy the crucial North Vietnamese Army supply line that snaked its way through Laos and Cambodia on its way to the south. By the time the war was over, those aerial campaigns entrenched Laos as the most heavily bombed country in history.

But today, it is people like Phongsavath who are paying the price for that conflict. Since the war ended, more than 20,000 people in this country have been killed or injured by leftover explosives.

Critics take particular aim at so-called cluster bombs – large explosives dropped from the sky, which contain hundreds of smaller submunitions, or ‘bombies’, as they are referred to in Laos – because they are especially deadly to civilians long after military hostilities have ended.

Estimates suggest more than 270 million individual bombies were scattered over Laos. With a failure rate estimated at around 30 percent, these deadly weapons litter the Lao countryside.

But advocates hope that 2010 represents a turning point in a long-running campaign to eradicate cluster bombs. In August, a treaty banning the use of cluster bombs came into effect. Starting Nov. 9 here in Vientiane, delegates from more than 100 countries are taking part in the first high- level meeting of signatory nations since then, aiming to hammer out a plan to implement the landmark accord.

“The horrifying thing is there may be up to 80 million of these bombs scattered around the countryside, in farmers’ fields, next to schools, beside roads,” said Thomas Nash, coordinator for the Cluster Munition Coalition, a broad group of civil society organisations who have pushed for the wide-reaching ban. “So there’s a huge amount of work to be done to clear this country of the deadly legacy from a war that ended over 35 years ago.”

Laos is seen, per capita, as the most heavily affected country by such munitions. But cluster bombs have riddled conflict-ridden countries around the globe, from Angola to Zambia and Lebanon to Libya.

The 108 nations that have signed on to the Convention on Cluster Munitions have committed to banning the use of the weapons and the eventual destruction of existing stockpiles. They have also made broad pledges to clear contaminated land and provide adequate aid to victims of cluster bombs.

But while heavily affected countries like Laos have ratified the treaty, major military players that still stockpile the weapons – the United States, China and Russia, for example – have not.

Advocates like Nash, however, are hoping the convention will serve to stigmatise the weapons enough so that their use is considered untenable – something he believes has already been accomplished with landmines.

The United States, for example, has not signed on to the Ottawa Treaty, which banned the use of landmines and came into effect more than a decade ago. But it is believed that the U.S. military has not deployed the weapons since the first Gulf War.

“Anti-personnel mines have been eradicated from most military arsenals and we believe the same will happen with cluster munitions,” Nash said.

“You cannot win a political war if you kill civilians, and that’s what cluster bombs do. So I think the message to countries … that haven’t signed is that we believe we have established a standard by which all countries are judged, whether they sign the treaty or not,” he added.

For many who are already scarred by cluster bombs, however, life remains a daily struggle.

Thirty-nine-year-old Ta Doangchom lost both his arms and the sight in his right eye when he triggered a bombie while foraging for food nine years ago. “I can’t support my family,” he said. “All of my children had to leave school because we were so poor. I feel like a burden on my wife and on my family.”

Like Ta, Phongsavath now advocates on behalf of other survivors, urging an end to the use of the weapons that devastated their lives. But he is also still learning to cope with what happened to him.

“I never saw the war with my own eyes,” Phongsavath said. “But I now know that the bombs were dropped on my country. And they didn’t just kill soldiers. They killed men, women and children.”

Excerpt:

By Irwin Loy
KAMPONG CHAM, Cambodia, Oct 31 2010 (IPS)

The monsoon rains soaked the ground beneath Mon Hol’s home until it turned to ankle-deep mud. The aged thatched-leaf roof of his hut, badly in need of replacement, provided little protection.

Monks like Thorn Vandong have gotten involved in bringing key HIV services to rural Cambodians. Credit: Irwin Loy/IPS

Just three years ago, Mon Hol’s world was spiralling out of control.

The results of a medical test came through: HIV-positive. His wife, Roun Ry, also tested positive. Mon could barely fathom what it meant.

His neighbours in this tiny village in rural Cambodia, however, had their own ideas. Word of his condition spread. Then came the taunting and the ridicule. He would ride his bicycle through the village and neighbours would point. Don’t talk to him; don’t even drink with him, they said. He has AIDS.

Then there was his health. He would need to take medicine every day to manage his condition, doctors told him. But the nearest clinic was an hour away. He could barely afford to feed his family as it was, let alone the cost of a motorbike taxi to pick up his medicine. How would he cope?

“I was scared,” Mon said. “I was afraid. I didn’t even know anyone who had HIV. Then I realised that I had it.”

Mon’s situation underscores just one of the challenges authorities in this South-east Asian nation face in addressing HIV. Countries have pledged to reduce the prevalence of HIV and offer life-saving anti-retroviral (ARV) treatment to all those who need it as part of the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals.

But in rural Cambodia, far from even basic medical care and a world away from city hospitals, the best intentions abruptly run up against the realities of daily life.

Three years ago, there were few options for Mon. He knew little about the virus that had taken control of his body. There was no care in his remote village, no counsellors, no one to talk to about the illness. Cambodia’s health system did not reach as far as his village and few non-governmental organisations operated in the area.

The hospital in the provincial capital was an hour away. For a poor farmer living hand to mouth, it might as well have been in another country.

In 2009, however, a non-government organisation led by monks, the Buddhism and Society Development Association (BSDA), stepped in with a programme that Mon says has changed his life.

It linked people living with HIV, like Mon and his wife, with counselling and offered health education to them and their neighbours. More vitally, they have also made it possible for Mon to get his medication on a regular basis. BSDA’s support includes a monthly stipend that allows him to make the trip to the nearest clinic to pick up his treatment.

“People who live in the village are very poor,” said Pheaktra Lansamrith, a project coordinator with BSDA. “If they don’t have money, then some of them just won’t get the help they need.”

Cambodia offers free ARV treatment to people like Mon – those who are least able to afford them. In remote rural areas like this, extra measures are crucial to ensuring people living with HIV can get the help they need.

“HIV and AIDS is the big issue, the big challenge in Cambodia, especially in rural areas like Kampong Cham,” said Thorn Vandong, a monk and BSDA’s executive director.

Thorn said while authorities may embrace the importance of addressing HIV and AIDS, many villagers in poor rural areas have a poor understanding of it.

“They don’t think that HIV and AIDS is the biggest problem. They can have sex without condoms; they don’t care,” Thorn said. “In Khmer, we say ‘they’re not afraid of AIDS; what they are afraid of is not having sex’.”

Still, for a country still mired in poverty following decades of conflict, statistics suggest that HIV is one of the key areas in which Cambodia has taken significant strides. Cambodia committed to cutting the HIV prevalence rate among adults to 1.8 percent by 2015. Current estimates peg this at around 0.7 percent, ahead of target.

Cambodia has also seen a rapid scale-up in the proportion of people receiving ARV treatment. In 2002, only 3 percent of those who needed ARVs had access to them and only two health facilities even offered the treatment. The government says more than 40,000 people now have access to ARVs – representing roughly 86 percent coverage.

By end-2009, ARV treatment had reached clinics or hospitals in 20 out of 24 provinces, but this translated into only half of the country’s 78 health districts.

Kampong Cham itself is one of Cambodia’s most populous provinces and its capital is a relatively close 125- kilometre drive from the capital Phnom Penh. But there are still areas where HIV programmes have yet to reach.

“We just started our programme last year,” said BSDA’s Thorn. “So you can imagine what happened here after 20 years with no HIV programmes in the community.”

A couple of years ago, Mon Hol’s older brother, Hon, then living on the other side of the country, also tested positive for HIV. He moved back to Kampong Cham because his brother told him he could get help here.

Today, he is healthy and manages to take his medication regularly. “I’ve learned a lot from the counsellors. Not just about the virus, but they’ve also given me the motivation to continue,” Mon Hon said. “There’s hope for the future. And there’s hope for the future of my children as well.”

Excerpt:

By Irwin Loy
KAMPONG CHHNANG, Cambodia, Oct 26 2010 (IPS)

Ngoun Thy shuffled through the darkened room. To the right, mortar shells, lined up in a row. To the left, a spool of aged wiring and a pile of metal.

Ngoun Thy of the Cambodian Mine Action Centre holds the remnants of a cluster submunition. Credit: Irwin Loy/IPS

Ngoun, a senior instructor at Cambodia’s national training centre for demining operations in central Kampong Chhnang province, walked to the back of the hall. “Oh, these ones,” Ngoun said, crouching in a corner. “Bombies.”

He picked up two half-circles the size of tennis balls; the metal shells clinked harmlessly in his hands.

This quiet hall on the outskirts of the provincial capital in central Cambodia could be a showroom for the deadly legacies of war. It is filled with the relics of almost three decades of conflict in this South-east Asian nation — rusty mines laid by once violent factions; cluster submunitions – bombies – dropped in the millions as part of the U.S. government’s secretive campaign over Cambodia in the early 1970s.

But for officials with the government’s demining operation, the Cambodian Mine Action Centre (CMAC), this room also represents hope. Each of the former weapons has been painstakingly unearthed, disarmed, then left here as a reminder.

Cambodia is one of the most contaminated countries in the world when it comes to land mines and unexploded ordnance (UXO). But with almost two decades of experience slowly cleaning away that legacy from contaminated rice fields and jungle brush across the country, Cambodian authorities have also become reluctant experts. They are now hoping to use that expertise to help other developing countries afflicted with similar problems.

Cambodian deminers have participated in peacekeeping operations as part of U.N. missions in countries like Sudan. Cambodia is also offering its experience at the strategy level. In September, a delegation from Colombia is expected to visit Cambodia as part of ongoing training.

Roath Kanith, CMAC’s director of training, research and development, compares the landmine situation in Colombia with what Cambodia faced a dozen years ago.

“Before 1998, Cambodia was partly secure, partly insecure,” Roath said. “If you conduct mine/UXO operations in an insecure area, what do you do? It’s the same thing in Colombia. Part of the country is secure, but part of the country is not under government control. So we can share the information we learned.”

Advocates see this kind of South-South partnership among developing countries as a way to reduce dependence on developed nations’ aid.

Roath, however, said such information exchanges make fiscal – and moral – sense. “Remember that Cambodia has received the support of the world community for almost 20 years. I think it’s time for Cambodia to pay back to the world,” he said. “Even if we don’t have the money to pay directly to mine operations, we can at least export our knowledge and experience.”

CMAC itself has grown from a small demining project in the early 1990s, as peace was being negotiated in Cambodia, to a national organisation with more than 2,300 deminers today.

As CMAC grew more independent, it also grew less reliant on foreign expertise. Roath said there were more than 100 foreign technical advisers at CMAC when he started working there 12 years ago. Now, he estimates, there are “two or three” throughout the entire organisation.

“In terms of training, in terms of mine/UXO clearance, we have the capability to handle all those issues,” he said.

Heng Ratana, CMAC’s director general and an advisor to the prime minister, said it makes sense for the country’s largest demining operation to be as independent as possible.

“We have had many short-term technical advisers in the past. They can speak very good English … but maybe not so sure about technical skills and experience in the field,” Heng said. “So I think promoting UXO-affected countries to share their experiences among themselves is very important.”

The significance of landmines and UXO in Cambodia cannot be overstated. Surveys have estimated that landmines affected almost half of the country’s villages. The mere threat that a stretch of land may be contaminated has rendered entire plots of arable land too dangerous to farm. Indeed, landmines are seen as such a barrier standing in the way of the country’s development that Cambodia has included mine eradication as one of the specific targets under its Millennium Development Goals aimed at ending poverty.

“Most of the affected communities are living in rural areas. These are people who are living under the poverty line,” Heng said. “People need to use safe land. So it is our obligation to provide them with that safe land for generations to come.” But although Cambodian authorities now lead demining efforts in their own country, they are still reliant on donors to fund these operations.

Government officials and those with demining NGOs have complained of “donor fatigue” – fluctuations in year-to-year funding that may threaten future plans, as well as Cambodia’s recently revised goal to clear severely contaminated areas within the next 10 years.

“The funding situation is fluctuating at this stage,” Heng said. “Projects are on and off. There are gaps for a few months. It makes it very difficult for mine clearance in this country.”

Excerpt:

By Irwin Loy
PHNOM PENH, Sep 23 2010 (IPS)

Questions hover over the future of Cambodia’s political opposition, as well as room for dissent, in the wake of the conviction and sentencing of the exiled leader of the country’s largest opposition party to 10 years in prison.

On Sep. 23, the Phnom Penh Municipal Court convicted opposition leader Sam Rainsy on charges of disinformation and falsifying public documents. He was accused of fabricating maps that he claimed showed neighbouring Vietnam had encroached on Cambodian soil – a politically charged subject in a country whose government has close ties to Vietnamese authorities, yet where centuries-old antipathy also lingers.

The court’s decision comes after a separate January conviction that saw Sam Rainsy sentenced to two years in prison after he uprooted a marker along a stretch of the border with Vietnam. He was convicted in absentia in both cases, living in self-imposed exile in France.

In an e-mailed response to questions Thursday, Sam Rainsy said the charges against him were “of a strictly political nature”.

“Only a kangaroo court can issue the type of verdict we saw today,” he wrote. “Everybody … rightly says that the judiciary in this country is everything but independent, being only a political tool for the authoritarian ruling party to silence any critical voices.”

Yim Sovann, a spokesman for the Sam Rainsy Party, said the court ruling was an alarming sign that the government has grown increasingly intolerant of criticism. “The courts are being used as a political tool to crack down on the opposition party,” he said. “It’s a big step backward for democracy in Cambodia.”

Thursday’s ruling adds to lingering questions over whether Sam Rainsy will even be allowed to stand in the next parliamentary elections, scheduled for 2013, in this South-east Asian nation. If the convictions are upheld, it would leave the Cambodian opposition without its leader and one of its most prominent members.

“The court issued a verdict to sentence Sam Rainsy. But it’s not just Sam Rainsy. It sentences the whole country,” Yim said. “The younger generation sees that when you stand up to protect your country, they will be tried like this. It sets a bad example.”

If the court ruling means that Cambodia’s opposition leader cannot run in the coming election, it will cast doubt over the state of democracy in the country, said Koul Panha, executive director of the Committee for Free and Fair Elections.

“Cambodia endorses liberal, pluralist democracies,” Koul said. “So the freedom to have different political opinions is very important. But now the case shows there are some political differences that are not tolerated. This will affect the full participation of the opposition parties.”

He said he believes the court decision shows Cambodia’s democracy is still “immature”, 17 years after its first post-war elections. He said that while there has been a sharp decrease in political violence in recent years, battles are instead being played through the courts.

Authorities, however, reject accusations of political interference in the judicial system.

“This was a decision of the court,” government spokesman Phay Siphan said of the ruling against Sam Rainsy. “We encourage the courts to do whatever the courts feel is just. We respect their sovereignty. Nobody influences them.”

Instead, Phay said any blame for Sam Rainsy’s predicament lies squarely on the opposition leader himself. “When you commit wrongdoings, you have to respect the rule of law,” he said. “Like everyone, political opposition parties have to abide by the rule of law.”

Rights groups, however, say the courts have increasingly been used as a means to silence opposition to the ruling Cambodian People’s Party. Villagers protesting land disputes, rights workers, journalists and politicians have all faced problems with the legal system in recent years.

Parliamentarian Mu Sochua, a Sam Rainsy Party member, was convicted of defaming Prime Minster Hun Sen in 2009 after she had earlier accused him of insulting her.

Sam Rainsy himself has previously faced legal problems; he fled the country in 2005 after was stripped of his parliamentary immunity in relation to a defamation lawsuit. A court later sentenced him in absentia, but he returned after receiving a royal pardon and led his party to opposition status in the following election.

But it remains to be seen if he will be able to find a similar resolution to his current problems.

Ou Virak, president of the Cambodian Centre for Human Rights, said it appears the government is intent on trying to end Sam Rainsy’s political career. “I think this government believes it can effectively stop Sam Rainsy from returning to Cambodia for good,” Ou said. “It’s a very clear, political move by the government to prevent Sam Rainsy from coming back and effectively weakening the opposition altogether.”

Ou said he believes the government knows that international reaction to its jailing a key opposition figure could be harsh.

By keeping Sam Rainsy outside Cambodia, any condemnation may be less severe than if he was imprisoned, Ou said. “The fact is he’s out of the country. It’s not like you have somebody in jail,” he explained. “The government understands this. As long as Sam Rainsy remains outside, you’re not going to hear too harsh criticisms from all sides.”

Excerpt:

By Irwin Loy
PHNOM PENH, Sep 18 2010 (IPS)

A war crimes tribunal in Cambodia may have reached a major milestone this week by indicting four former leaders of the Khmer Rouge. But much more needs to be done to ensure that the long-awaited trial is meaningful to the regime’s victims, analysts say.

On Sep. 16, the tribunal announced the indictment of four Khmer Rouge leaders: Nuon Chea, the party’s chief ideologue; Ieng Sary, the foreign minister; Ieng Thirith, the social affairs minister; and Khieu Samphan, the party’s head of state.

They face charges including crimes against humanity, murder and genocide and are accused of being among the architects of a regime that caused the deaths of up to 2.2 million people during the Khmer Rouge rule from 1975 to 1979.

More than three decades after the regime collapsed, the four ageing suspects are also the only senior Khmer Rouge leaders to be charged by the United Nations-backed tribunal.

“I think the case is going to be the most important trial in Cambodian history. It could allow Cambodians to turn to the next page and move on,” said Youk Chhang, director of the Documentation Centre of Cambodia, whose researchers have compiled a vault of evidence archiving the regime’s abuses.

Officials with the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), the tribunal’s official name, say they hope a trial will begin during the first half of 2011.

However, some observers say the court will not truly be effective unless it can properly address the crucial issue of how reparations will be given to victims of the regime.

In July, the court convicted former Khmer Rouge prison chief Kaing Khek Eav. Duch, as he is better known, was convicted of overseeing the murders of an estimated 14,000 people judged to have been enemies of the regime. But advocates for victims and their surviving families said the court did not go far enough to address the hugely symbolic issue of reparations.

Part of the court’s mandate is to give a voice to victims. And so it allowed qualified victims and their families to participate directly in the proceedings as civil parties – and at levels that were unprecedented in international justice.

The tribunal is also able to award “collective and moral reparations” to approved victims. Demands from civil parties in the Duch case included free medical care, the creation of staffed education facilities and a curriculum about human rights abuses and genocide, as well as a trust fund that could provide vocational training and small-business loans.

But in the end, the court consented only to having the names of approved civil parties and victims listed in the final written judgment and for transcripts of Duch’s apologies and admissions of responsibility to be posted to the court website. This latter gesture was derided by some as being severely inadequate in a country where few rural residents have access to the Internet.

“It’s not meaningful to victims,” said Sok Leang, the interim director and victims outreach manager for the NGO Centre for Justice and Reconciliation. “The names of the victims will be listed in the final verdict and then they will be digitised and posted on websites so everyone can see. This is just ridiculous in light of the technologies that victims living in remote areas have access to.”

But in their decision, trial chamber judges noted that they were “constrained” by the rules of the court. It was not within the tribunal’s scope, they said, to award reparations the court had no jurisdiction to enforce – thus ruling out civil party demands to create school curriculums or national memorials.

And while the court’s legal framework stipulated that the accused was to be solely responsible for reparations, there were no measures allowing the ECCC to enforce its rulings if Duch was unwilling or unable to comply. The court was also unable to draw funding for reparations from third parties like donor countries or government.

Sok said the first case was a “test” – one that he said produced very mixed results. “I think it was a lesson for the victims as well as a lesson for the panel of judges,” he said of some of the harsh reactions to the decision on reparations.

In the second case involving the four senior Khmer Rouge leaders, then, the tribunal must find more creative and symbolic solutions to the issue of reparations, should the accused be found guilty, Sok said.

“People have to have something to take away and be proud of this court; to be proud of the trial,” he said. “If the reparations after this second case are similar to the first case, then most victims will not be satisfied. If the reparations are still the same, I think it will not be successful.”

But the tribunal has taken measures that could see the matter handled differently in the second case. A day after the indictments were publicised, the court announced it had approved new rules that will expand its options for reparation during the second case.

The court will now be allowed to award reparations that may be funded by donor contributions. This would mean that potential reparations that would have been excluded under the old rules because the accused lacked the money to pay for them, could now be covered by donors. The rule changes do not affect the reparations rulings for the Duch trial.

“I think we are learning throughout the process what is working and what is not working,” said Lars Olsen, a court spokesman. “Remember, this is the first time in international criminal justice that we have victim participation on this scale.”

But while reparations have a highly symbolic meaning for victims, Olsen said the focus must remain on the trial’s criminal proceedings. “By the end of the day I believe the most important factor for any victim is to see that justice is being served,” he said. “This can mainly be done through criminal proceedings, holding perpetrators responsible for crimes.”

Excerpt:

By Irwin Loy
PHNOM PENH, Sep 16 2010 (IPS)

Twenty-nine-year-old Ramy shuddered as he described the years he has spent addicted to heroin. Lying to his family, stealing from friends to scrape together the money to feed his addiction – until a few months ago, that was the life he led.

A drug user comes for his methadone dose, hopefully on the way out of the drug habit. Credit: Irwin Loy/IPS

“The first week when I started, I would inject four or five times in a day,” said Ramy, who asked that his full name not be used. “And after that, I injected just once in a day. After a week, I stopped injecting.”

Now, Ramy said, he is able to work full-time at his family’s business. “My family trusts me now,” he said.

Every morning, Ramy and 60 other drug users come to a small clinic at a hospital in Phnom Penh, the Cambodian capital. He speaks to a counsellor who asks him questions about his health. Then he picks up his dose of methadone from staff stationed behind a glassed-in dispensary, heads to a private room and ingests his “medicine”.

While methadone programmes have been operational around the world for decades, the one Ramy goes to – a year-long pilot project officially launched this week – is the first of its kind in Cambodia.

Advocates say that prescribing methadone – a synthetic opioid – as a substitute for heroin allows participants to stabilise their lives by eliminating the need to find money for drugs. They add that coupled with supports like transitional housing and job training, MMT can enable drug users to reform their lives.

The methadone programme is also the first government-run drug treatment scheme – part of a plan that experts hope will be a turning point for drug policy in this South-east Asian country, where there are an estimated tens of thousands of metamphetamine users.

Rights advocates claim drug users are routinely rounded up, detained and abused in a series of “detention centres” around the country. A January report from Human Rights Watch reported that many drug users were subject to rampant and at times “sadistic” violence in many of the centres; authorities have rejected all claims of abuse.

The methadone programme, then, represents a small step away from the detention centre model, according to one of the scheme’s architects.

The compulsory drug detention centres “do not provide any evidence-based or health rehabilitation activities,” said Graham Shaw, technical adviser on drug use with the World Health Organisation (WHO), who designed the MMT programme.

“And so this methadone clinic is completely the opposite. It’s based on 40 plus years of evidence as to what does work,” he added.

Chhit Sophal, who is in charge of the programme as head of the Ministry of Health’s Centre for Mental Health and Drug Dependence, said the country has long lacked professional treatment options to counter addiction.

“I think the options for drug treatment are very limited in Cambodia,” he said. “We have some NGOs providing drug interventions for them. But we don’t have any professional skills yet. But now, it seems the Ministry of Health is starting to take a firm position and to lead in this area and to build up the capacity among our medical staff.”

Cambodian society as a whole also needs to overcome its traditionally harsh views of drug users, he said.

“For Cambodian people, we don’t like people using drugs. This is the tradition. So they consider them to be like bad children, like outcasts. This is what (drug users) face,” Chhit said.

But even though some advocates here say they are optimistic about progress in developing treatment, the more than 100 people expected to take part in the methadone pilot over the next year are a tiny drop compared to the scale of the problem.

“For heroin use, we estimate there are probably 3,000 (drug users) nationally,” said the WHO’s Shaw. “But for methamphetamine use, we’re probably looking at 30,000 to 40,000 at least; probably even more than that. So it’s a much more significant problem.”

The government and the WHO have pledged to work together to roll out what is hoped will be a nationwide treatment programme to address the larger problem. But in the meantime, the majority of the detention centres singled out by the Human Rights Watch report remains open.

Excerpt:

By Irwin Loy
PHNOM PENH, Sep 12 2010 (IPS)

For anti-smoking advocate Mom Kong, the ubiquitous flashy cigarette advertisements he sees throughout Cambodia’s capital city are a major barrier to reducing smoking.

“You can see it everywhere,” said Mom, the executive director of the Cambodia Movement for Health, a non-government organisation (NGO) that advocates tough anti-smoking laws. “You can see it on the street. Or at concerts, which can attract a lot of youth and rural people to smoke.”

But within the last year, the government has announced long-awaited measures aimed at reducing smoking in Cambodia, which are already among the highest in South-east Asia.

In July, a law that orders tobacco manufacturers and importers to place large health warnings on cigarette packages – spanning at least 30 percent of the pack – came into effect. And now, authorities have promised to introduce strict regulations that would ban all tobacco advertising and promotions by early next year.

Such a move would bring the country into compliance with a key element of the landmark Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), which mandates governments to ban all forms of tobacco advertising. Under the treaty, signatory nations are obliged to “undertake a comprehensive ban on all tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship” within five years.

For Mom Kong, the measures are vital to reducing smoking – and preventing potential new smokers from lighting up.

“Tobacco advertising helps to attract children to smoking and makes it difficult for smokers to quit,” he said. “Banning advertising would be an effective measure to prevent youth and children from smoking.”

Numerous studies have drawn a link between tobacco advertising and smoking. A study published in 2008 in the ‘British Medical Journal’ examined susceptibility to smoking among youth in Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam. Researchers found that the presence of billboard advertising increased even school-aged girls’ vulnerability to smoking.

“Our results indicate the potential benefits of banning billboard tobacco advertising in regions where it is not already banned,” the researchers stated.

Health experts say the government’s move represents a key part of anti- smoking policies, which authorities here have gradually implemented.

Cambodia has set up an inter-ministerial committee to advise the government on anti-smoking measures. Certain government ministries have also placed restrictions on smoking within the workplace. Even Cambodia’s prime minister has pledged to cut back on his own smoking.

“I think the government is working hard to reduce smoking,” said Yel Daravuth, the tobacco health adviser with the World Health Organisation (WHO) country office in Cambodia. Ending tobacco advertising would also bring Cambodia in line with neighbouring countries that have already implemented similar bans, Yel said.

“We can see Vietnam, Laos, Thailand and Singapore have already banned advertising,” he said. “You can see that a ban on advertising is one of the core articles of the FCTC. Advertising can make some people start to smoke, and it can lead to smokers continuing to smoke.”

Estimates for smoking rates in Cambodia vary. But the various studies suggest that the prevalence rate among male smokers in Cambodia is one of the highest in the South-east Asian region. Nearly half – 49 percent – of Cambodian males older than 15 smoke tobacco, according to the WHO’s yearly compilation of global health data, ‘The World Health Statistics 2010’. The prevalence rate in Laos is 64 percent; in Vietnam, 44 per cent; and in Thailand, roughly 43 percent.

Industry officials in Cambodia say they have been preparing for sweeping new regulations banning tobacco advertising and that they support the government’s move.

“We believe that banning tobacco advertising on TV, radio and billboards, as well as sponsoring concerts – all of those big mass media where you cannot control the access of underage people – we fully support those kinds of laws,” said Kun Lim, the head of corporate and regulatory affairs for British American Tobacco in Cambodia.

However, he said tobacco companies should still be allowed to advertise at corner stores and other places where cigarettes are sold.

“We still believe that cigarettes are a legitimate, legal product and we should have enough reasonable freedoms to communicate with clients at points-of- sale,” he said. “That is a fundamental right we should protect.”

Though health advocates say Cambodian authorities have taken positive steps in their efforts to reduce tobacco consumption, measures beyond a wide- reaching advertising ban will still be necessary.

Mark Schwisow, country director of the international NGO Adventist Development and Relief Agency, encouraged the government to make it more difficult for people to smoke. He recommended boosting taxes on cigarettes to make smoking more costly. At the moment, one popular locally produced brand sells for just 30 U.S. cents a pack.

The government should also create more smoke-free areas in public places, Schwisow said. “It would reduce access to smoking and act as a deterrent,” he said. “The main benefit is reducing the convenience of smoking.”

Excerpt:

By Irwin Loy
PHNOM PENH, Sep 10 2010 (IPS)

Cambodian authorities must take sweeping measures to boost the number of women who sit in parliament if the country is to meet a key part of its global commitment to gender equality, advocates say.

Former Cambodian Minister of Women's Affairs Mu Sochua says quotas alone will not address long-standing problems in women's representation. Credit: Irwin Loy/IPS

But with only one National Assembly election remaining before the deadline – voters in this South-east Asian nation are scheduled to head to the polls in 2013 – advocates say Cambodia risks missing this crucial target if the government fails to enact extraordinary measures to boost the number of women in politics.

Opposition members and civil society groups are calling on the government to legislate strict quotas that would ensure enough women are elected. But the government here is vehemently opposed to use of the term “quotas,” leaving advocates to walk a delicate line.

Drude Dahlerup, a political science professor at Stockholm University who has researched gender equality in political systems around the world, including Cambodia, said quotas are the most effective way for countries to show dramatic results in a short period of time.

In her native Sweden, for example, women represent 47 percent of legislators – one of the highest figures in the world. “But it took a long time to achieve; it took 100 years,” Dahlerup said. “Many countries are saying, ‘We aren’t going to wait that long.’”

Female lawmakers currently occupy 27 of 123 seats – or just under 22 percent – in the National Assembly following the most recent election in 2008. The figure represents a jump over Cambodia’s first post-war national elections in 1993, when women occupied only five percent of seats. But reaching the 30 percent target by 2015 remains a challenge.

Dahlerup, who said she was asked by the Cambodian government to devise options to reach the goal, is recommending that authorities consider legislating some kind of quota system – though she, like other advocates, uses the more subtle term “temporary special measures” in place of “quotas.”

“Everywhere quotas are controversial, but I think that’s because there’s a misunderstanding that quotas are used to give women special favours,” Dahlerup said. “I try to turn this around and say, ‘Why are men so over- represented?’”

Cambodia’s National Assembly is elected using a proportional representation system, whereby the electorate votes for a preferred party rather than individual candidates. The seats in multi-member districts are then filled from the parties’ candidate lists.

Dahlerup is recommending that the government legislate rules that require political parties to set gender quotas for its candidates – women must make up no less than 30 percent and no more than 70 percent of a party’s candidates. Additionally, the lists must be organised into a rank order system. Under one suggested option, the top two candidates cannot be of the same sex; under another, candidate rankings would alternate between male and female.

“I think you should have legislation that forces all political parties to do this,” Dahlerup said. “This is trying to make equality (happen) and jump over the barriers that women face.” The recommendation for the “temporary special measure” may comply with the government aversion to strict quotas.

Minister of Women’s Affairs Ing Kantha Phavi said the government will not consider quotas, but she said some steps must be taken before the next election to boost the proportion of female parliamentarians.

“In Cambodia, we won’t talk about a quota system,” she said during a gender workshop held this week to debate options for achieving the country’s gender goals. “It means you have to have 30 percent, or 40 percent. We cannot say we must do this.”

The minister acknowledged that “temporary special measures,” which do not directly set aside seats in the National Assembly based on sex, are on the table.

“I agree we may have to have temporary measures so that we can achieve [the MDG]. There is only one election to go before 2015,” she said.

Thida Khus, secretary general of the Committee to Promote Women in Politics, said such affirmative action measures are necessary to ensuring more women can break into the “old boys’ club” of national politics.

“It threatens some of the men, who are the gatekeepers of the political parties right now,” she said. “Are you asking them to let go of their power to make way for women?” The government’s current education and training efforts to encourage female politicians may simply be inadequate, she said.

“They do capacity building. They do awareness. But we will not meet the 30 percent goal in 2013 if we do not have special measures and more affirmative action,” she added.

Mu Sochua, a former Minister of Women’s Affairs who has become one of the government’s most outspoken critics in opposition, said she believes quotas are necessary, but such measures alone will not address long-standing problems involving women’s representation.

“I don’t think quotas alone are enough,” she said. “Female politicians have to make themselves accountable to women.” Though there may be 27 female lawmakers in parliament now, few of them are publicly vocal on crucial issues like violence against women, she said.

“They are lawmakers but they rarely speak,” Mu said. “Look at land issues. Look at migration. Poverty has the face of a woman. You cannot just close your eyes to it.”

Excerpt:

By Irwin Loy
PHNOM PENH, Aug 3 2010 (IPS)

On the first day of May, a deadly reminder from the turbulent past exploded in one of Cambodia’s provinces.

In Pailin province, a former stronghold of the genocidal Khmer Rouge that ruled the country in the seventies, unsuspecting farmers triggered an anti-tank mine that had been buried for years.

“A group of farm workers had come back at the end of the day,” said Cameron Imber, programme manager for British demining charity group The Halo Trust, reading a report of the incident. “They were driving down a track between a field. Five killed, nine injured.”

It was the deadliest landmine accident in the province in at least two years.

The blast underscored just how much work there remains for this South-east Asian nation of 14.8 million people – one of the most heavily mined countries in the world – to reduce injuries and deaths caused by long-buried weapons of war.

But efforts to eradicate landmines in a country that is one of the poorest in the region are still dependent on financial support from the international community. That support, officials here say, has waned in the last year.

“We have had a problem with funding this year,” confirmed Leng Sochea, deputy secretary-general of the Cambodian Mine Action and Victim Assistance Authority (CMAA).

Over the last three years, international donors offered up roughly 30 million U.S. dollars each year for mine clearance activities, he says. But in 2010, the amount has fallen short of that. “Up to now, we have secured around 23 million dollars only,” he said.

The fluctuations in funding, he said, could have a direct effect on whether Cambodia is successful in meeting its international obligations to eradicate landmines.

“If the development partners keep their promises and give funds, maybe we can clear the land and meet our obligations,” Leng said. “We need the development partners to be responsible.”

Cambodia has shown success in reducing casualties from landmines and other remnants of war. In 1996, as the country was in the early stages of rebuilding, Cambodia recorded more than 4,000 casualties. That number has been steadily dropping over the years. In 2008, 244 people were killed or injured by blasts from landmines or other unexploded ordnance left over from the country’s three decades of conflict.

But if that number is to continue to fall, advocates say the international community must do its part.

Imber said dwindling donor funding has also hit his organisation hard. Two years ago, the group counted on funding of roughly 7 million dollars. This year, that amount has dropped to roughly 4 million dollars, he said, forcing Halo Trust to cut back its operations.

So far, the non-government organisation has managed to absorb the cuts by slashing costs and holding off on major equipment purchases. If the funding continues to plummet, however, so could the amount of work Halo deminers are able to accomplish. “Unless the funding comes in the next year, we could possibly be losing 40 percent of our staff,” Imber said.

He attributes the funding problems to “donor fatigue”, with Cambodia “dropping slightly off the donor map.”

“At the end of the day, the more deminers out there, the more mines will be cleared,” he said.

There is no shortage of work.

A 2002 survey estimated that almost half of the country’s villages – around 46 percent – were affected by landmines. The threat of stepping on mines also scares villagers away from making use of crucial land for farming and basic sustenance.

Mine clearance represents such an important issue to Cambodia that the country has included it as one of its Millennium Development Goals, part of the global targets that U.N. member states have pledged to keep in order to reduce poverty.

Already though, authorities here acknowledge it will be impossible for the country to meet its goal of ending landmine casualties by 2012. “The old goal was a bit too ambitious to achieve,” said the CMAA’s Leng.

The country has also revised its commitment as part of the 1997 Ottawa Treaty, which banned the use of landmines and compelled signatory nations to clear contaminated areas – in Cambodia’s case, by 2009.

Last year, Cambodia was granted a 10-year extension on that goal. “Through the experience of the last two years, we have seen that this figure may be more realistic,” Leng said.

That experience has also played a role in holding Cambodia back from signing on to the global Convention on Cluster Munitions, which came into effect this week. Its signatory nations are banned from using cluster bombs, which are huge bombs that contain hundreds of individual bomblets and are dropped from the sky, of the type used during the U.S. intervention in Indochina decades ago.

Estimates suggest that between 1.3 and 7.8 million bomblets have been left unexploded in Cambodia, the result of the U.S. military’s bombing campaign between 1969 and 1973 in its fight against the communist movement in neighbouring Vietnam.

Cambodia has come under criticism for not signing on to the cluster munitions convention despite being one of its early proponents.

But officials here say they must conduct further research to figure out how the convention will affect the country’s military, how much contaminated land it can realistically clear – and how much time and money that will take.

Said Leng: “If we sign it, it means we bind our hands.”

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By Irwin Loy
PHNOM PENH, Jul 19 2010 (IPS)

On a muggy evening, a handful of men in suits were quickly getting drunk in a beer garden here in the Cambodian capital. One man rested his hand on the thigh of a slender woman sitting uncomfortably in a short skirt.

A sign above the table read: “Be responsible. Use a condom.”

“The customers play around with us all the time,” said Neang, glancing at the scene unfolding at the next table. “They touch my breasts, or put their hands on my thigh while I’m sitting down. I don’t like it, but I have no other choice.”

Beer promoters like Neang and others who work in places where Cambodia’s informal sex industry can be found are a growing concern for health experts in this South-east Asian country, as sex work shifts from traditional settings like brothels to informal ones in the entertainment sector.

Women who work in karaoke bars or beer gardens like this one may not identify as sex workers, but some occasionally sell sex to top up their meager earnings.

Neang, who asked that her full name not be used, said she recently decided not to have sex with her customers after she got married. In the past, though, many of the men who propositioned her would refuse to use a condom.

“The NGOs tell us to wear condoms properly to prevent HIV infection,” she said. “But in the past, when I slept with customers, some insisted it was not necessary. It is hard to refuse.”

Cambodia is seen as a success story in HIV prevention. It has managed to reduce its HIV prevalence rate among adults from a high of two percent in 1998 to an estimated 0.7 percent last year. If this trend continues, Cambodia will be on track to meet its Millennium Development Goals (MDG) for cutting HIV prevalence rates by 2015.

But critics say the government’s drive to stamp out human trafficking has actually exacerbated HIV risks for sex workers because it is forcing many to go underground. Without a renewed emphasis to reach those in the informal sex trade, Cambodia could face a stumbling block in meeting its MDG target on HIV.

Authorities have targeted suspected brothels as part of their crackdown on human trafficking. But advocates say the raids have resulted mainly in the arrest of sex workers, many of whom were driven to the trade by poverty, not trafficking.

The end result has been to push sex workers into hiding – and away from the reach of HIV prevention programmes.

“The more crackdowns, the more people will be pushed underground and disappear,” said Tea Phauly, the most at- risk populations adviser with the Joint U.N. Programme on AIDS (UNAIDS) in Cambodia. “And it is very difficult to structure a response to reach these people.”

Government studies here have shown that brothel-based sex workers are more likely to use condoms than women who sometimes sell sex in entertainment establishments.

But advocates say they now have difficulty reaching sex workers, many of whom have ended up in beer gardens and karaoke bars. “We can approach them, but not like before. They remain hidden,” said Ly Pisey, a technical assistant with the advocacy group Women’s Network for Unity.

Ly says outreach workers used to be able to easily access brothels and talk to sex workers about HIV prevention and health care. “But now if you go … and ask, ‘Are you a sex worker?’ they say no,” she said.

In March, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen delivered a speech that was interpreted by police officials as an order to intensify a crackdown on human trafficking. Within two weeks, raids on suspected brothels sent more than 280 sex workers into hiding, according to a local non-government group that tracked the enforcement.

Police actions have eased up in recent weeks, but the raids are a cyclical part of a longer-term trend that has helped change the nature of Cambodia’s sex industry.

Bith Kimhong, director of the Ministry of Interior’s anti- trafficking bureau, said: “We shut down clubs that are related to sex trafficking. We want to eliminate such sayings that Cambodia is a place for sex tourism.”

Sex workers, he says, are not the targets of such enforcement. “We know when closing such establishments, there are more people losing their jobs,” he said. “We cannot avoid this. The benefit is that we want to guarantee safety and security for our country.”

UNAIDS and Cambodian authorities are developing a plan to ensure that sex workers – especially those in entertainment venues like the beer garden Neang works in – are able to access HIV education and health care. Officials hope such a plan will include broad community partnerships, particularly with police officers.

“What we don’t want to see is a second (HIV) epidemic,” said Tony Lisle, the UNAIDS country coordinator in Cambodia.

In 1996, the HIV prevalence rate for female sex workers was well above 40 percent. Ten years later, this rate had dropped to around 14 percent, according to the last countrywide survey.

“There’s been an enormous amount of work done in reducing both incidence and prevalence of HIV,” Lisle said. “But we have to be mindful that if we don’t continue to roll out innovative, effective, scaled programmes in prevention and continue to normalise condom use, if we don’t keep the pace up and the intensity up with populations at risk for HIV, we could well see a reemergence of an epidemic – which we don’t want.”

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By Irwin Loy
PHNOM PENH, Jun 21 2010 (IPS)

Worrying trends continue to plague Cambodia and provide considerable concern for the future despite the gains it has reportedly made in combating human trafficking.

Citing renewed attention to law enforcement and the prosecution of offenders engaged in “modern slavery,” the 2010 Trafficking in Persons report released earlier this month by the U.S. State Department removed Cambodia from its watch list of countries seen as not doing enough to fight human trafficking.

“The government of Cambodia demonstrated significant progress in law enforcement efforts against sex trafficking during the last year,” the report states.

Cambodia was judged to be a Tier 2 country on a three-level scale, indicating that while it does not comply with “minimum standards for eliminating human trafficking,” it is nonetheless “making significant efforts to do so.”

The report cites increased convictions of people accused of human trafficking as justification for removing Cambodia from the watch list. There were 36 convictions of offenders during the reporting period, compared with 11 in 2008.

Bith Kimhong, director of the anti-human trafficking department in Cambodia’s Ministry of Interior, called the decision to remove the country from the U.S. watch list “just.”

“We have worked hard to combat human trafficking,” he said.

Samleang Seila, country director for the group Action Pour Les Enfants (APLE), which helps child victims of sex abuse, acknowledged that authorities have demonstrated increased commitment to tackling the problem.

“Cambodia is making progress against trafficking,” he said. “The number of arrests and investigations done by the police last year has increased. There are more sex offenders sent to court.”

Yet, he added, it remains difficult to prosecute offenders accused of abusing the children his organisation helps.

Impunity and corruption – sometimes from police and judicial officials alleged to be both “directly and indirectly involved in trafficking” – continue to impede progress, states the U.S. report.

Children, women and men still fall victim to trafficking within the country and outside of Cambodia’s borders.

And a “weak judicial system,” combined with “credible fears of retaliation,” means that many victims are unwilling to rely on the legal system for help, the report adds.

These and related warnings have left critics wondering why the U.S. State Department saw fit to lift Cambodia from its human trafficking watch list.

U.S. Congressman Ed Royce, a frequent critic of government corruption in Cambodia, said the country’s removal from the watch list was an unjustified reward.

“For Cambodia to make meaningful progress in addressing human trafficking, it must address the growing problem of government corruption,” Royce said in response to e-mailed questions. “The problem is getting worse by the year.”

Royce, who is a senior member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, sponsored a House Resolution last year condemning Cambodian corruption and “the role it plays in furthering human trafficking.”

“Having heard scores of accounts from NGOs (non-government organisations) and from eyewitnesses, the Cambodian government’s corruption often hampers trafficking investigations, and at worse, covers up the problem. Rewarding Cambodia, as the State Department Report does, only hampers efforts to curtail human trafficking,” said Royce in a statement.

Global Witness, an international anti-corruption watchdog, has accused Cambodia of “widespread corruption and mismanagement of public funds” even as it urged the international donor community to demand that the government fulfill its promised reforms, including those in the judicial system.

“What needs to be improved is the judicial system and the court process, which sometimes discourages victims from participating in the legal system against the defender,” APLE’s Seila said.

There is also a fear that economic problems could magnify human trafficking concerns in the near future, with migrant workers looking abroad for job opportunities.

Neighbouring Thailand remains a major destination country for Cambodian migrants, with some 124,000 migrants legally registered to work there. However, it is estimated that many more undocumented labourers head abroad each year.

Fueled by a lack of opportunity at home, trafficked migrant workers are often lured by middlemen who promise lucrative jobs abroad. Instead, they are often smuggled to perform dangerous work on fishing vessels.

“Most of them work under slave labour conditions for a very long time,” said Manfred Hornung, a legal adviser with the Cambodian rights group LICADHO.

The escaped migrants he has interviewed report brutal conditions – 22-hour work days, frequent beatings, even murder at sea.

Migrants are rarely paid until after they are released, he said, a timeline that can last for months and even years.

“In May, I had two guys come back after being away for three years,” Hornung said. “None of them received salaries.”

Hornung calls dozens of smuggled migrants he has interviewed “the tip of the iceberg” when it comes to human trafficking concerns.

Estimates suggest that between 250,000 and 300,000 young Cambodians will enter the labour market each year in search of jobs. If they cannot find them in Cambodia, many will choose to look abroad, potentially putting them at risk.

The U.S. State Department has also warned of this alarming trend.

“Labour trafficking among Cambodians migrating abroad for work is a growing problem that will require greater attention from authorities in the coming year,” it says.

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By Irwin Loy
PHNOM PENH, Jun 18 2010 (IPS)

For Chan Theary, a remote, mountainous stretch of land in western Cambodia encapsulates the uphill struggle this South-east Asian nation faces in reducing the alarming number of women who die during pregnancy.

Chan Theary, executive director of the Reproductive and Child Health Alliance, an NGO that supports a remote health centre in Cambodia. Credit: Irwin Loy/IPS

There is a single midwife stationed in a makeshift health centre. That means there is only one person who is trained to treat pregnant women for the roughly 4,000 people scattered throughout the entire commune over difficult, muddy roads.

“It’s hardly accessible,” said Chan, executive director of the Reproductive and Child Health Alliance (RACHA), a non-government organisation that supports the health centre.

“It takes so long to get to. If you imagine pregnant women when they go during the rainy season when the storms are very strong, it’s so difficult.”

Cambodia is burdened with one of the highest maternal mortality ratios, or MMR, in the region. In 2008 the figure stood at 461 per 100,000 live births.

The numbers mean that, on average, five women in the country die on a daily basis from what are essentially preventable causes – post-partum hemorrhages, eclampsia, and infections.

The frustration for those who work in the field here is the fact the MMR has not decreased in the last decade. And with five years to go until 2015, it appears unlikely Cambodia will meet one of its key Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) for maternal health – to cut the nationwide MMR to 140.

That is despite the fact the country has shown improvement in some of the building blocks crucial to curbing maternal health.

One of the eight MDGs – aimed at significantly reducing, if not totally eradicating, poverty – which all United Nations member states must meet by 2015 is to reduce the maternal mortality ratio by three quarters from the 1990 levels.

According to the U.N. at least 529,000 women die from complications in childbirth every year – the vast majority of them in developing countries.

Alice Levisay, the country representative for the U.N. Population Fund, says Cambodian authorities have been committed to solving the maternal health problems.

“There have been significant increases in deliveries by skilled providers, deliveries in facilities and in antenatal care in the last few years,” Levisay said.

Within the last decade, for example, the proportion of women who have their babies delivered by skilled health personnel has almost doubled form 32 percent in 2000 to 63 percent in 2009, she said.

More women now receive two or more antenatal check-ups from these trained professionals during their pregnancies – from 30 percent in 2000 to 83 percent last year.

And Cambodia now has at least one midwife for every health centre in the country, thanks to a recent focus on training and an incentive scheme that rewards midwives with cash payments for each delivery.

Though experts here say these are significant accomplishments, there still remains a wide gap between current standards and quality care.

Thma Da commune highlights both sides.

The health centre in Thma Da, for example, lacks running water during the dry season and until recently, electricity – brought in only after RACHA funded the installation of solar panels.

The centre’s midwife herself is inexperienced, and makes so little money, Chan said, that she sells cakes on the side, taking her away from her duties and ensuring the health centre is not fully staffed all the time. Crucial medicine, as well, that can help treat deadly post-partum hemorrhages, is in short supply.

“It is not even basic care,” Chan added. “We cannot say that, okay, the service there is really high quality. It’s not.

“That’s why, if you look at this situation, it is hard to say now that maternal health has been improved.”

Authorities here have acknowledged the tremendous difficulties the country faces in reducing maternal deaths.

“With a maternal mortality ratio of 461, Cambodia ranks among the highest in the region, and we are not likely to reach our goal,” said Ing Kantha Phavi, the Minister of Women’s Affairs, during the Women Deliver global conference on maternal health held earlier this month in Washington. “What is worse is that we know how to prevent these needless deaths.”

Still, experts here say there is some cause for optimism – provided that the proper investments are in place.

A study published earlier this year in the British medical journal ‘The Lancet’ suggested that Cambodia’s MMR has actually fallen over the last decade. It used what the researchers believe are more precise estimates to peg Cambodia’s MMR at 266.

If accurate, the findings would suggest that Cambodia is much closer to its elusive goals on maternal health, though Susan Jack, a medical officer with the World Health Organisation’s country office in Cambodia, noted that both figures are unacceptably high.

“Every effort needs to be made to prevent these largely preventable deaths through better access to good quality care,” said Jack. “This remains the paramount challenge for Cambodia.”

For now, health experts here are anticipating the results of this year’s demographic health survey – the last countrywide health census scheduled before 2015.

RACHA’s Chan said many, including her, are optimistic the recent gains made on the ground will finally culminate in showing a statistical reduction in maternal deaths.

“There is an expectation the MMR will be reduced because of all the efforts,” said Chan. “We hope so, too.”

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By Irwin Loy
PHNOM PENH, Jun 6 2010 (IPS)

Yuen Mach sat on the floor of her wooden home, her hands nervously twisting a stalk of lemongrass into fibrous strands.

With land-related disputes brewing in Cambodia, thousands of people stand to be evicted from what government calls state property. Credit: Irwin Loy/IPS

“The government took the land from the poor and gave it to the rich people,” she said. “We are the poor people. Now they say we’re living on state property illegally.”

Yuen and her relatives are among an estimated 4,000 families that will likely be relocated as part of the sprawling 133-hectare development – the largest real estate project in Cambodia’s rapidly changing capital.

With numerous other land disputes simmering across the country, housing rights advocates here say Boeung Kak lake is just one potent symbol of the worsening problems affecting the landless poor – land tenure, poverty and the cavernous gap between rich and poor.

But with international donors having pledged a record 1.1 billion U.S. dollars this year in aid to the government, some advocates say that those who hold the most influence have failed to use it to urge the government to pursue faster reforms.

“There are donors who give money and then keep quiet. We are sorry for that,” said Chhith Sam Ath, executive director of the coalition NGO Forum on Cambodia, which is composed of local and international non-governmental organisations working in the South-east Asian country. “People are crying and they just stay quiet.”

The majority of the population in Cambodia lacks legal land titles, a result of the tumultuous Khmer Rouge regime that emptied Phnom Penh of its inhabitants and stripped away private ownership. When the regime fell in 1979, refugees flooded back to the cities from the countryside, many settling in abandoned buildings and squatting on vacant land.

“When we moved here, everybody just emerged from death, from the Khmer Rouge,” Yuen said. “We just grabbed it and lived on the land. If the government had told us that living here was illegal, I would never have moved here.”

An ambitious donor-funded land titling project begun in 2002 was supposed to have helped people like Yuen. The 28.8-million-dollar Land Management and Administration Project, or LMAP, was designed to create a government- run land management programme and distribute official land titles. Nearly one million land titles were issued as part of LMAP across the country.

But when the Boeung Kak lake residents demanded titles as part of the programme, authorities rejected the requests, claiming the residents were living illegally on state property. The residents soon learned the land had been leased to a private developer, whose plans for new office towers and villas did not include them.

After the project’s proponents raised concerns about evictions with the government, authorities responded by abruptly cancelling the programme in September 2009.

The issue of land rights is just one of many on which critics are urging donors to take a tougher stand. The international watchdog organisation, Global Witness, slammed international donors last week for continuing to hand over huge sums of aid money, “despite evidence of widespread corruption and mismanagement of public funds.”

“The Cambodian government has been promising to reform for years, but nothing has changed,” Gavin Hayman, the group’s campaigns director, said in a statement.

The government, however, called the accusations part of a “hugely damaging smear campaign” to discredit authorities. “The request from NGOs to put pressure on the government and donors is a bad approach. They insult the government and they insult the donors,” said government spokesman Phay Siphan.

“We are all partners here. We respect each other and we respect the partnership. And the country donors respect this nation’s right to be a nation.”

In the end, the government said the donors had cumulatively pledged roughly 1.1 billion dollars toward the national budget.

Rafael Dochao Moreno, the chargé d’affaires for the Delegation of the European Union to Cambodia, said he believes the country is making strides toward development.

“It would be impossible for NGOs and development partners to agree 100 per cent,” he said. “At the end of the day, nothing is black or white. I think there is a consensus that this country is moving in the right direction.

Still, now that the money has been pledged, some critics believe donors should be acting more aggressively to ensure the funds are well spent.

“The donors should make it clear that if the government is not willing to use the aid effectively, they can find alternative ways to do so,” said Ou Virak, president of the non-governmental Cambodian Centre for Human Rights. “The problem is that message has never been clear.”

Though donors insist they are urging Cambodian authorities to increase transparency, Ou said their efforts have done little to ensure Cambodians themselves can hold their government to account. Despite the promises, it remains unclear just where all the aid money will go, he said.

“It’s easy to call on the donors to bring about change,” he said. “But the fundamental challenge here is how the donors can put conditions in place that will allow the Cambodian population to be able to hold its own government accountable.

“When you ask, has the money been used effectively? I just don’t know. There’s no transparency in this money and what kinds of projects they help to support.”

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