An artisan puts final touches to the monument of Magawa, a Tanzanian-born bomb-sniffing rat. Credit: APOPO

By Kizito Makoye
MOROGORO, Tanzania , Apr 7 2026 (IPS)

At Mazimbu village, not far from Tanzania’s Sokoine University of Agriculture (SUA), Stephano Jaka still remembers the night he trapped and killed a rat that had been feasting on his maize cobs – stored in a meticulously woven basket designed to protect grains from rodents.
“I felt a big sense of relief when I finally killed it. It had been causing huge losses to my family,” he tells IPS.

Thousands of kilometres away in Siem Reap, Cambodia, farmers were among the dignitaries invited on Saturday to honour a Tanzanian-born rat for detecting hundreds of landmines, helping to clear swathes of land for farming.

Where farmers in Tanzania’s Morogoro region still perceive rats as destructive creatures threatening their livelihoods, communities in Cambodia embrace one of the species as a life-saving hero – underscoring how a despised animal has come to embody entirely different meanings across continents.

Cambodia remains one of the world’s most landmine-infested countries, with millions of explosives still buried underground, making large areas unsafe for farming, settlement and development.

On the eve of the International Day for Mine Awareness, a 2.2-metre statue – the world’s first public monument dedicated to a life-saving rat – was unveiled. The monument honours Magawa, whose bomb-sniffing career began after a yearlong stint at Sokoine University. He was hailed not as a crop-raiding pest but as an unlikely hero whose extraordinary sense of smell helped uncover hidden dangers.

For years, Magawa worked across some of Cambodia’s most dangerous terrain, detecting more than 100 landmines and helping to make large areas safe before his death in 2022. He remains the only rat ever awarded the PDSA Gold Medal for bravery.

Carved from local stone by Cambodian artisans, the statue shows Magawa wearing his medal and operational harness. Its base incorporates fragments of decommissioned explosives, symbolising the threat he helped eliminate. Erected in central Siem Reap, the monument also directs visitors to APOPO’s centre, where they can learn about the rats’ work and the ongoing impact of landmines.

“Magawa became a global symbol of hope for Cambodia’s mine-affected communities. This statue honours his extraordinary service and the work of all APOPO HeroRATs who continue to save lives in Cambodia and around the world — step by step, life by life,” said Christophe Cox, founder of APOPO.

The tribute also serves as a reminder that millions of landmines remain buried, and efforts to clear them continue despite limited resources.

Magawa was trained by APOPO, a non-governmental organisation that deploys African giant pouched rats to detect explosives. Because they are too light to trigger landmines, the animals can safely search contaminated areas far more quickly than conventional methods.

Born at Sokoine University of Agriculture in Morogoro, Magawa showed early promise before being deployed to Cambodia in 2016, where he became one of the most successful detection animals in the programme.

In heavily affected regions such as Battambang, land once considered too dangerous has been cleared and returned to productive use, allowing communities to rebuild livelihoods and restore a sense of normalcy.

Magawa’s work also highlights a broader story of African innovation contributing to global solutions, with a programme developed in Tanzania now supporting mine clearance efforts in several countries.

Although Magawa died in 2022, other trained rats continue the work, helping to reduce the threat posed by unexploded landmines.

Residents of Morogoro spoke with a mix of pride, curiosity and quiet awe when reflecting on the global recognition of Magawa, the giant African pouched rat whose work in Cambodia has saved countless lives.

“Who would have thought a rat from our region could become a global hero?” said Jaka. “Here, rats are something we chase away. But Magawa has changed that story completely. He has shown us that even the smallest creatures can carry the biggest responsibilities.”

At the Morogoro main market, trader Rehema Msuya said Magawa’s story had sparked new conversations among residents about science and innovation.

“People now talk about rats differently,” she said. “We used to see them only as destructive. But this one saved lives and detected danger where machines sometimes fail. It makes you proud, knowing such intelligence can come from a rat.”

For some, Magawa’s legacy goes beyond admiration, emphasising the possibilities often overlooked.

“Magawa represents Africa in a very powerful way,” said Dar es Salaam-based secondary school teacher Godfrey Lwambano. “We often underestimate what we have – our environment, our knowledge, even our animals. Yet here is a creature trained with patience and care, going on to clear deadly landmines and protect communities far away.”

Young people in Morogoro, too, say the story touched them.

“When I first heard about him, I thought it was a joke,” said 22-year-old university student Neema Kibwana. “But when I learnt he worked for years detecting mines and even received awards, I was inspired. It shows that impact doesn’t depend on size or status.”

As the story of Magawa circulates in Tanzania and beyond, it continues to challenge long-held perceptions – transforming an animal once seen only as a pest into a symbol of ingenuity, resilience and hope.

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Delegates at the Youth Empowerment: Education, Employment and Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights forum held in Phnom Penh, Kingdom of Cambodia. Credit: APDA

By Cecilia Russell
JOHANNESBURG, Mar 8 2023 (IPS)

With more than 600 million youth aged between 18 and 24 in the Asia and Pacific region, putting their issues front and center is crucial. Speakers at a recent forum, Youth Empowerment: Education, Employment and Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights, held in Phnom Penh, Kingdom of Cambodia, agreed that policy development and implementation should be youth-centered.

Professor Keizo Takemi, MP (Japan) and Chair of the Asian Forum of Parliamentarians on Population and Development (AFPPD), reminded parliamentarians of the work ahead when he noted in his opening address that while youth were “innovative thanks to global digitalization, half are unemployed or underemployed. Therefore parliamentarians have a vital role to play.”

The extent of the challenges emerged during the discussions. Raoul Danniel A Manuel, MP Philippines, said teenage pregnancy was higher in rural areas than urban, and there was also an education differential.

“The rate is 32 percent among teenagers without education, 14% among teenagers with primary education, and 5% among teenagers with a secondary education,” Manuel said, noting that the Philippines was the only country in Southeast Asia where the teenage pregnancy rate is increasing in girls aged 10 to 14.

“It is important to raise awareness among young people so that they know how to take care of themselves before they marry. We also need to continue to strengthen services, especially user-friendly services, by focusing on vulnerable groups and young women who do not go to school because this group is at a very high risk of pregnancy, and pregnancy can be risky.”

Lisa Chesters, MP (Australia), reminded conference delegates that “comprehensive sexual education has a positive impact on young people. It has been credited with delaying sexual debut can reduce unwanted pregnancies and STDs.”

Benefits included preventing intimate partner violence, developing healthy relationships, and preventing sexual abuse.

Australia learned after an online petition went viral in 2021 the extent to which students had been subjected to sexual harassment at schools. Following this, ministers for education throughout the country agreed on sexual education at school.

Chesters said it was crucial to include comprehensive, well-planned engagement of young people at the center of any advertising and social media campaigns.

The discussion also centered around employment. Felix Weidenkaff, the Youth Employment Expert for the ILO’s regional office for Asia and the Pacific, told the conference that while digitalization was a key strategy to increase youth employment, it wasn’t a one-off. Aspects lawmakers should consider would include TVET and skill development (including understanding the needs of those with disability), infrastructure, connectivity, and equipment to create an inclusive system.

Delegates at the Youth Empowerment: Education, Employment and Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights forum held in Phnom Penh, Kingdom of Cambodia. Credit: APDA

Sophea Khun, Country Program Coordinator of UN Women, said changing gender norms required comprehensive and sustained strategies that engage multiple stakeholders at all levels: households, communities, institutions, and governments.

Girls and young women needed to be given the opportunity for training in STEM (science, technology, and mathematics) to close the digital divide.

“In addition, harmful social norms that contribute to controlling women and girls’ access to communications and technology also need to be tackled,” Khun said.

Hun Many, MP (Cambodia) and Chair of the Commission, reiterated in his closing remarks that to create a more elaborate and innovative policy, “youth need to be able to be part of the decision-making process and the discussions.”

Ahead of the conference, IPS interviewed Cambodian MP Lork Kheng, chair of the commission on public health, social works, vocational training, and women’s affairs. Here are excerpts from the interview.

Lork Kheng, Cambodian MP and chair of the commission on public health, social works, vocational training, and women’s affairs.

IPS:  A tremendous amount of work is to be done to improve SRHR for all and youth-friendly services. How can young MPs play an enhanced role in developing policy, ensuring services are adequately financed and delivered to the communities where required?

LK: With regards to the role of Parliament, we can oversee the implementation of policies related to education, the provision of safe counseling on sexual and reproductive health, family planning, abortion, HIV/AIDS prevention and care, and local monitoring of child marriages, which are challenges for our Asia-Pacific region. In addition, the National Assembly always provides opportunities for development partners to contribute ideas and proposals for consideration through close cooperation in organizing educational forums and disseminating discussions and exchanges at national and sub-national levels (in their constituencies). We can establish effective monitoring and evaluation mechanisms and coverage of the actual implementation of practitioners and service providers and the effectiveness of policies to ensure that they are providing the anticipated outcomes. Working with think tanks and civil society organizations to conduct research, assessment, and evaluation that informs policymaking and improves service delivery from all stakeholders’ perspectives.

Another important role is to communicate directly with the people and sub-national authorities in the constituencies where they are based. Young MPs and MPs often use the forum to meet and visit local administrations, etc., to mainstream the information and raise awareness of the importance of youth and family life planning, as well as to share good local and global political experiences and best practices that can be implemented within the existing framework of national and sub-national policies to stakeholders, especially local authorities who work directly with the youth.

In particular, in overseeing the financing, every year, MPs actively participate in the discussion of the draft budget law, in which the whole House closely monitors the progress and changes in the budget allocation according to each program. Furthermore, MPs also provide feedback to the executive branch during the initial consultation phase until the full house passes the draft budget. In this regard, the review of budget allocations for youth health care, such as increased attention to the prevention and control of non-communicable diseases, tobacco control, food safety and diet in general, and sexual issues in particular, has been addressed frequently and has been noted and considered by the relevant ministries as well as the Government.

The Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications has prioritized students who pass the upper secondary national examination with good grades to study digital skills with the support of a student loan that must be repaid when they get a job. This is to strengthen human resources with digital capabilities.

IPS: While Asia and the Pacific are home to more than 60% of the world’s youth aged between 15 and 24, the COVID-19 pandemic acted to disadvantage youth in poorer and rural communities, especially where schooling was interrupted, and children did not have access to the technologies for remote learning. How can youth MPs ensure that those children (who may even now be young adults) are given the opportunities to complete their education? Secondly, how should policy, infrastructure, and finance be directed at children still disadvantaged by a lack of technology?

LK: We all truly recognize that the COVID-19 pandemic is an extraordinary challenge that has plagued all socio-economic sectors, requiring the Government and authorities to respond with unusual means in these difficult circumstances. In developing countries like Cambodia, when schools were closed to prevent the spread of COVID-19 in its early stages, we did not have the right digital infrastructure for teaching and learning. Students in rural areas and those considered to be disadvantaged groups were the ones who faced barriers to accessing education at that stage. But if we look at the immediate solution of the Head of the Royal Government of Cambodia, we can measure the outcome of solving the challenges with this decision. The Government quickly rolled out vaccinations, especially prioritizing vaccinations for front-line medical workers and educators. That ensured that these two environments gained immunity as soon as possible so that students could return to class quickly with a high sense of security.

IPS: Youth are considered a vital resource for the country’s economic development, but they face high unemployment. What are young MPs working on to ensure that youth can get decent jobs and support young entrepreneurs? What are the policy directions needed to foster youth employment?

LK: Specifically in Cambodia, the unemployment rate for youth may be slightly lower than 14 percent. Nevertheless, youth are also facing other major challenges, such as skill mismatches with the job markets and vulnerabilities of international labor migration, which are the major concerns of the Parliament and the Government. As Cambodia is riding high on development in all areas, the labor market has expanded, especially in areas that benefit youth. In response to such demands, the Government has paid close attention to education and vocational training by prioritizing promoting science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) to encourage young people to acquire high-demand skills.

In this new academic year, the Government has encouraged youth to pursue vocational skills at the primary and secondary levels by giving monthly allowance to approximately 1.5 million students, in addition to their free tuition.

To support the promotion of young entrepreneurship, we have also established a number of mechanisms – both under state supervision and public-private partnerships – that have created entrepreneurship and incubation centers. In particular, during the COVID-19 pandemic, these mechanisms also played an important role in providing much-needed assistance to those businesses through loans and free training to the entrepreneurs so that they could utilize the technology for their businesses against the backdrop of a changing lifestyle in the new normal.

Note: Asian Forum of Parliamentarians on Population and Development (AFPPD), Asian Population and Development Association (APDA), and the Japan Trust Fund supported the hybrid conference.

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The little shop owned by Leean Saan, close the monument with the lions. "Business is going down, Chinese people don't buy from me," she says. Credit: Kris Janssens/IPS

By Kris Janssens
SIHANOUKVILLE, Cambodia, Sep 19 2018 (IPS)

The new Macau. That’s what the Cambodian coastal city Sihanoukville is called nowadays. Chinese investors are building casinos there on a massive scale.

The southern port city lies on the new Silk Road (the so called ‘One Belt, One Road’) and is therefore interesting for China.

The Cambodian government is happy to accept the money. And Beijing never asks difficult questions.

“Things are happening so fast in Sihanoukville; the city has changed completely in only a few months time,” a friend tells me.

My last visit there was in December.

And so I wanted to see these ‘spectacular changes’ with my own eyes.

My friend was right. When you enter the city, you see casinos everywhere. There could be about a hundred by now, and new ones are constantly being built. Some of them are big showy palaces, but there are also obscure gambling houses.

Alongside those casinos you still find the typical Cambodian shops, where people drink tea and where food is skewered and cooked on the barbecue.

Tourists at the beach enjoy their cocktails or take a dip in the gulf of Thailand.

But all those elements are in disharmony with one another.

There is clearly no urban planning here.

It seems the builders got carte blanche to satisfy the hunger for gambling.

Gaudy lions

The statue of two golden lions, at a roundabout close to the sea, is a beacon in the city. Leean Saan (76) has a tiny little shop close to the lions. She sells soda water, cigarettes and fuel for motorbikes.

Ten years ago, when the tourists came, she started selling drinks. “But the business is going down,” she says. “There are more and more Chinese people and they don’t buy in my shop.”

“They are gangsters!” says a tuk-tuk driver who comes to buy fuel. “They promise for example to pay three dollars, but when we get to the destination they only give two. And when I complain, they threaten me with violence. They always travel in groups, so they feel superior.”

Making good money

I walk down the street and see some Cambodian youngsters who are queuing to buy coffee. They are more positive about the recent developments.

Rath (22) has been working for five years as a receptionist in a hotel casino. “My first salary was 80 dollars a month. Two years ago it was raised to 200 dollars and since last year I make 500 dollars a month. They need experienced staff.”

But there is a flip side to the coin: prices have gone up in a short period of time. “I used to pay 30 dollars a month to rent a room, nowadays they ask up to 250. But at the end of the day I still earn more than before.”

O Fortuna

It is time to get an inside look into one of those casinos, ‘Golden Sand’. I am the only white person and the security staff watches me closely.

At the entrance of the hall the song ‘O Fortuna’ taken from ‘Carmina Burana’ is being played repeatedly. A screen shows an animated movie with Chinese dragons and philosophers.

The game room is big but feels cold, in spite of the wall-to-wall carpet and the leather and fabric seats. There are Chinese wall ornaments.

Croupiers in red costumes are sitting at big card tables. You see a lot of security agents here as well. Young girls in blue outfits wander down the hall carrying fly swatters to kill annoying insects.

Remarkable: Cambodians are not allowed to gamble, by law. So all customers are Chinese.

Also remarkable: they don’t come dressed in suits and ties, but are dressed in shorts and t-shirts.

“Most customers here are builders,” says Wu, who works himself at one of the numerous construction sites in Sihanoukville. “They come here to spend the money they just earned.”

Wu is here for six months. He earns 700 dollars a month. He could make as much money in China, but here he has more job security.

Recruiting

Srun (28) works as a recruiter. He’s Cambodian but has Chinese roots and works as a tour guide for Chinese tourists. “They often asked me where they could go to gamble.” So Srun went to talk to several casino managers and he has an agreement to work on commission.

“You have to talk face to face to Chinese people,” he says. “I understand some Cambodians think they are gangsters, because they always talk so loudly. But that is simply their way of negotiating.”

Srun gets one percent of the money customers spend on gambling. “That doesn’t seem much, but in some cases we are talking about 10,000 dollars for a group of four people. The casino opens a special VIP-room and I get a 100 dollars.”

Rental prices

It is lunchtime. I decide to go for a noodle soup in a…Chinese restaurant.

“We only have Chinese people,” says manager Zong, “I don’t even speak Khmer.” She followed her husband about one year ago, coming from Hangzhou, in the eastern part of China. “Customers pay about seven times more here for the same dish. So the decision was easily made.”

She pays 3,000 dollars in rent for her restaurant. “That’s a lot of money, but it still is an interesting deal. That also goes for the owner. He could never get this amount of money from locals. So everyone is satisfied.”

This house owner is actively helping the Chinese settlement in Sihanoukville. His fellow citizens, who might have been born here, have no other option than to leave the city and try to find affordable business premises elsewhere.

As long as money talks here, the Chinese population will continue to grow.

Maybe I should make the same trip in another six months from now, to document the new changes to this area.

*The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of IPS. 

Excerpt:

The Cambodian village of Kbal Romeas is slowly vanishing beneath the rising waters of a lake formed by the Lower Sesan II (LS2) dam. Credit: Pascal Laureyn/IPS

By Pascal Laureyn
KBAL ROMEAS, Cambodia, Apr 10 2018 (IPS)

Suddenly the road ends. The cart track disappears under the water. A vast lake stretches out in front of me. I have to transfer from a motorbike to a canoe. “Tuk laang,” my guide says coolly. “The water is rising.”

This started eight months ago, when the hydroelectric power station closed its gates for the first time. Ever since, the road to Kbal Romeas sinks a little deeper under the slow waves every day."Beware of the branches above your head," the guide says. "The pythons and the cobras have climbed into the trees."

According to the level gauge on the road, the water behind the concrete barrage has risen up to 75 meters, higher than the intended 68 meters. Nobody knows why, and the government doesn’t provide any information.

Three sturdy men are unloading planks from a canoe. The houses of flood refugees are being dismantled in order to sell the wood.

The village is a world away from Phnom Penh. In Cambodia’s capital, saffron-robed monks are tapping on their smartphones and purple Rolls Royces are negotiating hectic traffic. But 450 kilometers to the north, Kbal Romeas is hidden deeply in the jungle. Here no shops, restaurants or traffic lights are to be found. And for a few months now, no roads either.

I’m undertaking the journey with Vibol. He is studying in the provincial capital and returns home often. “My parents are having a hard time since our village is flooded. The government wants us to leave, but we will never do that,” he says.

The expansive forests of Stung Treng – a province as large as Lebanon with barely 120,000 inhabitants – are the home of the Bunong, the ethnic minority to which Vibol belongs. Their way of life has been in sync with nature for 2,000 years, while they’ve been fiercely resisting modern influences from outside. But the small community now risks being washed away, quite literally.

Concrete vs. water

A few kilometers from the village, a gigantic wall towers over the trees. The ‘Lower Sesan II’ (LS2) dam is a powerful symbol for the economic growth of Southeast Asia, but also for man-made disasters. In September the gates were closed, thus creating a lake that soon will expand over 360 square kilometers, the size of Dublin. The livelihood of a unique culture will be wiped out.

The ten-year-old son of my guide navigates the canoe that will bring me to Kbal Romeas. Skillfully, he avoids crashing into the trees of the submerged forest. “Beware of the branches above your head,” his father says. “The pythons and the cobras have climbed into the trees.” There’s a shorter way to get to to the village, via dry land, but that’s not an option for a foreign journalist. The army closed off the whole area. No snoopers allowed.

I have to take the long detour over water, a surreal two-hour trip through a drowned jungle.

“The trees still bear fruit, but soon they will die,” the guide says. There is also less fish and the water has become undrinkable. Since the dam unhinged their lives, the Bunong have to pay for water and fish. But money is an alien concept for animist forest dwellers who are used to living in complete harmony with nature.

My canoe floats gently into the main street of the village. Thanks to their stilts, the typical Cambodian dwellings are still dry, even if the road lays one meter beneath the water’s surface. It is dead quiet. Until some children appear in doorways. “Soë-se-dei!” “Hello!”

A villager from Kbal Romeas paddles between two partly submerged houses. Credit: Pascal Laureyn/IPS

About 250 people still live in the flooded village of Kbal Romeas; about half of the original population. I clamber from the canoe into a house. The lady of the house offers me some rice and spiced pork.

“We used to have everything we need here. But since the water started rising, we have to go to the market,” says Srang Lanh, 49. She has the face of someone who has lived a hard life.

“During the dry season it takes us about three hours to get there. In the rainy season we can’t use the road at all.”

The government has built a new village, on higher ground. “But we do not intend to move,” says Vibol. “The Buddhist Cambodians don’t understand our religion. We can’t leave our cemetery.” He wants to show me the graveyard. Small corrugated iron roofs are barely above the water. They used to give shade to the late loved ones.

I ask the former cemetery supervisor how many people are buried here beneath the flood tide. His reacts emotionally. “Thousands! Everyone who has ever lived in Kbal Romeas is buried here.”

Every day another grave disappears into the tidal wave of progress coming from this Chinese dam. “The spirits of our ancestors can’t leave here. To abandon them would be a disgrace,” says Vibol. The Bunong believe they are protected by the ancestors. Leaving means disaster.

In Kbal Romeas, the cursed dam is called ‘Kromhun’, the Company. The Chinese group Hydrolancang invested 800 million dollars in the LS2 dam and will be operating it for the next 30 years. Theoretically speaking, a dam producing 400 megawatts might seem a good idea, as this country lives in the dark. Three quarters of the Cambodian villages are not connected to the electrical grid.

However, Kbal Romeas will never see one single watt of the Kromhun. Ninety percent of the electricity in Cambodia goes to capital city Phnom Penh and is used for air conditioners, neon publicity signs and garment factories.

Noah’s Ark

There’s a little ceremony for the visitor, the first foreigner since the army shut this area down in July. Ta Uot is the most important guardian spirit of Kbal Romeas. His temple is nothing more than a hut on poles, now surrounded by water. But since the patriarch told the Bunong through his visions where his shrine has to be put, it cannot be moved.

In the temple are some holy branches and rocks; from their canoes the attendees throw grains of rice towards them while they say prayers in the old Bunong language. They inform Ta Uot about the visit of a foreigner. They also mention the latest water level. A newly born child is being blessed. In spite of the upcoming flood, this is a lively village with a simple shed as a spiritual Noah’s ark.

Set Nhal, 89, has been living here his whole life. He remembers the French colonists, the Khmer Rouge and the Vietnamese soldiers who came to chase away the genocidal regime. And now the Chinese. “We were always confident that the French and the communists would leave one day. But the Chinese will never go away; this dam will stay where it is,” he says.

Meng Heng, an activist of the outlawed NGO Mother Nature, knows Kbal Romeas very well. “The government succeeded in hiding a catastrophe,” he says. “As a result of the LS2-dam, one tenth of the fish population will disappear. The dam disrupts critical breeding migration routes for fish and the fish will become extinct.”

Not just a trifle, as 70 million people depend on the Mekong for their daily needs. As we speak, 200 dams are in use, being built or in preparation. LS2-dam is only one of them.
For the Bunong, a day in ancient times is as important as yesterday. But their days are numbered. Once the rainy season will start, in June, Kbal Romeas will be history.

After dark, a motorbike takes me back to the rest of the world, using a last scrap of dry land. The jungle is black as soot and the bouncing moto passes by a deserted army checkpoint, unmanned at night.

I’m dropped off at a gas station, an oasis of neon lights where they promise me there will be a bus soon. I ask Vibol if I can do something for him when I’m back in Phnom Penh.

“No one knows what’s happening here,” he says. “Tell our story.”

Chhean was four years old when he moved to the U.S. His impoverished and traumatised parents ended up in the margins of society. "Life was hard. We were a minority in a minority.”

By Pascal Laureyn
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia, Jan 18 2018 (IPS)

Three friends are relaxing in a quiet courtyard. They speak English with a strong American accent and talk about their disadvantaged neighborhoods. Their tattoos depict a rough life on the street. One of them calls Massachusetts home, while the others grew up in Georgia.

But home is far away, on the other side of the world. They have been living in Cambodia for a number of years, against their will. They were deported by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to their country of origin, one completely unknown to them. Most have no or little knowledge of the Cambodian language, Khmer."Officially I'm Cambodian, but I don't feel that way. My home country is the U.S. but they don't want me there anymore." --Jock, 49

These American Cambodians belong to a group of more than 500 ‘deportees’ who have been sent back since 2002. They have lived the biggest part of their lives in the U.S. Their parents fled in the eighties, when Cambodia was torn apart by the genocidal Khmer Rouge and the following civil war. Between 1975 (start of the Khmer Rouge) and 1994 (end of the civil war) 158,000 Cambodians were allowed into the U.S.

“I was born in Thailand, in a refugee camp. Before I was deported, I had never visited Cambodia,” explains Chhean* (35). “I didn’t know nothing of this country. I didn’t speak Khmer. I grew in America, I am an American.”

Chhean was four years old when he moved to the U.S. His impoverished and traumatised parents ended up on the margins of society. “Life was hard. We were a minority in a minority. It was a tough time trying to survive, there was a lot of violence. I had to protect myself. That’s how I ended up in a gang.”

“I made bad choices. I was a threat to society. I can’t make no excuses, I can only blame myself.” After Chhean finished his time in prison, he was deported by ICE.

Five Years for a Fistfight

Legal residents in the U.S. who have no citizenship and get convicted for a crime can be sent back to their country of origin. No appeal is possible. The nature of the crime is not taken into account. “Immigration came to my home to detain me,” remembers Jock* (49). “I once got a conviction for a fistfight at school. I was 18. Twenty years later I get deported for a fistfight.”

Jock recounts what happened to him with disbelief. “I have spent five years in a cell, they thought I was an escape risk. Five years! For a fistfight 20 years ago! For years I have been begging them: ‘Please deport me’.” His friend Chhean was also incarcerated before his flight to Cambodia, but ‘only’ for two years.

Jock has been living in Cambodia for six years. He didn’t know the country at all. “I cried a long time when I arrived here. I thought my life was over. Someone who robs a bank is released after 15 years in prison and can start over again. I can’t.”

The deported Cambodians have trouble finding work. This country has a high rate of unemployment. They speak the local language badly and lack the necessary skills. Cambodia has an agrarian economy, but they are city boys. They are also met with distrust. They dress and behave differently. In Cambodian culture, their tattoos are considered signs of serious crimes.

“I worked the first six years in the rice fields. That is simple but hard work. I couldn’t find anything else,” says a deported Cambodian who wishes to stay anonymous. Last year, he acquired a certificate to teach English. He works in a classroom now.

“In the U.S. I worked in construction, but here it makes very little money. So I became a farmer,” explains Jock. “When I’m picking mangos, I can stop thinking.”

Chhean has familiar problems. “When I arrived here, I suffered from panic attacks. And even now I’m not adapted yet. Officially I’m Cambodian, but I don’t feel that way. My home country is the U.S. but they don’t want me there anymore. Now, Cambodia is my ‘land of opportunity’. I have to make the best of it. But I don’t plan big things for my life anymore.”

Lasting Trauma

The U.S. government wants Cambodia to take back more of its ‘lost’ children. That is required by international law when Cambodians are deported. But the government in Phnom Penh is hesitant. These citizens have no sense of the culture and can never really integrate into society. Some have serious mental illnesses, says Jock.

“I know a mental ‘deportee’ in my neighborhood. He walks all day in the middle of the street. He doesn’t realize where he is, he thinks he is still in the U.S. They shouldn’t bring those people here.”

The families that found a new home in the U.S. in the eighties brought few belongings but many war traumas. “My parents survived famine and mass murder,” says the teacher. “They don’t talk about it much. They try to forget.”

Research by the Leitner Center in New York showed that 62 percent of Cambodian refugees in California suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Fifty-two percent had severe depression. Many were in a state of shock and not able to take care of themselves or their children. They ended up in poor neighborhoods where crime was the norm.

For these specific circumstances, psychiatrists and lawyers say that refugees from Cambodia deserve special treatment. But President Donald Trump wants to increase the deportations. Some 1,900 are eligible for deportation, says ICE. In the “Kingdom of Wonder” – as Cambodians call their country – many refugees who return are confronted with alcohol and drug abuse. Many suffer from depression, and at least six deported Cambodians have committed suicide.

“I miss my three children (24, 18 and 13),” says Jock. “I call them once a week. I don’t tell them how I’m doing here. I don’t want them to worry.”

The teacher has a child in the U.S. as well. “I talk to her with Messenger. I can’t do much more. I can miss her as much as I like, it will not change a thing.”

Once deported, there is no way back. They can never visit the country where they grew up ever again. “Hell yeah! I would go back immediately if I could. Not tomorrow but today,” shouts Chhean jokingly.

His friend Jock has another view. “Once you have a criminal record in the U.S. they will never leave you in peace. I don’t want to go back. Period.”

*Last names omitted to protect the sources’ privacy.

Police arrayed in front of the Cambodian Supreme Court. Credit: Pascal Laureyn/IPS

By Pascal Laureyn
PHNOM PENH, Nov 17 2017 (IPS)

The government had an almost paranoid fear of protests. A square kilometer around the Supreme Court was barricaded and off limits to the public. In faraway provinces, roadblocks were erected to stop demonstrators. Some opposition members were under temporary house arrest. But it turned out to be unnecessary. Nobody dared to protest.

The Cambodian government has launched a fierce crackdown on the opposition. For a few months now, politicians, journalist and activists have been harassed to make their work impossible. A new low point was reached on Thursday when the Supreme Court dissolved the CNRP (Cambodia National Rescue Party) ahead of the elections in 2018. Only the CNRP could have competed with the CPP (Cambodian People’s Party), which has been in power for more than three decades. Hun Sen is the world’s longest serving prime minister."Blood on the streets is not a victory for democracy. It's a return to the dark ages. We want people to stay hopeful." --Mu Sochua, vice president of the CNRP

The official dissolution of the CNRP was just a formality. The president of the Supreme Court is also a top committee member of de CPP and a longtime ally of Hun Sen. In Cambodia, justice is an auxiliary of the government – and the prime minister is pulling all the strings firmly, now more than ever.

“I could easily continue for another 10 years,” the 65-year-old Hun Sen told reporters on Thursday. Consequently, he acknowledged that he doesn’t consider an election as a consultation of the people, but as a way to varnish his dictatorial regime with a thin layer of legitimacy. The CNRP was the last democratic obstacle to his power over the country’s resources, which he needs to buy support from the elite.

Fear of reprisals

Since the government stepped up the crackdown on democracy, few Cambodians dare to speak out in public – certainly since the murder of Kem Ley, a popular journalist and a government critic. That was a turning point. Until then, Cambodians thought that their country would slowly become more democratic. But that hope was buried together with Kem Ley in his hometown Takeo.

His mother is cutting vegetables at the grave of her son. Phauk Se had done that every day since July 2016. Next to the burial site are pictures taken moments after the shooting. Kem Ley is lying between tables and chairs, a puddle of blood under this head. He was killed while he was having his morning coffee in a gas station in Phnom Penh.

The 80-year-old mother receives guest every day with soup and a friendly chat. The grave of her son has become a place of pilgrimage. The gunman is behind bars. “That’s not the real killer,” Phauk Se says in a timid voice. “If the government really wanted, they would have found the real culprit.”

Phauk Se, 80, whose son Kem Ley, a popular journalist and a government critic, was murdered in July 2016. Pascal Laureyn/IPS

No Cambodian believes that the killer acted alone. But nobody dares to express their suspicion. “Who has the real power? There is only one party who can organize such a murder,” says Kem Rithisith, the brother of Kem Ley, without naming it. “There was a second finger on the trigger, and everyone knows whose finger that was.”

Meanwhile at the market of Takeo, business is not good. Shopkeepers are lying in hammocks, waiting for customers. Mao Much Nech, a salesman of cheap jewelry, doesn’t want to say what party he supports. “That’s sensitive. But the government has lost dignity and credit because of the murder. It’s time to wake up and fight back.”

“The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer,” a woman says in her stall filled with colorful dresses. “We want change.” Most of the shopkeepers at the market use the same word to express their disappointment with the government.

Blood on the streets

The CPP knows it can’t survive a new popularity test. The CNRP almost won the elections of 2013. It made more progress with the local elections in June. It’s evident that the elections due in July 2018 are causing anxiety at the CPP headquarters. To prevent a defeat, it has started the final assault on the opposition. The CNRP is now dissolved and the party’s president Kem Sokha is in prison. Five thousand mandatories lost their jobs and half of the 55 members of parliament have fled the country.

Mu Sochua is one of them. She is preparing a vegetable soup during the phone call with this reporter. The sound of cutting, chopping and grating makes a fitting backdrop to the combative language of the vice-president of the CNRP.

“The dissolution of the CNRP is a big miscalculation of Hun Sen. The discontent will only continue to rise. Until now the CNRP has channeled this peacefully. But soon people might take their anger to the streets,” Mu says from a Moroccan kitchen. She fled Cambodia after she was tipped off about her impending arrest.

“It needs only one spark to start violent protests, like Tunisia and the Arab Spring,” the politician says while igniting a gas stove. “I’m very afraid of violence. Hun Sen will do anything to stay in power. If people would dare to protest, the tanks will be waiting. Blood on the streets is not a victory for democracy. It’s a return to the dark ages. We want people to stay hopeful.”

The exiled Mu Sochua is now traveling the world to find support for the grassroots movement for democracy in Cambodia. “The CNRP is more than a party. We don’t care about the political game. We want democracy in Cambodia, that’s our real job.”

Sanctions please

The offices of the CNRP headquarters echo hollowly. The building is quiet and almost empty. A few guards are watching a Korean soap opera. Lawmaker Kimsour Phirith may get arrested any moment, but he keeps on smiling. “I’m not afraid. I have done nothing wrong. The CPP is afraid – of losing power.”

“We are witnessing the death of democracy in Cambodia,” Kimsour says. “Hun Sen is showing his true face. He is a dictator now. We are counting on the West. Only economic sanctions can help us.”

The Cambodian economy strongly depends on tourism and the garment industry. If the factories stop producing, 700,000 workers will lose their jobs. Hun Sun would have a major crisis on his hands.

The government may think that Beijing will come to rescue. China has proved in recent years that it has the will and the money to back up Phnom Penh. “But that’s not guaranteed,” says Ou Chanrath, who lost his job as a lawmaker on Thursday. “The Chinese are still dependent on the West. The garment factories are Chinese, but the exports go to the West. When sanctions hit Cambodia, they will pack their bags.”

Human rights groups condemned the dissolution of the CNRP and asked the West to act. “The international community cannot stand idly, it must send a strong signal that this crackdown is unacceptable,” said James Gomez, Amnesty International’s Director of Southeast Asia and the Pacific.

The European Union issued a critical statement in which it linked human rights with access to the European bloc’s reduced and zero tariff trade scheme. The US government decided to discontinue funding for the NEC (the Cambodian election body), in case it still bothered to organise elections.

Prime Minister Hun Sen tried to reassure the nation on Thursday evening. In his speech he said – without any hint of irony – that the government is still deeply committed to democracy. CNRP spokesperson Yim Sovann reacted by saying that “they can never remove the CNRP from the heart of the people.”

A boat navigates the Mekong, whose combined fisheries are valued at 17 billion dollars. Credit: Francisco Anzola/cc by 2.0

By Pascal Laureyn
PHNOM PENH, Nov 14 2017 (IPS)

In Laos, the lush forests are alive with the whines of drills that pierce the air. On the Mekong, a giant concrete wall rises slowly above the trees. The Don Sahong dam is a strong symbol, not only for a power-hungry Asia but also for what critics fear is a disaster in the making.

Landlocked Laos wants to become ‘the battery of Southeast Asia’. The mountainous country with swirling rapids has the ideal geography for hydropower production and Don Sahong is just one of nine dams that Laos wants to build on the mainstream Mekong, claiming that this is the only way to develop the poor country.Millions of people in Laos, Cambodia, Thailand and Vietnam could lose the fish they rely on for food.

But there are serious drawbacks. The Don Sahong dam is being built with little or no consideration of the impact on ecosystems and communities along the Mekong. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the Mekong is the second most biodiverse river in the world, after the Amazon. It supports the world’s largest freshwater capture fishery. The Lower Mekong Basin provides a wide variety of breeding habitats for over 1,300 species of fish. But damming the Mekong will block fish migration towards these habitats.

The FAO calculated that about 85 percent of the Lower Mekong Basin’s population lives in rural areas. Their livelihoods and food security is closely linked to the river and is vulnerable to water-related shocks – not just for fishers but for thousands more who sell food products or provide hundreds of related services, says FAO. Millions of people in Laos, Cambodia, Thailand and Vietnam could lose the fish they rely on for food.

Chhith Sam Ath, the Cambodian director of the World Wide Fund (WWF), claimed in The Diplomat that the Don Sahong Dam is “an ecological time bomb”.

Millions of people in Laos, Cambodia, Thailand and Vietnam could lose the fish they rely on for food.
“It threatens the food security of 60 million people living in Mekong basin,” he said. “The dam will have disastrous impacts on the entire river ecosystem all the way to the delta in Vietnam.” This is particularly devastating for downstream Cambodia because more than 70 percent of the protein consumed there comes from fish.

The 260-megawatt dam can also endanger the Irrawaddy dolphins, which are an important source of ecotourism on the Cambodian side of the Mekong. There are only 80 dolphins left. Some live just a few miles from the Don Sahong dam site. WWF warns that damming the Mekong will soon drive all the remaining dolphins to extinction.

A battery worth 800 million dollars

Laos is going forward with the dam all the same, without approval from the Mekong River Commission and in defiance of protests from NGOs and downstream countries. Lao officials say that they cannot stop the country from pursuing its right to development. They argue that they will address some of the concerns with ‘fish-friendly turbines’ and fish ladders. But critics are not convinced that these measures are sufficient.

Downstream, Cambodia is making things much worse. On a Monday morning in September, Prime Minister Hun Sen pushed a symbolic button. For the first time the floodgates of Lower Sesan 2 Dam closed and an artificial lake started to fill. Cambodia now has its own 800-million-dollar battery, built with Chinese funds and knowhow.

In the opening ceremony, Hun Sen praised the technological miracle and the Chinese investors. He pointed out that the need for electricity is growing rapidly. Cambodia has the most expensive electricity in Southeast Asia. That will change with this 400-megawatt dam on the river Sesan, close to its confluence with the Mekong.

Drowning village

In Kbal Romeas, upstream the Sesan, fishermen waited in vain for the yearly migration in May and June. No more fish to catch. The villagers have moved elsewhere, escaping the rising water and increasing poverty. The only reminder of a once lively Kbal Romeas is the roof of a pagoda that seems to float on the empty water.

“The river Sesan is blocked by the dam,” Maureen Harris of NGO International Rivers writes in her report. “That’s a problem for the 200 species that migrate from the Mekong to their breeding grounds in the Sesan.”

The American National Academy of Sciences predicts that the fish population in the Lower Mekong Basin will decline by 9.3 percent. That’s just one dam. More dams are on the drawing table. The Mekong River Commission (MRC), the intergovernmental body charged with coordinating the river’s management, recently released provisional but alarming results of their research. The two finished dams and the 11 scheduled dams will decimate the fish population in the Lower Mekong Basin by half.

The dams would also affect roughly 20 million Vietnamese people in the Mekong Delta, an area that accounts for more than a quarter of the country’s GDP. Dams block the flow of sediments, rich with nutrients needed to make soil suitable for cultivation. In Vietnam eroded riverbanks and houses tumbling in the water have become a common spectacle.

The Cambodian prime minister Hun Sen dismissed these environmental concerns, criticising “radical environmentalists”.

“How else can we develop?” he said. “There is no development that doesn’t have an effect on the environment.”

The international NGO Mother Nature mapped the environmental consequences of the Lower Sesan 2 dam. Consequently, the Cambodian government revoked its license. One of the founders, Alejandro Gonzalez-Davidson, has been banned from the country.

Costs outweigh benefits

The dams come at a high environmental cost, imperil food security and risk increasing poverty for millions of people. Moreover, the river’s potential is overestimated by dam developers, says the Mekong River Commission. Dams will meet just 8 percent of the Lower Mekong Basin’s projected power needs. The MRC proposes a ten-year moratorium on dam building. But few governments are listening.

The MRC valued the combined fisheries for the Mekong Basin at 17 billion dollars. Energy from the 13 dams may yield 33.4 billion, according to an international study by Mae Fa Luang University in Chiang Rai. But a denuded river system carries a price tag of 66.2 billion dollars, the same study predicts.

The real costs of hydropower seem to outweigh the benefits. But the projects still go ahead. The thump of jackhammers will become more common. The mother of all rivers will have to face an army of men with safety hats that want to stop her from flowing freely.

Tensions in Cambodia are growing. The reigning party have been in power for decades, but as the upcoming elections in June come closer, support is gathering for the opposition. The response from the government has been to pass laws that seek to silence protests.

The corridor is stacked with boxed kits of demonstrator equipment. In each box there are sections for vests, for helmets and for glasses.

”For teargas”, Naly Pilarge explains.

She works for the Cambodian human rights organisation Licadho.

Political control in the country has tightened. In June local elections will be held, followed by parliamentary elections in 2018. The government has started to sense that its hold on power is threatened. For defenders of civil rights, Cambodia has practically turned into a one party state.

Every Monday, members of the opposition dress in black to show their discontent with the present regime. This led to the arrest of two women a few weeks ago. The commander of the army commented: ”We can’t permit a revolution of color in the country”.

The government has started to sense that its hold on power is threatened. For defenders of civil rights, Cambodia has practically turned into a one party state.
Naly Pilarge shakes her head and leaves the room. Out in the corridor, she lights a cigarette. ”Things have gotten much worse”

A year ago, on the tenth of July, local politician Kem Ley was followed into a gas station in the capital city Phnom Penh by a man with a gun.

Three shots to the head ended his life. The murderer was apprehended but there were plenty of unanswered questions. Why did the police drive alongside the fleeing murderer for a long while, witnessed by bystanders and recorded on video. What did they say to each other for a prolonged period of time before the arrest was made?

Kim Ley led the grass root advocacy group Khmer for Khmer that aligned several of the country’s grass root movements, and had also started a political party which was quickly gaining support.

He often spoke out in criticism of the prime minister Hun Sen, and only briefly before the shooting, he had added comment to a report on widespread corruption. Although the 38 year old murderer claimed that a dispute over money led to the shots being fired, the opposition claim that it was a planned assassination, although the accomplices are as yet unknown.

In order to understand the present situation, the past must be considered.

The government party CPP (Cambodian Peoples Party) have been in power since the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia in 1979 that removed Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge.

With messages from the leadership like: ”It’s better to kill an innocent by mistake than spare an enemy by mistake.’ the Khmer Rouge communist reign of terror decimated Cambodia by killing one fourth of the population.

The effects of that systematic torture and murder of those deemed unsuited for the Khemer Rouge society, is still visible in today’s politics.

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

From the tenth floor of Phnom Penh Tower, the Swedish embassy overlooks the heavily trafficated city streets that clog to a standstill several times every day. From there, Andreas Johnsson, among other tasks, can overlook the political situation in the country.

”There is turbulence right now”, he begins. ”Alot of people support the CPP as they see the party as a safeguard for stability and to make sure that what happened under the Khmer Rouge does not happen again”

Down below SUVs crowd the narrow streets as testiment to a booming economy.

Growth is around 7-8% annually. For some, times are very good. But only few can reap the gains. Of the 16 million inhabitants of Cambodia, as many as 12 million are surviving on just over 2 dollars per day.

The spread of mobile phones and increasing use of social media has spurred a willingness to discuss political issues. At the same time, the important textile industries have increased pressures as they demand improved wages and a higher standard of living.

This forms a growing demand for change, which isn’t easy to deal with for a leader who has been in power for more than thirty years.

The CPP realize that they must deal with the opposition in some way. The results of the last elections in 2013 shocked the party. Although they won, the support for the opposition had grown significantly.

Soon after that result, leader Hun Sen realized that some action must be taken. He brought forth several reforms and reached out to the leader of the opposition Sam Rainsy.

But the initiative quickly got bogged down without making any reforms and relationships quickly cooled. Rainsy was also accused of numerous crimes and charged with criminal defamation.

As the upcoming elections on local and national levels grow near, new laws have been introduced that curtail the opposition.

In February, a law was enacted that could lead to political parties being banned if they are repesented by criminals.

While that might sound like a sensible idea, the reality of it, and that was apparent to the opposition, was that opposition representatives had started to be charged with crimes.

Their claims that the charges were unfounded has been backed by Amnesty International.

Sam Rainsy decided to leave Cambodia and lives in exile in France. One month ago he also resigned as leader of the opposition in order to stop any attempts to ban the party due to the new law.

Persecution has also been seen on the streets as several representatives have been struck down by unknown assailants.

Another legal challenge has come with a new law that regulates union activity. Regulation dictates which unions are given the right to negotiate and for independent labor unions this makes organized efforts more difficult and they risk losing members.

Furthermore, the government has proposed a new law to regulate minimum wages.

According to the proposal, mimunim wage levels are set for the entire labor market, and not for individual industries, for example the textile industry.

These minimum levels are to be set by a tripartite committee representing unions, employers and the State. But when the levels are set, protests by the unions would be outlawed.

The proposal goes even further, in banning research and reporting on minimum wages. These laws have made it difficult for opponents of the legislation to come together.

There are 3000 registered labor unions in Cambodia, a country that is considered to be one of the most corrupt in the world.

This story was originally published by Arbetet Global

The International Criminal Court in the Hague, Netherlands. Credit: UN Photo/Rick Bajornas.

By Phoebe Braithwaite
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 1 2016 (IPS)

The International Criminal Court (ICC) will pay more attention to crimes of environmental destruction and land-grabs, according to a new policy paper published by the court.

This may see business executives and government officials in cahoots to exploit natural resources prosecuted for crimes that displace millions. 38.9 billion hectares – an area the size of Germany – has been leased to investors in resource-rich but cash-poor countries since 2000, Alice Harrison, Director of Communications at Global Witness, told IPS.

“It is an important acknowledgement that crimes against humanity are not exclusively perpetrated by warlords in so-called failed states, they can also be linked back to company directors in our financial capitals,” she said. The ICC has been criticised since it was set up in 2002 for convicting too few people and being too expensive. African leaders have also accused the courts of unfairly targeting their continent.

According to the policy paper, the court will pay special attention to crimes committed in light of “the destruction of the environment, the illegal exploitation of natural resources or the illegal dispossession of land” in the selection of cases. The proposal does not increase the Hague-based court’s mandate, established by the Rome Statute in 1998 to prosecute war crimes and crimes against humanity.

This has been hailed as a landmark shift in international criminal law that could reshape the way business is done in poorer countries. Global Witness have said that it shows the ICC adapting to the “modern dynamics of conflict,” to violations and displacements which happen in times of peace.

There are hopes that this change in policy signals good news for hundreds of thousands of victims of land grabbing in Cambodia, ten of whom are represented by international criminal law firm Global Diligence LLP, and whose case is currently under review at the ICC.

“The government talks about poverty reduction, but what they are really trying to do is to get rid of the poor. They destroy us by taking our forested land, 70 percent of the population has to disappear, so that 30 percent can live on. Under Pol Pot we died quickly, but we kept our forests. Under the democratic system it is a slow, protracted death. There will be violence, because we do not want to die,” a Cambodian victim of land grabbing recounts.

Speaking to IPS, Richard Rogers, who lodged the case with the ICC, said this is an indication that Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda “has accepted the argument of Global Diligence and others that the systemic crimes committed under the guise of ‘development’ are no less damaging to victims than many wartime atrocities – forced population displacement destroys entire communities and leads to massive suffering.”

“I feel very confident that the ICC Prosecutor will soon move forward with the case that I filed relating to the land grabbing and forcible evictions in Cambodia,” he said. “That case is a perfect test case for the new policy.”

But Senior Appeals Counsel at the ICC, Helen Brady, has disputed any connection between the two situations, saying that the Cambodian victims’ case and the policy document are “two completely separate things. We wrote a policy, and separately, we have under analysis in our office a preliminary examination going into the Cambodian [case],” she told IPS.

Brady, who also chaired the working group that came up with the policy document, stressed that the court’s policy on the selection of individual cases, which takes place after the decision to commence a full investigation into an overall series of crimes, is a distinct issue from whether the court decides to formally declare a preliminary examination into the Cambodian victims’ case, which will be determined by different means laid out in a policy document published in November 2013.

In fact, this earlier document already determines that cases where there is “social, economic and environmental damage inflicted on the affected communities” will be given special attention.

Yet it is clear that the recent announcement describes these kinds of environmental crime in more detail, even specifically mentioning “land grabbing” in its introduction. Paying heed to other major watchwords of supranational judicial bodies, it also refers to the increased vulnerability of victims instilled by terror, and of the trafficking of arms and persons.

Perhaps this isn’t the watershed moment environmental activists have been campaigning for, but it remains a promising step towards accountability for the victims of environmental crimes. “I think it’s highly important and it’s not just symbolic – it means something,” the ICC’s Helen Brady said.

Legal experts have played down the significance of the shift since the ICC’s mandate has not changed, with some saying this looks more like an attempt for the ICC to work with national judicial authorities in helping them to prosecute crimes of this kind, provided for in the paper’s seventh clause.

As it stands the ICC can only prosecute Rome Statute crimes if the perpetrator comes from one of the 124 countries that have ratified its statute, or if the UN refers a case. Three of the five members of the UN Security Council – the US, Russia and China – have not ratified the court’s statute and can veto crimes referred to it.

Nevertheless, as Rogers argues, should the Cambodian victims see a fair hearing, prosecution for environmental crimes would be entering new waters: “the impact of the new ICC focus can be enormous. Those who commit land grabbing and related crimes have a lot to lose – they tend to be government ministers and businessmen with reputations to protect. Therefore, they are far more likely to change their behavior than regular war criminals,” Rogers said.

In Cambodia, 10 percent of the country’s land has already been carved up among 230 companies. There are estimates that 770,000 people have been affected by land grabs in Cambodia since 2000, 6 percent of Cambodia’s total population.

“Chasing communities off their land and trashing the environment has become a common and accepted way of doing business,” Harrison said.

“More than three people a week – ordinary citizens – are murdered for defending their land, forests and rivers against destructive industries like mining, logging and agribusiness. These numbers are increasing. In 2015 we documented 185 deaths – by far the highest annual death toll on record.”

Women are disproportionately targeted in these killings, which were brought greater attention after Honduran activist Berta Caceres’ high profile murder in March.

Phal Vannak, a farmer from Amlaing commune in Cambodia, who has benefitted from the rehabilitation of a water irrigation scheme by FAO. Credit: Amy Fallon/IPS

By Amy Fallon
KAMPONG SPEU PROVINCE, Sep 26 2016 (IPS)

In Kampong Speu province, when the wet weather doesn’t come, as in other parts of Cambodia, it can affect whether food goes on the dinner table.

“When there’s drought, it strongly affects crop production,” Vann Khen, 48, a married father of three from Amlaing commune, who farms corn for his family’s consumption, and rice, cattle, pigs, chickens and ducks to sell, told IPS.Tens of thousands of households are thought to be affected by drought every year, with "millions" spent saving lives and recovering livelihoods, according to FAO Cambodia.

What has been worsening the situation for farmers in Kampong Speu, some 40 miles west of the country’s capital Phnom Penh and with a population of at least 700,000, was that a 770-metre water canal, made during the reign of dictator Pol Pot, needed urgent restoration, so when it did rain farmers could access water.

In each irrigation scheme, a command area normally allows all farmers access to water. But in many instances lack of maintenance, destruction due to floods or animals, and culverts or other gates not working properly can prevent farmers from accessing water, stress officials with FAO Cambodia.

In other cases, if the irrigation scheme is not built correctly or if there is ineffective land levelling, the water won’t flow. Those not having water access, in both cases, rely mainly on rain patterns. During long dry spells and drought, they suffer more than farmers who have access to irrigation water.

“Last year wasn’t a good harvest, I got only about 500 dollars in total,” Phal Vannak, 28, a married father of three, who mainly farms corn and rice, told IPS.

For corn alone, he earned only about 100 dollars due to the delay in rainfall.

Kampong Speu has been on the other end of extreme weather, suffering from floods and storms.

But the province experienced severe droughts in 1987, 1999, 2000 and the last two years in a row.

“In 2015 and 2016, as in other countries, Cambodia has been hit by El Nino, affecting crop production,” Proyuth Ly, from FAO Cambodia, told IPS.

The dry periods are the “most prominent hazard” threatening the agriculture sector in Kampong Speu, says FAO Cambodia. The industry is one of the sectors most impacted by drought, and smallholder farmers particularly suffer. Tens of thousands of households are thought to be affected by drought every year, with “millions” spent saving lives and recovering livelihoods, according to FAO Cambodia.

Vannak is the president of a Farmer Water User Group (FWUG) for the Kampong Speu irrigation scheme.

There are 500 households from six villages who are members.  To effectively manage water use, they established six sub-committees (one for each village), and a sub-committee of between four to eight people.

“The farmers weren’t happy (last year) because they needed the water to get into the rice field,” said Vannak.

After a request for help from Cambodia’s ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, FAO Cambodia, with funding from the European Commission’s Humanitarian Aid and Civil Protection (DIPECHO), rehabilitated the canal.

“Livelihoods would be affected as they could not grow intended crops,” Etienne Careme, in charge of operations at FAO Cambodia, told IPS. “FAO Cambodia rehabilitated the canal to ensure correct flow of water to needy farmers. It meant rehabilitating canal corridor, strengthening slopes, constructing or rehabilitating culverts.”

The 80,000-dollar, three-month project, completed last December, included setting up software to train farmer water user groups in water management (a figure that doesn’t include staff time and other travel costs).

Today, even though Kampong Speu is still experiencing a dry period, rice grows in lush green fields.

The irrigation scheme is connected from a stream located about 20 miles from the Aoral mountain, the main source, and can supply water to 400 ha of paddy fields.

“This water has really saved this rice crop,” said Ly on a recent field trip to Kampong Speu to monitor the irrigation scheme and the farmer’s needs, trips conducted regularly, as water rushed past him.

Vannak said this season’s harvest was already an improvement on last year.

“When I heard this (canal) was being fixed I was very happy because some people didn’t have water to save their crops,” he said, clutching a handful of corn in a field.

Khen said he was also happier. “We can open or close the water gate,” he said. “Also the small water gate is allowing us to better regulate water and better distribute it to farmers in the commune.”

Careme said the restoration of the irrigation scheme had improved rice yields.

“It allows better production and therefore increases incomes through sale of rice,” he said.

Land mines are not the only type of explosive devices that families returning home after conflicts risk stumbling across, representatives from the UN’s Mine Action Service (UNMAS) told journalists here Monday.

“There is a lot of stigma about using mines now – the real issue is just the explosive detritus of conflict,” said Paul Heslop, UNMAS chief of program planning on the International Day for Mine Awareness. This detritus, said Heslop, includes unexploded hand grenades, rockets, bombs, shells, cluster munitions, and improvised explosive devices.

This is why UNMAS does not discriminate when removing unexploded ordinances in conflict and post-conflict zones, said Agnes Marcaillou, director of the UN Mine Action Service (UNMAS). For UNMAS, it doesn’t matter if the explosive device is a land mine or an improvised explosive device inside a soda can, she said.

Marcaillou described how in Iraq people are returning home to find their homes deliberately booby-trapped. “In Iraq if you decide to return to your home after Daesh (also known as ISIS or ISIL) has left your village you are likely to find your doors, your windows, everything will be booby trapped,” she said.

Syrian families who return home are faced with “a land littered with unexploded bombs and cluster munitions that might kill (them) or (their) children today, or perhaps tomorrow,” she said.

While some of these devices are sometimes described as improvised or homemade, they are actually sophisticated systems designed to make sure that people are not safe to return home even after the fighting has ended, said Marcaillou.

Marcaillou told journalists that it is essential that mine action is incorporated into the upcoming World Humanitarian Summit to be held in Istanbul in May. If not, it will be impossible to meet the cost of clearing mines and other unexploded devices from Iraq and Syria, which, she said, could exceed 100 million dollars. However Marcaillou said that the cost of removing the unexploded weapons was small in comparison to the amount spent on purchasing bombs and fighter jets. “There is money to clean up what money paid to do,” she said.

And while progress has been made on mine clearance, including in some of the worst affected countries such as Afghanistan and Cambodia, the international community should not yet see the problem as solved, said Heslop.

For example, in Afghanistan, he said, the number of deaths from mines has dropped from hundreds per month down to five or six, yet other types of unexploded ordinances still cause about 70 deaths per month.

And despite decades of clearing land mines from Cambodia, Heslop said that making Cambodia mine free could still take another decade, with cluster munitions posing a new challenge as people move to areas which haven’t yet been cleared.

In a statement issued to mark the International Day, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon said that he was “particularly concerned about the use of explosive weapons in populated areas.”

However Ban also noted that even in extremely challenging contexts such as Syria progress is being made on removing mines. Since August 2015, some 14 tonnes of unexploded ordnance have been destroyed in Syria, he said.

The World Bank has increased financial support for the cotton sector in Uzbekistan, despite evidence that the industry is rooted in a system of forced labour. Credit: David Stanley/CC-BY-2.0

By Kanya D'Almeida
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 22 2015 (IPS)

For an entire month beginning in February 2015, a group of between 40 and 50 residents of the Durgapur Village in the northern Indian state of Uttarakhand would gather at the site of a hydroelectric power project being carried out by the state-owned Tehri Hydro Development Corporation (THDC).

All day long the protestors, mostly women and their children, would sit in defiance of the initiative that they believed was an environmental and social danger to their community, singing folk songs that spoke of their fears and hopes.

“I had expected a very constructive conversation with the World Bank. Instead all I am hearing are non-responses." -- Jessica Evans, senior advocate on international financial institutions at Human Rights Watch
Their actions were well within the bounds of the law, but the reactions of THDC employees to their peaceful demonstration were troubling in the extreme.

According to one of the women involved, THDC contractors and labourers routinely harassed them by hurling abusive slurs – going so far as to call the women ‘prostitutes’ and make derogatory comments about their caste – and attempted to intimidate them by threatening “severe” consequences if they didn’t call off their picket.

In a country where activists and communities demanding their rights are routinely subjected to identical or worse treatment at the hands of both state and private actors, this tale may not seem at all out of the ordinary.

What sets it apart, however, is that this hydroelectric project was not simply a government-led scheme; it is financed by a 648-million-dollar loan from the World Bank.

Governed by a set of “do no harm” policies, both the Bank and its private sector lending arm, the International Finance Corporation (IFC) have – on paper at least – pledged to consult with and protect local communities impacted by its funding.

But according to a new report by Human Rights Watch, the Bank has not only systematically turned a blind eye to reports of human rights abuses associated with its projects, it also lacks necessary safeguards required to avoid further violations in the future.

When silence and negligence equals complicity

Based on research carried out over a two-year period between May 2013 and May 2015, in Cambodia, India, Uganda and Kyrgyzstan – the latter following allegations of rights abuses in Uzbekistan – the report entitled ‘At Your Own Risk: Reprisals Against Critics of World Bank Group Projects’ found that Bank officials consistently fail to respond in any meaningful way to allegations of severe reprisals against those who speak out against Bank-funded projects.

In some cases, the World Bank Group has even turned its back on local community members working with its own officials.

Addressing the press on a conference call on Jun. 22, the report’s author, Jessica Evans, highlighted an incident in which an interpreter for the Bank’s Inspection Panel was flung into prison just weeks after the oversight body concluded its review process.

Withholding all identifying details of the case for the security of the victim, Evans stated that, besides questioning government officials “behind closed doors”, the Bank has so far remained completely silent on the fate of an independent activist working to strengthen the Bank’s own process.

Such actions, or lack thereof, “make a mockery out of [the Bank’s] own stated commitments to participation and accountability,” the report concluded.

HRW has identified dozens of cases in which activists claim to have been targeted – harassed, abused, threatened or intimidated – for voicing their objections to aspects of Bank or IFC-funded initiatives for a range of social, environmental or economic reasons.

Because the bulk of communities in close proximity to major development schemes tend to be among the poorest or most vulnerable, and therefore lack the access or ability to formally lodge their complaints, the true number of people who have experienced such reprisals is “sure” to be much higher than the figures stated in the report, researchers revealed.

Evans told IPS, “On this issue of reprisals the World Bank’s silence and inaction has already crossed the line” into the realm of compliance.

She added that the Inspection Panel raised the issue of retaliation back in 2009, giving the Bank ample time to take necessary steps to address a chronic and pervasive problem.

Instead, it continues to engage with governments that have a poor human rights track record, while remaining apparently deaf to pressures and demands from civil society to strengthen mechanisms that will protect powerless and marginalized communities from violent backlash.

Take the case of Elena Urlaeva, who heads the Tashkent-based Human Rights Alliance of Uzbekistan, and who was arrested in a cotton field on May 31, 2015, while documenting evidence of the Uzbek government’s massive system of forced labour in cotton production.

According to HRW, Urlaeva was detained, abused and sexually violated during an extremely violent cavity probe. On the grounds that they were searching for a data card from her camera, male doctors and policemen conducted such a rough and invasive search that the ordeal left her bleeding.

She was forbidden from using the bathroom and eventually forced to go outside the station in the presence of male officers who called her a “bitch”, filmed her in the act of relieving herself and threatened to post the video online if she complained about her treatment.

Evans told IPS all of this occurred against a backdrop of the World Bank’s increased financial support of the cotton sector – already it has pledged over 450 million dollars to three major agricultural projects of the Uzbek government – despite evidence that the industry is rooted in a system of forced labour.

In the absence of any robust mechanism within the World Bank to make continued funding conditional on compliance with international human rights standards, there is a “real risk” that independent monitors and rights activists will continue to face situations as horrific as the one Urlaeva recently endured, Evans stressed.

A ‘disappointing’ reaction

Both the World Bank and the United Nations have tossed the issue of development-related rights abuses from one forum to another.

In his May 2015 report to the U.N. Human Rights Council (HRC), Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights Philip Alston stressed the urgency of “putting questions of resources and redistribution back into the human rights equation.”

He decried several member states’ attempts to keep international economics, finance and trade “quarantined” from the human rights framework, and blasted international financial institutions (IFIs) for contributing to this culture of impunity.

“The World Bank can simply refuse to engage with human rights in the context of its policies and programmes, IMF does the same, and the World Trade Organisation is little different,” Alston remarked, adding that these bodies throw the issue at the HRC, while the latter simply knocks the ball back into the financiers’ court.

It is becoming akin to a game of political ping-pong, with the ball representing the human rights of some of the most impoverished people in the world – at whom multi-million-dollar development projects are ostensibly targeted.

Gretchen Gordon, coordinator of Bank on Human Rights, a global coalition of social movements and grassroots organisations working to hold IFIs accountable to human rights obligations, told IPS, “You can’t have successful development without robust civil society participation in setting development priorities, designing projects, and monitoring implementation.”

If development banks and their member states neglect to take leadership and implement the necessary protocols and policies, she said, “they will continue to see increasing development failures, human rights abuses, and conflict.”

If the World Bank Group’s initial reaction to HRW’s comprehensive research is anything to go by, however, Bank on Human Rights and other watchdogs of its ilk have their work cut out for them.

Though HRW’s researchers invited the Bank and the IFC’s input with an in-depth list of questions back in April, they have received nothing but a rather “bland response” that failed to address the issue of reprisals at all and simply stated that the Bank “is not a human rights tribunal.”

“I had expected a very constructive conversation with the World Bank,” Evans said. “Instead all I am hearing are non-responses. We have proposed really pragmatic recommendations for how the Bank can work effectively in challenging environments, but we are a long way from that at the moment.”

Both the Bank’s Inspection Panel and the IFC’s Compliance Advisor Ombudsman (CAO) have greeted the report with enthusiasm, but they are independent bodies and remain largely powerless to effect change at the management level of the World Bank Group.

This power lies with the Bank’s president, Jim Yong Kim, who will have to “take the lead and send a clear message to his staff that the question of reprisals is a priority issue,” Evans concluded.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

United Nations Organization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUC) peacekeepers provide security at a trial. U.N. staffers have been killed in the country in recent years. Credit: UN Photo/Martine Perret.

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Jan 14 2015 (IPS)

The widespread field operations of the United Nations – primarily in conflict zones in Africa, Asia and the Middle East – continue to be some of the world’s deadliest.

The hazards are so predictable that the United Nations – and its agencies – subtly encourage staffers to write their last will before leaving home.

And working for the United Nations proved especially deadly in 2014 as its personnel “continued to be subject to deliberate attacks and exposed to hazardous environments”, according to the Staff Union’s Standing Committee for the Security and Independence of the International Civil Service.“I think the most appropriate question is: should the U.N. send staff members to places where their security and safety cannot be guaranteed?” - Barbara Tavora-Jainchill, president of the U.N. Staff Union

Asked if the United Nations was doing enough to protect its staff in these overseas operations, Barbara Tavora-Jainchill, president of the U.N. Staff Union, told IPS:  “This is a tricky question, because in principle the responsibility for the protection belongs primarily to the host country, i.e., the country where the staff member is working/living”.

“I think the most appropriate question is: should the U.N. send staff members to places where their security and safety cannot be guaranteed?” she asked.

At least, 61 United Nations and associated personnel were killed in 2014, including 33 peacekeepers, 16 civilians, nine contractors and three consultants, compared to 58 in 2013, including 33 peacekeepers and 25 civilians and associated personnel.

In 2012, 37 U.N. personnel, including 20 civilians and 17 peacekeepers, two of them police officers, were killed in the line of duty.

According to the Staff Union Standing Committee, the incident with the most casualties took place in Northern Mali, where nine peacekeepers were killed last October when their convoy was
ambushed.

Northern Mali was the most deadly place for U.N. personnel: 28 peacekeepers were killed there between June and October. And Gaza was the most deadly place for civilian personnel, with 11 killed in
July and August.

The killings, some of them described as “deliberate”, took place in Afghanistan, Somalia, Mali, Cambodia, Pakistan, Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan, North Darfur, Central African Republic and Gaza.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has expressed serious concern over the continued killings of U.N. staffers in field operations.

“I am appalled by the number of humanitarian workers and peacekeepers who have been deliberately targeted in the past year, while they were trying to help people in crisis,” he said, at a memorial ceremony last week to honour fallen staff members.

In the past year, he said, U.N. staff members were killed while relaxing over dinner in a restaurant in Kabul while two colleagues were targeted after getting off a plane in Somalia.

Speaking at the same ceremony, Ian Richards, president of the Coordinating Committee of International Staff Unions, said: “We are asked to work in some of the world’s most difficult and dangerous places.”

He said the work is fulfilling and “we do it willingly.”  “But all we ask in return is that the Organisation do its best to protect us, look after our families, and hold those who attack us, including governments, responsible for their actions.”

In a statement released Tuesday, the Staff Union Standing Committee said South Sudan was the country with the highest number of national staff members detained or abducted.

In May, there were allegations that members of South Sudan’s security forces assaulted and illegally detained two staff members in separate incidents in Juba.

In August, South Sudan’s National Security Service detained two national staff.  And in October, eight armed men wearing plain clothes seized a World Food Programme staff member who was waiting in line for a flight from Malakal airport and drove him to an unknown location.

Scores of United Nations staff and associated personnel were also subject
to hostage-taking, kidnapping and abductions, the statement said.

The worst incidents took place in the Golan Heights, where 44 Fijian peacekeepers were detained by armed opposition elements between 28 August and 11 September last year.

Meanwhile, U.N. personnel were abducted in Yemen, the Sudan’s Darfur region, Pakistan and in South Sudan.

An international contractor from India working for the U.N Mission in Darfur (UNAMID) was released on 12 June after 94 days of captivity.

Asked about “hazard pay” for staffers in overseas operations, Tavora-Jainchill told IPS staff members do get hazard/danger pay depending on conditions of the individual duty station.

She said, “Each duty station is a unique duty station and receives unique consideration for hazard/danger pay, so your question cannot be answered in a general manner.”

United Nations staff members participate in a Pension Fund and there are provisions in that pension related to their death and the payment of pension/indemnities to their survivors, she added.

Asked about the will, she said: “That question is very interesting because I also heard that and some time ago asked someone from the U.N. Administration if it was really the case.”

The response was that those staff members are asked to consider “putting their business and paperwork in order”.

“My understanding from the answer is that the paperwork might include a will, she added.”

Srun Srorn, trainer for the E-learning project, shows teachers at Koh Kong High School how the sexual education curriculum works. Credit: Michelle Tolson/IPS

By Michelle Tolson
KOH KONG PROVINCE, Cambodia, Nov 5 2014 (IPS)

The transition to puberty can be an awkward experience for youth to navigate. In Cambodia, sex education is moving increasingly into the virtual realm, with the Internet and mobile phones providing welcome spaces for young people to learn, seek help and stay safe.

Cambodia is classified as one of the world’s Least Developed Countries (LDCs), with 20 percent of the population living below the poverty line, while another 20 percent are just 0.30 dollars a day above the poverty line, according to the World Food Programme (WFP).

Illiteracy has been linked with poverty and only 74 percent of rural communities are literate. Cambodia has been heavily influenced by the NGO culture, which has helped bring about some improvements, yet when it comes to sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR), these organisations have tended to focus on addressing poor maternal health or at-risk groups, such as entertainment workers.

"This is the difficulty that we experience [in Cambodia: making people aware that counseling is a way of providing emotional support and empowerment as well as exploring options without judgment or assumption.” -- Sean Sok Phay, executive director of Child Helpline Cambodia
Youth, on the other hand, particularly those from poorer families and in rural areas, have not received much attention, particularly those who engage in romantic relationships outside of marriage.

Now, a wave of online learning is filling crucial gaps in the knowledge system.

One such initiative is a major E-learning platform being rolled out with support from the ministry of education, youth and sport (MoEYS), aimed at improving young people’s access to vital information.

“NGOs focus on the population in general, birth spacing, maternal health, but not sweetheart relationships that youth have,” Kuth Sovanno, administrative officer in the school health department of the MoEYS said recently to a roomful of teachers at Koh Kong High School during the launch of the E-learning initiative.

It is being piloted in 24 secondary schools in the provinces of Bantey Meanchey, Battambong, Pursat, Kampong Chhnang, Takeo, Kampot, Koh Kong and Sihanoukville (Kampong Som province) and Phnom Penh. At present, the plan is to expand the programme to reach 100 schools.

Sovanno tells IPS that tapping into social media is a way to get the information out to youth who flock to Facebook to socialise. Youth are beginning to see online access as an important source of information, so the MoEYS maintains an up-to-date website, which is not always the case with the other ministries.

Cambodia’s mobile phone sales have mushroomed, resulting in an estimated 134-percent mobile phone penetration, with cell phones being cheaper than land lines, while social media – accessed through Internet cafes and mobile devices – was believed to have played a major role in the 2013 elections.

In this same way, youth are breaking away from traditional restrictions on sexual and reproductive health education, says Srun Srorn, advisor to One World UK, partnering with the MoEYS to launch the E-learning programme.

Srorn is an activist who uses social media to reach marginalised youth, including the LGBT community, drug users, sex workers and migrant workers. His volunteer-led organisation, CamASEAN, reaches 2,000 members through social media.

Chheon Rachana, a 28-year-old female activist for LGBT issues who teaches about sexual orientation, gender identity and expression for Rainbow Community Kampuchea (RoCK) and CamASEAN, tells IPS that many girls do not talk to their parents or female teachers for advice on seemingly basic topics like menstruation; instead, most reach out to friends.

While some schools make use of NGO support to supply poor rural students with feminine products at school, many girls continue to face challenges in acquiring the most essential products and services.

“Poor girls ask for money from their parents or from someone close to them in their family,” explains Rachana. She herself did not tell her parents when she started menstruating, but had a sympathetic relative help buy her monthly feminine products.

Things become even more challenging for teens learning about safer sex, abortions and sexual orientation.

“The traditional Cambodian style of reproductive and sexual health education means that most youth have to find out by themselves by book, [and] share [this information] with their friends because they don’t learn this at school,” Rachana says.

She thinkx the Internet is changing this, though she maintains the importance of accurate information – something that is not always possible given the very nature of the Web.

NGOs such as the Reproductive Health Association of Cambodia (RHAC), which also supports the E-learning initiative, trains peer educators to provide accurate information and emotional support in several provinces but adolescents without access to this especially benefit from mobile, SMS and online counseling.

Sean Sok Phay, executive director of Child Helpline Cambodia, which, along with Inthanou, provides counselors for the new website www.youthchhlat.org, tells IPS, “Online and phone counseling is a new concept in Cambodia. Many people often refer [to] counseling as giving advice or instructing people to do certain thing. This is the difficulty that we experience: making people aware that counseling is a way of providing emotional support and empowerment as well as exploring options without judgment or assumption.”

He describes the service as “pro-poor” and especially helpful for youth in rural areas, as one-on-one counseling can be expensive, while this service is free. The use of mobile phones allows for privacy to talk about these topics either online, by calling or through SMS.

The MoEYS recently published a life skills book for youth that tackles changes in adolescents’ bodies, but also social issues such as drug use and learning about sexually transmitted infections (STIs), which is paired with the E-learning project that has its own curriculum as well.

“Each student has time at the computer already so it will be easier because they are shy to learn [about sexual reproductive health],” Theary, a high school teacher who has taught grades 7-9 at Koh Kong High for the past seven years, tells IPS.

Computer labs, such as the one in Koh Kong High School, will introduce the website’s lessons to students offline first because of the school’s slow Internet connection but they can also access the lessons online at Internet cafes or through mobile phones.

The new website was launched in March of this year.

“Many youth have sex before marriage now, compared to traditional times,” adds Srorn of One World UK, who trains teachers on how to use the E-learning platform.

“Girls already learn by themselves and use porn videos for this. Internet cafes are not expensive, just 1000 riels [0.24 dollars] an hour so poor girls can learn this way. Males use karaoke bars, beer gardens, massage parlors.”

Koh Kong town, situated close to the Thai border, has many massage parlors and some casinos.

“Middle-class and [upper]-class girls can walk or take a moto bike along the riverside in cities [to meet potential sex partners], while high-class girls go to hip-hop clubs where they can meet a guy. But youth also use the Internet for this. They can use Skype, Facebook messenger and phone sex to hook up.”

Chheon agrees that meeting girlfriends and boyfriends online is common these days. But she says it is important that they meet in public places first and not away from other people for safety reasons.

According to a 2013 U.N. report, 20 percent of men in Cambodia said they had forced a woman to have sex, half of whom claimed to have done so as a teenager.

For those surviving an assault, phone and online counseling can be a lifesaver.

“A girl in a village [who has] been raped … will not only face discrimination, she will have a very difficult time in terms of trauma, stress, and feelings of suicide. Phone counseling, online and text message counseling is playing a role to create the means or opportunity for such a community,” points out Sok Phay from the Child Helpline.

But perhaps what is most urgently needed is information about practicing safer sex.

Monyl Loun, executive director of Inthanou, the other counseling service supporting the project, tells IPS that while love and relationships are “natural” at the age of puberty, the important thing is to learn about the “responsibilities of love, and information to prevent … unintended pregnancy, HIVs and STIs.”

Karaoke videos that play on televisions in buses and even the simplest cafes show romantic partners ending their lives over relationship problems.

“KTV songs and dances are about love, broken hearts and marriage,” explains Srun, adding that most music videos depict couples killing or hurting themselves as a solution to their problems.

But counselors working round the clock in Cambodia hope the new technology-savvy mode of sex education will remind youth that love does not have to end in tragedy.

Edited by Kanya D’Almeida

Mr. Kong, left, is among thousands of Cambodia workers eager to find higher paying jobs in neighboring Thailand. Credit: Michelle Tolson/IPS

By Michelle Tolson
Poipet, Cambodia, Jul 3 2014 (IPS)

Eight people, three women and five men, are crouched in the dirt in the center of a roundabout where the main road at Poipet –a major Cambodia border town– merges with the check point to Thailand. Dust swirls in the wind as they squint their eyes at the sun. Others playing the waiting game mill about on the road’s edges.

Last week a reported 220,000 Cambodian migrants hastily returned from Thailand in fear of a crackdown against undocumented workers, creating a migration crisis. The Cambodian government, United Nations and NGOs quickly mobilized to feed and transport them to their home towns.

This week Poipet is quiet, but a growing number or migrants have come back to the border since Thailand announced last Friday it opened a fast-track visa processing center at the border for undocumented workers. Their Thai construction employer, DC Company, is supposed to help them obtain official work permits for as little as 37 dollars.

I am here waiting for my employer to tell me he has the documents I need to cross,” Mr. Lin, a 36-year-old man from a village near Battambang, tells IPS.

“But I don’t know how much it is for a new document,” he adds.

Expensive documents

The Cambodian government, for its part, is trying to help the estimated quarter million repatriated undocumented migrant workers return to work and has introduced its own 4-dollar passport fee for students studying abroad and migrants, down from the previous 135 dollars charged.

Cambodia, as a least developed country (LCD), has one of the most expensive passports in the ASEAN region, contributing to the high rate of undocumented workers. Vietnamese passports cost just 12 dollars, while Laos and Thai ones go for 35 dollars and 30 dollars, respectively.

“Factories in Cambodia don’t pay you for two months sometimes. They smell bad, have fumes and are big and cold.” - Cambodian migrant worker Ms. Hun
Cambodian Human Rights and Development Association (ADHOC) estimates that 50 to 55 percent of the 440,000 Cambodians that work in Thailand are undocumented.

In addition to passports, there are fees for foreign work permits.

“It costs 50 to 100 dollars to work in Thailand for two to four months, and 500 dollars for two years,” Mr. Kong, a young 19-year-old construction worker from Sisophon, tells IPS.

Like Lin and others interviewed for this story, Kong was only conformable providing part of his name, as policemen were closely watching the crowd and listening in on their statements.

According to Chaan Sokunthaea, Head of Women and Children Section and Alternative Dispute Resolution Sectionwith ADHOC, “the price for the work permit depends on the situation and the broker.” The Cambodian government is allowing brokers to help Cambodians get passports, enforcing a 49-dollar broker-fee limit, but the new scheme will take several weeks.

Speaking to IPS, Chaan said it was too early to comment on the process.

“Good money”

Kong was able to save money in Thailand as an undocumented worker because he didn’t owe a debt to a broker, he says. He made “good money” working in construction in Bangkok for a year, sending it home to his family by electronic wire.

“Because I was good at my job, sometimes I made 320 baht (about 10 dollars) a day,” he says. He managed to save 3,000 to 4,000 baht (92 to 120 dollars) a month.

All the families lingering by the border have tales of supporting elderly parents, aunts and uncles in the countryside, or they have children their grandparents are raising for them.

“There are no jobs in my village and we don’t have enough land to grow rice,” Mali, the 33-year-old wife of Lin, tells IPS.  The couple recounts leaving their 13-year-old daughter back home with their parents, where their foreign income puts her through school – a parent’s sacrifice to allow her to have a better life.

Like her husband, Mali works in construction. Mali earns 250 baht (approximately 7.70 dollars) a day. It’s 50 baht less than the men make, but she thinks this is “fair” because she is not as strong as they are. Still, she prefers it to working in garment factories in Cambodia.

“Factories in Cambodia don’t pay you for two months sometimes,” Ms. Hun, who works with Mali, tells IPS . “They smell bad, have fumes and are big and cold.”

With an average salary of just 100 dollars a month, making ends meet with factory work is near impossible for many.

As a result, “Most workers we talked to complained they have debt in [Cambodia]”, Tola Moeun, Head of Labor at Community Legal Education Centre (CLEC), tells IPS. “They need the Cambodian government to set up a minimum wage to allow them enough to live on.”

They avoid garment factory work in Thailand “because they check documents,” a tour guide going by “Jim”, who is translating for the women, says.

Other migrants work as farmers or fisher folk, another industry known for undocumented workers.

Mr. Gumroun, 41, is sitting on a bench with his family waiting for work papers from his Thai boss. They had worked together on a Thai farm harvesting sugar cane, mangos and corn. His 16-year-old son sits next to him and his older daughter sits nearby.

“I don’t want to leave my son at home because he has no mother. We have no family in our village so it is safer working with me,” Gumroun tells IPS. He earns 300 baht (about 9.20 dollars) a day, while his children earn 200 baht (about 6.16 dollars). In Cambodia, in comparison, they might only bring home 3 dollars a day.

Rumours

ADHOC’s Chaan says workers fled Thailand because of a rumour they would be killed if found without documents. “According to our research, brokers told workers this to get money from them for documents.”

A quarter million workers needing papers represents a lot of cash.

Workers who fled back to Cambodia said they were cheated by taxi drivers and police to pay bribes, according to CLEC.

Several died in traffic accidents from the panic. Military fired guns at workers’ vans and trucks, further increasing the hysteria, ADHOC reported.

The Thai government claims it was merely addressing the sudden downgrade by the U.S. Department of State’s Trafficking In Persons (TIP) report to tier three, which resulted from reports that migrant workers were enslaved on Thai fishing boats.

While various migrants told IPS they are “very afraid” of the new Thai junta, the realization that they can’t survive in Cambodia continues to drive them across the border.

And so, as the Cambodian government scrambles to meet the needs of returnees by starting the untried 4-dollar passport system, migrants are trickling back to the border.

They put their faith in their bosses to help them navigate the new Thai document system they think will be faster.

“Our bosses are good to us,” 29-year-old Mr. Ta from Battambang tells IPS. “They like Cambodians more than Thai workers because we work all day — 12 hours, only stopping to eat lunch.”

Women in Cambodia’s garments sector work 10-12 hours a day. Credit: Michelle Tolson/IPS

By Michelle Tolson
PHNOM PENH, May 31 2014 (IPS)

The movement for reproductive justice sees women’s decision to have – or not have – children as a fundamental right. Should they choose to bear a child, women should have the right to care and provide for them; if they opt not to give birth, family planning services should be made available to enable women to space or prevent pregnancies.

In Cambodia, where women make up 60 percent of the population of 14 million people, this fundamental right is being trampled by insecure labour contracts, toxic working conditions and a near-total absence of maternity benefits for working mothers.

Take Cambodia’s garments industry, a massive sector that accounts for 80 percent of the country’s exports. A full 90 percent of the workforce is female, but labour rights have not accompanied employment opportunities.

"[The] lack of labour rights for women [is] a worrying trend that is completely changing the culture of Cambodia.” -- Tola Moeun, head of the labour programme at the Community Legal Education Centre
Ever since the country entered into a liberalising agreement with the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in 2005, long-term contracts have been edged out in favour of short term or fixed duration contracts (FDCs), the latter being far more popular among East Asian factory owners and western clothing brands like Gap, Walmart and H&M.

These informal arrangements “abuse garment workers’ reproductive rights,” Sophea Chrek, a former garment worker and technical assistant to the Workers Information Center (WIC) – which recently staged a fashion show to highlight the issue – told IPS.

“Women employed under FDCs for three to six months, or sometimes even one month, will not risk their job by having a baby. Usually, they choose to have an abortion…before the contract ends to ensure that the line leaders or supervisors are not aware of their pregnancy,” Chrek added.

According to Cambodian labour law, factories are supposed to provide maternity leave, but most get around this requirement with short contracts, which leave the estimated 600,000 workers vulnerable to employers’ whims.

Melissa Cockroft, a technical advisor on sexual and reproductive health, tells IPS that women without access to family planning services resort to unsafe and unregulated measures, such as using over-the-counter Chinese products to induce abortions.

These methods can be fatal, but women seem hesitant to avail themselves of NGO-provided free or discounted service at on-site infirmaries, which are less confidential.

Sometimes their grueling schedules, which include 10 to 12-hour workdays with only a short lunch break in between, keep them from making appointments. Many of these women, Cockroft says, are just too busy to even think of starting families.

Garment workers’ reticence to use reproductive services can be cultural too, as talking about sexual health is considered ‘shameful’ in traditional Cambodian society.

Cambodian law also stipulates that factories provide working mothers with childcare, but Cockroft says she has only seen one operational childcare facility during all her years as an advocate in the field.

For some women, the decision to leave their children at home emerges from a desire to spare them the grueling commute – many factory workers travel shoulder-to-shoulder in trucks or on compact wagons pulled by tuk tuks, ubiquitous motorcycle taxis, down Cambodia’s notoriously unsafe roads.

Very often, babies remain at home with their grandmothers in the countryside while their mothers go off to work in the city, where they earn roughly 100 dollars per month. Union leaders are trying to raise this minimum wage to 160 dollars.

In general, though, both Cockroft and Chrek say garment workers consider themselves “too poor” to have children.

Entertainers and street workers

Meanwhile, in Cambodia’s popular entertainment sector, women face a unique set of challenges, their access to reproductive health services hindered by the informal and unpredictable nature of their work.

Independent researcher Dr. Ian Lubek tells IPS that entertainment workers are likely to experience a much higher risk of foetal alcoholic syndrome due to the number of beverages they are forced to consume every night in order to get tips from their customers. Research from the International Labour Organisation (ILO) suggests that a female beer seller or hostess consumes up to 11 drinks a night.

Years of advocacy efforts have at least enabled entertainers working for international beer companies to secure better wages, with women employed by the Cambrew brewery now drawing a salary of close to 160 dollars a month.

Higher wages, according to Phal Sophea, former beer seller and representative for the Siem Reap division of the Cambodia Food and Service Workers Federation (CFSWF), amounts to less economic pressure to have transactional sex.

“I think better pay will reduce sex work because the [women] generally go out with customers when the pay is too low,” she told IPS.

Of all the groups of working women struggling to raise children, street-based sex workers are among the most marginalised and are often subject to police violence, arrests and forced detention in anti-trafficking ‘reeducation centres’.

While unions for entertainment workers can negotiate contracts, sex workers are left completely vulnerable to the laws of the streets.

Labour research indicates that Cambodians living in urban areas require, at the very least, 150 dollars a month in order to survive; most salaries are set below 100 a month, making it very difficult for the average working Cambodian to make ends meet, and feed their families. As it is, 40 percent of Cambodian children are chronically malnourished.

WNU Board Member Socheata Sim explained that sex work might be the only option for the many women without a formal education; according to a report on education levels among women in Cambodia, only one-third of school-aged girls are enrolled at the lower secondary school level, and one in ten at the upper secondary school level.

Many sex workers want a better life for their children, but few can afford the high fees, bribes and related costs of formal schooling.

Furthermore, sex workers living in slum dwellings face a constant threat of eviction. Tola Moeun, head of the labour programme at the Community Legal Education Centre, told IPS that high rates of evictions are now forcing many women to migrate abroad in search of employment.

“Yet once abroad, if undocumented, migrant workers find they do not have the rights citizens have,” he lamented.

In Thailand, for instance, where tens of thousands of Cambodian women now live and work, undocumented workers are fired from their jobs if they become pregnant, are denied maternity leave and earn half the 300-baht (nine-dollar) daily minimum wage.

Tola sees the “lack of labour rights for women as a worrying trend that is completely changing the culture of Cambodia.”

(END)

Workers at a lunch break in front of factories supplying H&M in Phnom Penh. Credit: Michelle Tolson/IPS.

By Michelle Tolson
PHNOM PENH, Mar 4 2014 (IPS)

An uneasy calm prevails in Cambodia after the government crackdown on protests by garment workers in January. With public gatherings banned and charges framed against 23 union leaders and activists, labour discontent may not be spilling on to the streets, but it is simmering.

Prime Minister Hun Sen has now called for removal of the ban on public assembly.“This is a critical juncture for garment workers and trade unions to use their leverage as a voting bloc to pressure both parties for better wages."

“The government should not be suppressing the demonstrators if they want to prove that Cambodia is a democratic country,” Phorn Sreywin, a 26-year-old garment worker, told IPS.

She has the support of the Workers Information Centre (WIC), which supports women in the garment industry, but voices asking for higher minimum wages in this impoverished Southeast Asian country appear to have been muffled for the time being.

“There should never have been a ban as this contradicts the Constitution and treaties ratified by Cambodia,” Naly Pilorge, Director of the human rights NGO LICADHO, told IPS by e-mail.

The Garment Manufacturers Association in Cambodia (GMAC), 93 percent of which comprises foreign business owners, mostly from Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan and South Korea, has cited the International Labour Organisation’s (ILO) convention number 87 to claim that workers have no “right to strike”.

“Freedom of association cannot be used as an excuse to get away with illegal behaviour and undermine a government’s ability to govern,” said a statement on GMAC’s website, alluding to the protests of Jan. 2-3 by garment workers, which led to military action.

GMAC claims that the strike by garment workers was violent.

“A multiplicity of unions in the workplace continues to create challenges, including but not limited to an increasing mass of unrepresentative unions, infighting amongst unions on the factory floor to gain popularity, misrepresentation of membership numbers due to double counting, and inability to engage with the unions constructively,” it said.

Activists, however, say that this amounts to intimidation by GMAC.

International trade unions around the world have protested in front of Cambodian consulates in support of the country’s garment workers.

Trade unions have also condemned GMAC for stating that it condoned the military action on striking garment workers Jan. 3 that killed four of them, left one missing and seriously injured over 30.

“The response from the Cambodian government is very oppressive,” said Pranom Somwong, a labour activist and consultant for the Clean Clothes Campaign who helped organise a protest in Bangkok in front of the Cambodian consulate.

She also told IPS that factory owners were “confrontational” vis-a-vis the unions. “Denying workers the right to freedom of assembly and the right to a living wage is unacceptable,” she said.

In the days leading up to the protest, the Labour Ministry had approved an increase in the minimum wage for garment workers, from 80 to 95 dollars a month. But trade unions and workers protested, saying it was not enough to live on, and demanded a monthly minimum wage of 160 dollars.

Labour activists are now being threatened with loss of job or with lawsuits, Sophea Chrek, interim coordinator for WIC, told IPS.

Tola Moeun, head of the advocacy organisation, Community Legal Education Centre, explained that factory owners have threatened labour leaders with lawsuits. “Yang Sophorn (president of the Cambodian Alliance of Trade Unions) was sued by suppliers (factory owners) for mobilising workers to strike,” he pointed out.

He highlighted another problem.

Despite 90 percent of garment workers being women, men tend to lead the labour unions, partly owing to the combative environment. “Women do not feel confident in their positions or are not provided enough opportunities to grow, especially due to their poor wages and short term contracts,” he told IPS.

Thida Khus, Executive Director of SILAKA, an organisation that trains women, believes women workers hold the key to shaping their work environment.

“Women workers need to lead and use their natural leadership quality to deal with the environment, using better negotiation skills with the thugs in factories, with the government and with the elites who are looking after their bosses’ interests,” Khus told IPS.

Labour researcher Dennis Arnold has written a report detailing how the bargaining power of workers in Cambodia weakened under the 2005 WTO free trade agreement (FTA).

He found that, prior to the agreement, most workers in registered factories had long-term contracts with holiday pay benefits, including sick and maternity leave. But afterwards the contracts became short-term, covering just three to six months, and with no benefits. Factory owners said western brands preferred flexibility in their contracts but the shift also made factory workers easier to manage.

There are an estimated 400,000 workers in registered factories, but if those in unregistered factories, and workers who are part of the supply chain were to be included, the number would be around 600,000, he says.

Arnold told IPS that the elite siphon off money through “bribes, bureaucracy and corruption”, contributing to the already high cost of production, and this is used by factory owners as a reason for not raising wages.

“This is a critical juncture for garment workers and trade unions to use their leverage as a voting bloc to pressure both parties for better wages,” Arnold said. “This is part of broader efforts to redistribute wealth and power in favour of workers – and you see very clearly the deep resistance to this by GMAC and the ruling Cambodian People’s Party (CPP).”

The opposition Cambodian National Rescue Party (CNRP) is completely on board.

Mu Sochua, CNRP’s elected lawmaker and Director General of Public Affairs, told IPS, “Strong trade unions, strict implementation of the labour law (against short-term contracts) and ILO conventions must be upheld and the government and global brands should be allowed no excuses to delay negotiations for living wage.”

A spokesperson for H&M, one of the largest brands sourcing from Cambodia, told IPS on e-mail that the company plans to work towards a living wage “by 2018”.

Cambodia’s garment industry is regularly plagued with strikes and protests. But when armed security forces opened fire on striking workers in the capital city of Phnom Penh on Jan. 3, killing five and injuring dozens, it suddenly became clear that this was not just another protest.

With the situation left unresolved since, advocacy groups are urging clothing brands to review their purchasing practices and take action to ultimately end low wages, which are at the root of the bloody demonstrations in Cambodia.“We need a system that is different from the current business-as-usual model where brands and retailers will shop around to different factories and say ‘who will make this shirt for two dollars’?" -- Liana Foxvog

“Workers are getting very angry,” Anannya Bhattacharjee of the New Delhi-based Asia Floor Wage Alliance, told IPS. “There is a lot of explosiveness. They do not want to tolerate the current situation of continuing poverty anymore.”

Statutory minimum wages determined by national governments and industries usually fall short of workers’ demands. In the case of Cambodia, the government first offered to raise monthly pay from 80 to 95 dollars, then to 100. Striking workers, however, insisted that the minimum level should be 160 dollars.

Asia Floor Wage, which has been campaigning for higher minimum wages across garment-producing countries in Asia, believes that if statutory minimum wages are not high enough, multinational companies need to be involved.

“Garment workers are producing for the whole global industry, so multinationals should pay the difference between statutory minimum wage and living wage,” Bhattacharjee said.

“This is not an unfair demand, but brands are still not agreeing to provide the money for it,” she said.

In fairness, major clothing brands did not stay silent after the crackdown in Cambodia.

The majority of Cambodia’s exports to the European Union (EU), over 89 percent, are textiles such as garments and shoes. Credit: Michelle Tolson/IPS

Companies including American Eagle Outfitters, Gap Inc. and Levi Strauss & Co. have sent an open letter to Cambodia’s government expressing their concerns over the recent violence. They also called for the government, manufacturers and trade unions to develop a regularly-scheduled wage review mechanism.

In a statement sent to IPS, Levi Strauss & Co. said it is “firmly committed to sourcing in Cambodia” and encourages peaceful resolution to end political unrest. Meanwhile, a spokesperson from Gap Inc. said the company strongly opposes any form of violence, calling for negotiations among stakeholders to peacefully resolve the dispute.

According to the Washington-based International Labour Rights Forum, while it is commendable that brands are willing to speak up, further steps must be taken.

“Brands and retailers need to agree to voluntarily pay higher prices for apparel products made in Cambodia and require the factories to therefore pay higher wages,” Liana Foxvog, communications director of the Forum, told IPS.

She said that over the past two decades, multinationals have spread their supply chains around the world, driving a “race to the bottom” among developing countries.

“We have seen low wages, repression of freedom of association as well as poor working conditions,” Foxvog said.

“We need a system that is different from the current business-as-usual model where brands and retailers will shop around to different factories and say who will make this shirt for two dollars. If a factory won’t, they can find a factory that will.

“As a result we still have a sweatshop economy in 2014,” she said.

The solution to the problem, she said, is to have all brands and retailers develop long-term relationships with suppliers so they have more control in the working conditions offshore.

“We need workers to once and for all have a fair living wage and will no longer have to face hunger and mass fainting,” she said. “We know companies can pay more.”

No end in sight

One month after the killings of strikers, there is still no end in sight for the crisis.

Human Rights Watch released an urgent statement on February 3, demanding the Cambodian government to ensure that garment factories stop intimidating and threatening workers seeking to form unions and assert their labour rights.

Last week, the U.N. International Labour Organisation (ILO) said it was “deeply disturbed” by the continuing violence in Cambodia. The agency also reiterated its earlier call for the government to launch an independent inquiry into the repression of strikers.

Cambodia’s economy is dependent on the garment industry, which employs half a million workers and accounts for almost all of the nation’s exports.

According to the ILO, the country just topped five billion dollars worth of garment exports last year for the first time.

The garment industry is also very important because its workers, most of whom are women, not only support themselves but also send remittances to their families.

Jill Tucker, manager of ILO’s Better Factories Cambodia, a Phnom Penh-based project that monitors the garment industry in the country, said working conditions have been declining since 2010, even though not every factory is a sweatshop.

As developing countries try to be competitive, wages have been set “artificially low” for a long time, unable to keep up with increasing consumer prices, Tucker told IPS.

And unlike other garment-producing countries where factories are not concentrated in big cities, Cambodia only has one main manufacturing hub: its capital city. Workers as a result have to pay very high living costs to stay near where they work.

“If Cambodian workers were satisfied with their job and felt that the pay and the working conditions were adequate, probably we would not see quite so much unrest,” she said.

“The current system of consumers owning cheap, disposable clothes in very high volume cannot sustain itself economically or environmentally. We have maybe 10 years left of cheap clothing.”

Consumer guilt

Professor Benjamin Powell, director of the Free Market Institute at Texas Tech University, told IPS that consumers should not feel guilty when they buy low-cost products made in developing countries.

The term “sweatshop”, he argued, has negative connotations even though it is sometimes the best available opportunity to workers, which can lead to economic development and, at the end, better wages and working conditions.

While Cambodia successfully slashed the national poverty ratio from 50 percent in 2007 to 20 percent today, it is still listed by the World Bank as a “low-income” economy.

The country of 7.1 million people has a per capita income rate of 880 dollars. That compares to Hong Kong’s 36,560 dollars, according to World Bank data.

Asia Floor Wage’s Bhattacharjee is hopeful that developing countries such as Bangladesh and Cambodia would soon progress to the next economic level. But for that to happen, the issue of low wages has to be dealt with.

Garment-producing countries need to take wage completely out of the competition and start competing instead on logistics or raw material supplies, she said.

As broader protests continue to sweep Phnom Penh streets, the strikes of garment workers have become more politically charged.

But Bhattacharjee said she never doubted the real motive behind what the workers are fighting for.

She said strikers may have multiple reasons for protesting, including political demands for a democratic society and for fundamental human rights, but there is “a very clear economic demand here.”

“They want a higher wage,” she said. “That’s how it all began.”

Many Cambodians see dubious hope across the Poipet border crossing to Thailand. Credit: Michelle Tolson/IPS.

By Michelle Tolson
PHNOM PENH, Jan 24 2014 (IPS)

Many Cambodian women arrive in South Korea or China for marriage, only to find themselves being chosen as mistresses, say labour rights activists. While young Cambodian men, who travel to Thailand to work on fishing boats, often fall prey to drug abuse.

Loss of land, debt, poor pay and high prices of petrol and electricity are pushing youths from poverty-stricken Cambodia to foreign lands – sometimes with disastrous consequences.

Miserable working conditions in the garment sector have only worsened the labour trafficking scenario.Despite these problems, repatriated workers often leave Cambodia again.

Tola Moeun, head of the Community Legal Education Centre (CLEC), said rural farmers comprise 80 percent of Cambodia’s population, but they are increasingly in debt due to high-interest loans. As a result, youth leave home in search of work.

He also cited the example of Cambodia’s garment industry, saying the prospect of being a garment worker is so terrible that often women will do anything to escape this fate.

“Women garment workers often choose to go to South Korea to escape the situation,” Tola told IPS.

CLEC has received several calls from families whose daughters were experiencing troubled “marriages” to Chinese and South Korean men that turned out to be sham marriages.

Tola said families accept money from marriage brokers without understanding the situation. The truth emerges when the women arrive in South Korea, only to be lined up in a room for the “husband” to choose from.

“I went to South Korea in 2011. It was explained to me that South Korean wives are not worried about sex workers because the husband takes a mistress. So he chooses a Cambodian girl to ‘marry’,” he said.

“In China, there is a shortage of women in the countryside. The man wants a wife to work for him without pay, so she becomes not only a labour slave but also a sex slave,” Tola said.

He concedes, however, that all international marriages are not shams.

A 24-year-old woman in Phnom Penh told IPS she knew of many successful relationships through marriage brokers. But she contacted IPS when a 30-year-old woman was being aggressively pursued by a marriage broker after she changed her mind about an offer. The broker backed off when CLEC was mentioned.

“A lot of Cambodian girls marry South Korean men. These are real relationships. Really poor people do this. Sometimes the girls come back and are able to build a house for the family and improve their lives.”

Young Cambodian men travel to Thailand to work in the construction sector, on fishing boats or in fish processing factories. This takes place either formally, using a broker for visas, or illegally.

“In case of illegal offers, the recruiter will call and say, ‘Do you want a job?’ The person will then cross the border at night, not using checkpoints, hiding in the back of a truck, lying head to toe with other people and covered with supplies that are being transported,” said Tola.

Brahm Press of the Raks Thai Foundation, an organisation that assists migrant workers, said most problems occur due to work contracts at the Cambodian end.

“As of July 2013, around 8,000 Cambodians were registered in Bangkok – 5,000 men and the rest women – and they were probably all in construction. I have heard that after deductions for recruitment agencies and housing, they come away with less than the 300 baht [10 dollars] a day minimum wage,” Press told IPS.

He said problems usually occur due to misunderstandings about work arrangements and fees or when passports are withheld to ensure that workers pay their recruitment debt.

Recently 13 young Cambodians – 11 men and two women aged between 15 and 23 – entered Thailand with the help of brokers to whom they paid 500 dollars each, said Si Ngoun, the father of one of the youths.

“They were promised a good job with a good salary of 300 baht per day.”

For two months they worked at a rubber band factory, a metal smith factory and, lastly, in the construction sector, which is where their troubles began.

“We were paid very little, about 120 baht [four dollars] per day. We didn’t want to work any more because we were too hungry,” 20-year-old Si Pesith, one of the workers, told IPS.

Tola said the workers asked for food and protested but the employer had them jailed as illegal workers. Usually detention lasts six to nine months, but Cambodian Ambassador You Ay intervened and they were sent home within a week.

IPS spoke with Pesith after he was repatriated. “If we compare work in Thailand with that in Cambodia, it is not much different,” he said.

Thai fishing boats have been flagged by the U.S. State Department Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Report as potential labour trafficking scams for Cambodian migrants.

Press said conditions on fishing boats are notoriously difficult to monitor. Work there has been linked to drug use as labourers try to get through work shifts that can last up to 20 hours.

“When migrants, first Burmese and then Cambodians, were prominently replacing Thais on the boats, amphetamines were becoming the rage,” he said.

“First there was Ya-Ma (horse drug), which was milder than the current Ya-Ba, but no less addictive. During the last decade there were anecdotal reports, first of migrants on fishing boats voluntarily taking Ya-Ma, then stories of captains putting Ya-Ba in the drinking water.” Press, however, said such stories had become less frequent.

Eliot Albers, executive director of the International Network of People who Use Drugs (INPUD), said criminalisation of drug use makes it harder to assist users, especially migrants.

“Poverty and labour abuse worsen people’s relationship with drugs. They suffer from labour abuse and drugs help them get through the day,” Albers told IPS.

Migrant workers lack union representation, making them especially vulnerable to abuse. If they are formal workers, the process of migration is expensive (up to 700 dollars each), requiring a recruiter and debt. If they are informal, it is cheaper. But they risk detention and deportation by Thai police if they complain about the working conditions.

Despite these problems, repatriated workers often leave Cambodia again.

Police raiding Canadia Industrial Park in Phnom Penh on Jan. 3, 2014. Credit: Courtesy LICADHO

By Michelle Tolson
PHNOM PENH, Jan 9 2014 (IPS)

“Cambodian garment workers have two handcuffs and one weapon [against them]. One handcuff is a short-term contract [10 hours a day, six days a week]. Even if they get sick, if they get pregnant they feel they have to get an abortion so they don’t lose their jobs.

“The second handcuff is the low wage,” Tola Moeun, head of the Community Legal Education Centre (CLEC), which advocates for workers rights, told IPS from the organisation’s headquarters on the outskirts of Phnom Penh. “The weapon used against them is violence, both mental and physical.”

About 90 percent of garment workers are young women, mostly in their teens and twenties.

His words, which came just days before mass protests broke out in the Cambodian capital, proved prophetic as garment workers took to the streets Dec. 24 until their demonstrations were brutally quashed by Prime Minister Hun Sen’s private military the first weekend in January, resulting in five fatalities and over 30 serious injuries.

In the days leading up to the protest, the Labour Ministry had approved an increase in the minimum wage for garment workers, from 80 to 95 dollars a month. But trade unions and workers protested, saying it was not enough to live on, and demanded a monthly minimum wage of 160 dollars.

Chrek Sophea, interim coordinator of the Workers’ Information Centre (WIC), which helps factory workers organise, told IPS workers cannot survive on the government’s proposed wage, and that it is in violation of Cambodia’s labour laws.

According to a 1997 law, “The minimum wage must ensure every worker of a decent standard of living compatible with human dignity.”

Tola agreed. “The minimum is for eight hours, so most work 10 hours to get a higher income to have just enough to sleep in a shared room. Most workers are in debt, borrowing about 50 dollars each month, and can only pay 10 dollars interest on the loan each month.” Workers struggle to send money home to their families in the countryside.

The Messenger Band (MB), made up of six former garment workers who write songs in the traditional Cambodian folk style, also supported the protest. Sothary Kun, a singer known as “Ty Ty”, told IPS “problems of debt and migration and the difficulty of workers to earn money and repay debt for their families reach into the hearts of audiences very quickly because they have experienced it all themselves.”

Launched a decade ago, MB works with WIC as part of the United Sisterhood Alliance, a collaborative of grassroots groups serving farmers, factory workers and sex workers.

“MB and WIC discussed the strategy of supporting peaceful protests by garment workers demanding a minimum wage of 160 dollars a month, so it is very important for us to be there together with the workers,” Kun said.

MB’s songs are the oral histories of the working poor. “We sang a number of songs to encourage and keep workers together while they were protesting in front of the Labour Ministry. We also distributed lyrics of songs related to workers, so that they could sing along,” Kun explained.

The peaceful events took a dark turn last Thursday. Chrek said “I witnessed the workers’ peaceful strike at around 9:30AM on Jan. 2, when my colleagues and I travelled around the factory compounds located on the outskirts, including the place where the clash happened.

“I stopped by and saw them gathering in front of the Canadia Special Economic Zone near the local market. Workers who joined the strike were singing and dancing and chanting their message.”

The opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP), protesting the results of the July elections, which they say were rigged, joined the garment worker protest with chants of “Hun Sen Must Go”, and as the crowds swelled to tens of thousands, international media attention was drawn.

The military stepped in the night of Jan. 2, brutally beating and arresting labour leaders and protesting monks. Pictures of the bloodied trade unionists were widely shared on social media, which seems to be the point when the protests veered out of control.

By the early hours of Friday Jan. 3, young men allegedly armed with Molotov cocktails and machetes had replaced the women protesters. Hun Sen’s private military stormed the scene with live ammunition, shooting over 30 people, killing five and seriously injuring the rest.

Srun Srorn with the CamASEAN youth group told IPS “It is possible people in the crowds were hired or ordered to create violence, and those people were not shot, or just created violence and then escaped.”

The ruling Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) calls the opposition “extremist”. But activists speculate that agitators, termed Hun Sen’s ‘Third Hand’, may have caused the violence.

Thida Khus, director of SILAKA, which supports women’s organising, told IPS “Some of our men noticed this strategy in the first [CNRP] demonstration last September. These agitators have been used in all the previous events, including the [Jan. 4] crackdown at Democracy Park, trying to justify the shooting at unarmed protesters.”

CNRP lawmaker-elect Mu Sochua mentioned Hun Sen’s Third Hand on her Facebook page. She told IPS “Throughout the three-month protest, CNRP has appealed for non-violence. CNRP, including its top leadership, went through non-violence training and took to Democracy Square where thousands of people came regularly to express their opinions. Our rallies have never been violent.”

By Monday Jan. 6, it was discovered that the five young men killed were in fact garment workers and another 35 in the hospitals were also factory workers.

During the crackdown, a number of protesters were also arrested, including labour leaders. The Cambodian League for the Promotion and Defence of Human Rights (LICADHO) reports that 23 detainees are being held in an unknown location.

The government has sinced banned public gatherings of 10 or more people.

WIC, which is careful to not take political sides, became concerned when the garment protesters joined with the CNRP. As a non-partisan women’s organiser, Chrek believes both sides need to focus on working together, not blaming each other.

“It creates an environment of instability, fear, tension and anger. Our country has been through a lot of painful experiences resulting from violent responses.

“The current political chaos showed that political parties, both ruling and opposition, do not have a real commitment to solving problems, and often innocent and ordinary citizens and the powerless are affected. I call on all parties, including union leaders, the opposition party and the ruling party to act together in a mature manner addressing the current situation by setting problems aside.”

A ferry boat on the Sesan River. Credit: Michelle Tolson/IPS.

By Michelle Tolson
RATANAKIRI PROVINCE, Cambodia, Dec 17 2013 (IPS)

“I prefer the dam to the fish,” says middle-aged farmer Ton Noun, when asked his opinion on a proposed 400 megawatt dam on Sesan river near his home in northeastern Cambodia. Then he chuckles and asks, “What fish?”

That’s because there are few fish in the brown, murky waters of the river, and he can buy them cheap from bordering Vietnam. On the other hand, electricity – which the dam promises – is costly.

“Electricity is expensive because the village doesn’t have it,” Ton tells IPS.

Cambodia, among the least developed countries in Asia, lacks an electrical grid. Only 26 percent of the population has access to government-supplied electricity. The rest use private operators, generators, or have no electricity at all. Private operators charge consumers as much as 75 cents per kilowatt per hour.“Since the Vietnam dam was built, there have been less and less fish."

Ton pays 15 dollars per month for electricity, using a battery and a generator – costly by the standards of a country where 49 percent of the 15 million population lives on two dollars a day or less.

Villagers like him, therefore, think the hydropower project will end their power woes.

But what Ton doesn’t know is that once the dam comes, the fish could become even more scarce, depriving Cambodians like him of their staple food and one of the most important sources of protein, say several NGOs.

“No one consults with the local community. They just say, ‘We are going to bring electricity to you’,” Ame Trandem of the International Rivers NGO tells IPS.

The government believes rural electrification is important “to reduce poverty, improve the standard of living and foster economic development,” as stated in a report earlier this year titled Rural Electrification Policies in Cambodia.

Its two-step target is: “(1) All the villages in the Kingdom of Cambodia have access to electricity of any type by the year 2020; and (2) At least 70 percent of all households have access to grid-quality electricity by the year 2030.”

The dam near Ton’s home is to be built at the junction of the Sesan and Srepok rivers.  The two rivers converge about 25 km upstream from Stung Treng city and are joined by the Sesong river before merging with the Mekong, in what is called the 3S River Basin.

Hydroelectric dams have been suggested as a resource for the electricity-hungry nation, and the declining fish catch has only helped support the cause of dams.

But fisheries expert Ian Baird finds this argument shortsighted. “Fish can rebound with management, but not if there are structures. After the Khmer Rouge banned commercial fishing in 1976, in Laos they reported record catches that season.”

During the famine in the 1970s, Cambodians did not have access to their staple protein – fish – due to government policies that forbade commercial fishing. This policy was also seen as contributing to the starvation and death of about two million people.

It serves as an example for how dependent the country is on fish as a source of protein. With malnutrition rates in children in Laos and Cambodia as high as 40 percent, Baird thinks putting pressure on the limited resources is a dangerous option.

Meach Mean, coordinator of the 3S Rivers Protection Network, says most tribal people living in the watershed don’t have access to information. The indigenous Tampuan people have historically not had a written language.

A Laos-Tampuan himself, he experienced the consequences of dams after Vietnam built a hydropower dam upstream on Sesan at Yali Falls in 1996. Officials released water without notifying the communities downstream, causing numerous deaths and crop and livestock loss.

“Since the Vietnam dam was built, there have been less and less fish. Now there are almost none because the level of the river goes up and down so much,” says a Lao man in his 30s from Kalan village. “You can almost walk across the river in the dry season.”

Speaking with IPS from his small, wooden home, with an unused fish net hanging from the ceiling, he says, “We don’t want the dam because it causes floods, which kill crops and animals. We are afraid of the water.”

The three other Lao men with him agree, though they all decline to give their name for fear of repercussions from the government.

“We live in a remote area and people don’t know about us. Only 30 percent of the people here know about the dam. I hear about it from people further down the river,” he says.

They doubt that the project will bring cheap power.

Laos too is planning to build the Don Sahong dam on the Mekong river, just two kilometres from Cambodia’s border. The Mekong flows through a series of channels that become waterfalls before reaching Cambodia.

While the Lao government seeks to harness energy from just one channel and sell it to either Cambodia or Thailand, the dam will rest on one of the only year-round transit points for fish migration that could jeopardise the food security of Lower Mekong.

Despite this, a Lao tourism operator on an island adjacent to the dam site cheerfully tells IPS, “Most people want the dam.”

Baird says the government could jail villagers who speak against it.

After a recent site visit to speak with engineers of the Lao project, Cambodian officials came away uneasy about the environmental impact and insisted the project be halted, according to Trandem.

“The idea behind the Sesan dam was that Cambodia could benefit from its own dams,” says Trandem.

Vietnam was to invest in the venture as a kind of payback for the suffering inflicted on them earlier, and buy electricity from Cambodia. But after an outcry from Cambodians, who thought Vietnam would benefit yet again at their expense, Prime Minister Hun Sen declared that all the power generated would go to Cambodia.

“The problem is Cambodia has no way of using that electricity as it has no grid to transport it to the cities,” says Trandem.

Laos has the advantage of having a basic electrical grid in place, as does Vietnam, in contrast with Cambodia.

Trandem says, “The World Bank and Asian Development Bank proposed that the countries share electricity. But the trouble is there is no master plan for it – which is not good for countries that are dependent on rivers for everything.”

Something as simple as skateboarding is lifting the lives of many Cambodian youth. Credit: Simba Shani Kamaria Russeau/IPS.

By Simba Shani Kamaria Russeau
PHNOM PENH, Nov 30 2013 (IPS)

An array of colourful quarter pipes, bank ramps and a fun box come to life as a clutch of Cambodian youngsters do balancing tricks, kick-flips and kick turns. The all-girl session at a skating facility near the Russian Market here is facilitated by 20-year-old Kov Chansangva, popularly known as Tin.

“I’ve been doing it every day for a year. I feel happy when I get on the skateboard. It releases stress. My life has become better. I feel more responsible and have more confidence to overcome life’s obstacles,” Tin tells IPS.

Skateboarding is new in this Asian country, but it is changing lives.“One advantage that skateboarding has in a place like Cambodia is that, as a new sport, it lets girls participate more easily."

Cambodia, with its conflict-ridden past, has hundreds of thousands of children who work on the streets to fend for themselves or supplement the family income. There are an estimated 10,000 working children in Phnom Penh alone and half of them are girls.

Many youngsters in the 5-17 age group work in garbage dumps, brick factories and fish processing units. They are often at risk of being drawn into gambling and drug abuse.

In this bleak scenario, skateboarding has come as a refreshing new way of life.

Not only is it bridging the gender gap – according to the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) 2013 Gender Gap Index, Cambodia is the lowest-ranked country in the East Asia and Pacific region – it is helping put street children back in school.

“In the past, girls didn’t get involved in sports because they thought they couldn’t do what the boys could. Now as they start to see more and more women skaters, they realise they can do better than the boys,” adds Tin.

Every week, nearly 200 students come to the skateboarding facility the capital, run by a non-profit organisation called Skateistan Cambodia.

“One advantage that skateboarding has in a place like Cambodia is that, as a new sport, it lets girls participate more easily,” Alix Buck, development manager for Skateistan Cambodia, tells IPS.

The organisation uses skateboarding as a tool for empowering youngsters in the 5-18 age group. Over 50 percent of its skaters are children who work on the streets and nearly 40 percent of them are girls.

“Gender-based stereotypes are non-existent in skateboarding because the sport is new here. On the other hand, more commercialised sports like football are difficult because these have been defined as male-dominated,” Buck says.

What’s more, skateboarding is encouraging children to resume studies.

Skateistan Cambodia has several partner organisations like the Cambodian Women’s Development Agency, Damnok Toek, Friends International, Pour un Sourire D’Enfant (PSE), Tiny Toones and Transitions Global.

These provide education, counseling, shelter and health services to youth groups, including those from low-income families and those at risk of exploitation or trafficking.

So while the children are first attracted to skateboarding, gradually these organisations help them access education and healthcare.

“I want to go back to school to study and become a lawyer so I can improve my family’s life,” says Tin.

Over half the country’s 15 million people are under the age of 25. With the average income being less than a dollar a day, many people migrate from rural to urban areas. According to the National Institute of Statistics, nearly a quarter of the population consists of internal seasonal migrants, of which nearly three quarters – around 2.5 million – are under the age of 30.

“Substance abuse and gambling is a big problem for the youth,” Rath Chansopheakna, a 24-year-old skateboard and break dance instructor, tells IPS.

“Before I started studying at PSE, there was nothing to do. Most kids in Cambodia leave school and land in the streets,” he says.

PSE, a French non-profit organisation, is dedicated to providing food, healthcare, education and vocational training to children who work on the streets of cities like Phnom Penh, Siem Reap and Sihanoukville.

“At PSE, there are kids from many different social backgrounds. But skateboarding helps break down class barriers, with poorer kids learning not to fear the well-off ones,” Chansopheakna says.

Sometimes skateboarding is combined with art.

For instance, Skateistan offers an hour of skating classes and an hour of art classes. It uses art to level the playing field as art is accessible to all children, regardless of education. Their classes include photography, film production, sculpture and painting.

“When I first started teaching kids how to skateboard, I didn’t know it would become an amazing tool to help and motivate kids in Cambodia,” Benjamin Pecqueur, Skateistan country and operations manager, tells IPS.

“We provide opportunities for kids to go to school through skateboarding. Our art-based classes give at-risk youth the opportunity to express their opinions on issues concerning them,” Pecqueur says.

He narrates an interesting story. He was working for PSE when his sister sent his old skateboard from France to Phnom Penh. Excited, he raced out with it. In 10 minutes, 20 students were around him, eager to try the new thing. That’s when the director of PSE asked Pecqueur to initiate skateboarding activity for children.

Pecqueur later joined Skateistan, which helped set up the skating facility in Phnom Penh, the only one of its kind in Cambodia. Now PSE also sends kids there to learn skateboarding.

“Youth are essential to Cambodia’s development and, given the right tools, they can play a role in shaping its future,” he says.

Eb Mon welcomes CamASEAN volunteers who hand out food, water and educational materials to the village children he teaches in a one-room school in the Cambodian village of Chouk. Credit Michelle Tolson/IPS

By Michelle Tolson
KOH KONG PROVINCE, Cambodia , Oct 5 2013 (IPS)

The quiet Cambodian village of Chouk, set in the beautiful forests of the Cardamom Mountains near the Thai border, seems peaceful. But things are difficult in this largely empty village of simple wooden houses, populated mainly by children and the elderly.

The 270 families in Chouk, which means Lotus, own houses but not enough land for subsistence farming, which was their decades-long occupation here in Koh Kong province in southwest Cambodia.

The problem is that they lost their fields to a 20,000-hectare land concession for a sugarcane plantation in 2006, to business tycoon and Senator Ly Yong Phat

The families used to grow rice, vegetables and watermelons on plots averaging 2.5 to 5.0 hectares, but were left just 0.5 hectare each after the company destroyed their crops and took over the land.

Families in the village were offered just 50 dollars per hectare, though rights groups say the market rate was 500-1,000 dollars per hectare.

During the Khmer Rouge years (1975-1979), land titles were abolished, leaving little evidence of land ownership. This paved the way for the current wave of land grabs.

Now heavily in debt to about three microfinance organisations each, the parents travel to nearby Thailand to work as agricultural day labourers every week, or they stay there for months, Noun Sidara of CamASEAN, a volunteer-led youth group from Phnom Penh helping them find a solution, told IPS.

And in some cases, the parents don’t come back.

One 72-year-old grandmother in the village has been caring for her three grandchildren since the parents left and “never returned,” Srun Srorn, a founding member of CamASEAN, told IPS. The grandmother was hired by the sugarcane plantation but only earned 6000 riels (1.5 dollars) working all day.

Labour rates are 100 riel (2 cents) to harvest 20 canes of sugar. “A strong person can earn 2.50 dollars a day, but others make as little as one dollar,” Srun added. In 2010, the sugarcane plantation basically stopped hiring people from this village, complaining that they “were always demonstrating against the plantation”; it now hires from other towns instead.

A sugarcane factory built to process the harvest polluted the local river with industrial runoff, and the villagers’ cows became sick. Some of the families, having no alternative water source, got diarrhea. Their only option was to collect rainwater in containers or, if they could afford it, buy water from a truck. They used to fish from the river but say the pollution killed off the fish.

The villagers survive mainly on rice. Because of the remote location, there is little food to buy in the village market as the nearest town is a four-hour walk away, or an hour-and-a-half drive by car.

For protein, they “sometimes eat eggs or fish sauce” made from fish caught upstream of the factory’s pollution, Srun said. Eggs, costing 400-500 riel (8 to 10 cents) each in Phnom Penh, are double here at 800 riel (16 cents).

They also lack vegetables in their diet, said Noun, who is researching alternative farming methods. He hopes to help them find ways to maximise the capacity of their small plots.

Srun, who has 13 siblings, grew up in the 1980s during the famine in Cambodia. “I experienced a lot of hunger and I wished to change that. So I decided to work more on human rights.”

The World Food Programme (WFP) found that 40 percent of Cambodia’s children are chronically malnourished, despite recent economic gains.

Children of the rural poor, either landless or without enough to subsist on (0.5 hectare or less), are vulnerable to malnutrition, making it harder for them to succeed in school, and putting them at risk of dropping out.

The United Nations Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) reports that poverty causes hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition, which in turn affect cognitive and physical development, limiting productivity as “inter-related phenomena”.

The impact on education is illustrated in the village of Chouk. The nearest public school is five kilometres away and the children have dropped out since their families lost their land. Their parents can’t afford to contribute to their education any more. Public school teachers earn as little as 40-50 dollars a month and rely on gifts from families.

Srun traveled to the village a year ago and met 77-year-old Eb Mon, who has been teaching the children, coping with about 67 students in a small one-room building. The elderly villager volunteered under the ministry of education in the 1980s for a small stipend, so he knows about hard times.

He asked the ministry to help by building a school, providing him with a table and chair, hiring more teachers, and paying him a small salary. But the ministry never replied.

CamASEAN decided to help him, bringing donated educational materials, clothing, rice noodles and bread – their most recent trip being their fifth. According to the indomitable Eb Mon, who lost his right leg to a land mine and wears a prosthetic, they have been the only group to come regularly.

They have also used the growing popularity of social media in Cambodia to connect the remote village with donors. A French NGO, SIPAR, is building a school for the children – when IPS visited in early September the cement foundations were being laid.

SIPAR also provides Eb Mon and his wife a stipend of 30 dollars a month. And a private Malaysian individual built a water pump for the village in June, the first and only for the nearly 300 families.

“Yet it is not enough,” said a volunteer, Ny Vichet.

Food insecurity remains a problem. Villagers forage in the nearby forest but face risks. Eb Mon’s daughter died from eating poisonous mushrooms several months ago and he and his wife now care for their three grandchildren. The children’s father still forages for food or works in the sugar cane fields. Foraging is a common coping strategy for food-insecure families, according to the FAO.

Eb Mon said he has taught students in grades 3-5 how to read and write by having them study together. Most of the children just come to see him instead of going to the public school because they learn more, he said.

At the Romdeng restaurant. Credit: Simba Shani Kamaria Russeau/IPS

By Simba Shani Kamaria Russeau
PHNOM PENH, Aug 16 2013 (IPS)

Following the death of his parents when he was just four, Samlain Chey, now 22, found himself living on the streets along the river near the Royal Palace in Phnom Penh. Until he met a social worker from Mith Samlanh.

Mith Samlanh, which means ‘friends’, is a local organisation that facilitates reintegration of youth into their family, the public school system, the workplace and their culture. And it has found innovative ways of doing so.

It picks up homeless people and trains them as chefs at its training restaurants Romdeng and Friends. Besides what the restaurants do for the homeless, they do something for food – both have garnered local and international recognition for contemporary and traditional Khmer cuisine.

Samlain was 15 when the restaurants found him. They gave him a home and a future. “I was given housing while I learnt traditional Khmer cooking, and about the hospitality and service industry,” he told IPS. “After a month of learning I wanted to be a head chef and open my own restaurant.”

Upon completion of his three-year training, Samlain was offered a teaching position. As a former street youth, he feels he now has the opportunity to help others who are like him.

“For young people, it’s hard living on the streets because we don’t eat enough, there’s no security, we start using drugs and no one seems to care about our future.

“I’m happy working here because I’m also able to share my story, which gives the students the confidence they need to not give up.”

In Cambodia, 44.3 percent of the population of 15 million is under 18 years of age. According to official statistics, 35 percent of the population lives below the poverty line – which in Cambodia is 45 cents per person per day.

According to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), between 10,000-20,000 children work on the streets of Phnomh Penh.

Seventeen-year old Bopha is one of them. She lived on the streets until she was 14. Bopha says it was difficult for her parents to support a family of eight selling cakes on the roadside in Phnom Penh.

“My life was very difficult because there were times when we couldn’t make enough money for food and I was unable to attend school,” Bopha told IPS.

“Things changed when a social worker from Mith Samlanh started visiting us on the streets to offer food. They asked me if I would be interested in gaining computer skills and learning traditional cooking. At first, I felt hesitant because I was afraid that if I left, I wouldn’t be able to help my family earn a living by selling cakes.” Later, she took the offer.

Finding work is a struggle. The economy has been unable to absorb the nearly 400,000 new labour market entrants per year.

According to the Ministry of Labour, some 200,000 to 300,000 youth migrate out of the country annually in search of low-skilled jobs due to lack of proper training or education – and lack of opportunities.

“Street children have lost their right to education,” Friends restaurant communication officer Menghourng Ngo told IPS. “For children aged 3-14 we provide informal education so that they integrate easily into the public school system. Youth aged 15-24 are more interested in employment, so we offer them vocational training at our centre.

“Our training focuses on developing confidence, self-respect, proper hygiene and hospitality skills. Upon completion, we assist in finding them jobs. Our nationality is Khmer so the programme also instils a sense of pride in the Khmer culture.”

The vast numbers of the young, and their vast problems, have caught political attention.

Approximately 50 percent of eligible voters are under 25, and calls to increase youth employment did well for the Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) in the elections last month.

Many believe that the 22-seat loss for Prime Minister Hun Sen in the elections sent a message to the ruling party that resentment among youth could deepen if their quality of life fails to improve.

“It’s my dream to see my family have a comfortable way of life. I would like to own a house and open my own business one day, sharing Khmer cuisine with the international community,” says Bopha.

“Since coming to Mith Samlanh, I feel more excited about my future. It’s very important that I was able to access their vocational trainings because now I will have the skills to make my dream a reality.”

Cambodia National Rescue Party supporters walk in support of opposition leader Sam Rainsy [left, holding flag] in Angkor Wa. Credit: Erika Pineros/IPS.

By Michelle Tolson
PHNOM PENH, Jul 27 2013 (IPS)

As Cambodia readies for general elections Sunday Jul. 28, the youth, who make up 36 percent of the country have signaled they are eager for ‘change.’

‘Change’ is their main slogan as they campaign for the opposition party on the streets of the capital every day. They are hoping to make a dent in the dominance of the ruling Cambodian People’s Party (CPP), which currently holds 90 out of 123 seats in parliament. The CPP government has been led by Premier Hun Sen for 28 years.

“Supporters for the [opposition] Cambodian National Rescue Party (CNRP) totally outnumber the Cambodian People’s Party,” 23-year-old activist Sek Sokunroth told IPS in the capital Phnom Penh.

“They are more enthusiastic, louder and they are paying for their own gas and food. I saw a guy with CPP campaign stickers on his bike. I said something to my friend about it, like ‘there goes the CPP,’ and he heard me. He said ‘No, my friend, they are paying me five dollars a day to do this but I am not with them.’”

Half the country lives on two dollars a day, making five dollars a tidy sum of money to ‘work’ the campaign trail.

Srun Srorn, civil society election observer for the CAM ASEAN Youth Advocacy group, said times have been hard for youth, particularly for those who migrate from the countryside to the cities to work for monthly wages as low as 60 dollars. From this income many try to send remittances to parents who have lost out due to land grabs from dubious foreign investment.

The growing wave of evictions has left an estimated 20 percent of Cambodians landless. It is this disenfranchised group that is keen on change.

The rising discontent got an unexpected boost when opposition leader Sam Rainsy returned to the country Jul. 19. He was greeted in Phnom Penh by about 100,000 supporters and a royal pardon from the King. Self-exiled in France since 2009 to avoid charges levelled by the ruling party, Rainsy told supporters the country was at a “turning point” and that he was ready to risk his life to bring change.

“This is the biggest campaign that I have ever seen in my life. Rainsy’s presence has made a big difference. The town was packed,” said Sokunroth. “My parents called me three or four times a day asking me to quit, but I told them I can’t.”

Young CNRP supporters did not experience the Khmer Rouge years 1975 to 1979, but they saw the impact it had on their parents. “People that lived during that time have bad dreams and nightmares every night,” said Sokunroth.

Bill Herod, a retired NGO worker, said most Cambodians outside the capital are content with the way things are because they remember how bad it can get. “Things may change in time, but at this point the ‘average’ Cambodian is virtually basking in the best quality of life in the whole history of the Khmer people and is unlikely to want to rock the boat.”

The young and excitable population have faced unrest already as they struggle for a free and fair election. CNRP supporters were attacked with rocks in a spate of incidents this week, said Tola Moeun, head of the labour programme at the Community Legal Education Centre. “From what we see, the CPP group is trying to provoke violence from the youth, as they know they are very sensitive.”

“Compared to the last elections, this year is more exciting with many more supporters  prepared to stand up and say the things they want to say,” said Srun. He looks to the government, NGOs and international bodies to collaborate to reduce unrest.

The secretary general of the CNRP in North America, Pretty Ma, said they are working for a contingency plan in case of strife.

“We do not think that violence is the way to solve problems. We plan to appeal to the government [of Cambodia]. It is their responsibility to address that.” North American party representatives are also looking for support from U.S. congressional representatives.

Cambodians abroad like Pretty Ma, many of who migrated in the Khmer Rouge years, have been instrumental in garnering some international support for their homeland. Sam Rainsy grew up in France after fleeing Cambodia’s war with his family as a child.

Researcher Gea Wijers of the Netherlands has studied Khmer living abroad looking to return to help build their homeland.  She told IPS they struggle to reconcile their experiences of democracies with those of Khmer living in the homeland who have yet to know it.

The Failed State Index for 2012 declared the country at ‘warning’ level, ranked at 41 out of 178 countries, just five spaces below Congo (Republic) at 36. Cambodia earned particularly poor marks in the “rise of factionalised elite” and “legitimacy of the state”.

With these structural flaws, the country faces many obstacles that might be greater than its current youthful desire to transform the system. How Rainsy guides his supporters through the election outcome will be watched keenly.

With the Cambodian national assembly elections fast approaching on Jul. 28, local and international organisations are expressing concerns about the fairness and transparency of the electoral system.

According to an audit of the Cambodian voter registry conducted by the National Democratic Institute (NDI), a U.S. government-funded entity, almost 11 percent of eligible citizens wrongly believe themselves to be registered to vote.“Cambodia should rise above a mechanical application of democracy ." -- U.N. Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Cambodia Surya P. Subedi

“These citizens will show up to the polling stations on election day and not be able to vote,” Peter Manikas, NDI’s regional director for Asia, told IPS. “Further, more than 10 percent of the names listed on the voters’ list are invalid, of unknown people, presenting an opportunity for fraud on election day.”

The results of the audit haven’t been accepted by the Cambodian National Election Committee (NEC), which maintains that the number of names on the voter registry represents 101.7 percent of the eligible population, even more than the actual number of eligible citizens, in stark contrast with NDI’s findings that only show an 82.9 percent registration rate.

The extra names in the NEC registry data “could be duplicates or could be those of unknown/non-existent people,” Manikas told IPS.

Irregularities in the voter registry are also cited in a report compiled by the Phnom Penh-based Committee for Free and Fair Elections in Cambodia (COMFREL) just after the last commune council elections in June 2012, as well as in the last report of the United Nations Special Rapporteur on human rights in Cambodia, Surya P. Subedi, dated July 2012.

Some of Subedi’s recommendations to the Cambodian government “could have been implemented within a short period of time without requiring many additional resources if there had been the political will to do so,” he told IPS.

The present electoral system requires every eligible citizen to register in order to vote, which can only be done in September and October, nine months before the election, and in the place of one’s own residency. This will potentially disenfranchise those who change their residency within nine months of the polls, as well as the homeless and evicted, who are unable to show proof of residency.

A “dire need for electoral reform” in the longer term is called for in NDI’s report. Subedi has made similar recommendations, and hopes for a more independent NEC, composed of neutral and high-level personalities able to represent all political parties in a balanced way.

A democracy trapped in patronage networks

Electoral malpractice, such as vote buying, use of state resources for political campaigns, threats and intimidation of some candidates and unequal access to media for all parties have been monitored over the years by organisations like COMFREL.

According to Trude Jacobsen, assistant director of the Center for Southeast Asian Studies at Northern Illinois University, Cambodian political culture is deeply informed by patron-client networks, in which votes are given in exchange for protection and personal favours.

“People would vote according to whoever is at the top of their [patronage network], it has nothing to do with what they actually think about elections,” she told IPS.

“No one would do anything to change the status quo at the bottom because it is simply not in their best interest,” she said, as they rely on political patronage connections for daily needs, such as having a job or sending their children to school.

Change can only come from the future generation of political leaders who are being exposed to alternative models outside Cambodia and will hopefully be “willing to sacrifice their own self-interest for the greater good”, said Jacobsen.

Another reason for concern is the decreasing voter turnout in the last years, which could be a sign of voters’ frustration with the current electoral system.

However, according to NDI, 92.8 percent of eligible citizens plan to vote on Jul. 28, which is a notably high percentage in a country in which voting is not compulsory.

Several rallies organised by opposition parties in the last months have gathered crowds of thousands, but according to Jacobsen, participants are not all authentic political supporters. Some of them are paid to attend, a practice widely used by both governing and opposition parties.

Following the signing of the Paris Peace Agreements in 1991, which gave the U.N. the responsibility to supervise peacebuilding operations and the first democratic elections, the country embarked on a democratisation process and went seven times to the polls, for the national assembly (1993, 1998, 2003 and 2008) and commune council elections (2002, 2007 and 2012).

July’s elections will renew for another five-year term the 123 seats of the national assembly, which is the lower house of the Cambodian parliament, and the winning party will be assigned the task of forming a new government.

The current ruling coalition of the Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) and the royalist party FUNCINPEC is expected to remain in power, defeating the opposition’s Cambodian National Rescue Party (CNRP) and extending for another five years the already 28-year-long tenure of Prime Minister Hun Sen.

Land has become a pivotal issue, in a country where 80 percent of the population is involved in subsistence farming but 20 percent of agricultural families are landless, due in part to the government’s scheme of leasing millions of hectares of agricultural land to mammoth multinational corporations.

“Cambodia should rise above a mechanical application of democracy … ,” said Subedi in his report, “and implement the fundamental principles and spirit behind the notion of the rule of law.”

“The country has come a long way since the Paris Peace Accords, but it still has some way to go to meet the international standards in a number of areas including the holding of transparent, free and fair elections,” he told IPS.

According to Jacobsen, “The mistake that was made was expecting people to be able to come out of a 20-year civil conflict and then adapt to Western models immediately,” with the result that the existing conception of political power as a patron-client relationship survived under the surface.

“It’s not going to be an immediate change,” she added, “and certainly not for this election.”

A farmer looks out at a flooded paddy field in Laos. Credit: E Souk/IPS

By Simba Shani Kamaria Russeau
BANGKOK, Jun 20 2013 (IPS)

The future of food security in the Mekong region lies at a crossroads, as several development ventures, including the Xayaburi Hydropower Project, threaten to alter fish migration routes, disrupt the flow of sediments and nutrients downstream, and endanger millions whose livelihoods depend on the Mekong River basin’s resources.

Running through China, Myanmar (formerly Burma), Laos, Thailand and Cambodia to the Mekong Delta in Vietnam, this is Asia’s seventh longest transboundary river.

An estimated 60 million people live within the lush river basin, and nearly 80 percent depend on the Lower Mekong’s waters and intricate network of tributaries as a major source of food.

But if all goes according to plan, 88 dams will obstruct the river’s natural course by 2030. Seven have already been completed in the Upper Mekong basin in China, with an estimated twenty more either planned or underway in the northwest Qinghai province, the southwestern region of Yunnan and Tibet.

Construction of the 3.5-billion-dollar Xayaburi Dam on the Lower Mekong in northern Laos is the first of eleven planned dam projects on the main stem of the Mekong River, with nine allocated for Laos and two in Cambodia.

Construction began in 2010 and as of last month the project was 10 percent complete.

At best these development projects will alter the traditional patterns of life here; at worst, they will devastate ecosystems that have thrived for centuries.

Over 850 freshwater fish species call the Mekong home, and several times a year this rich water channel is transformed into a major migration route, with one third of the species travelling over 1,000 kilometres to feed and breed, making the Mekong River basin one of the world’s most productive inland fisheries.

Large-scale water infrastructure development projects such as hydropower dams have already damaged the floodplains in the Lower Mekong and in the Tonlé Sap Lake in Cambodia, affecting water quality and quantity, lowering aquatic productivity, causing agricultural land loss and a 42-percent decline in fish supplies.

This spells danger in a region where fish accounts for 50 to 80 percent of daily consumption and micronutrient intake, Ame Trandem, Southeast Asia programme director for the non-profit International Rivers, told IPS.

Locating alternative protein sources such as livestock and poultry is no easy task and would require 63 percent more pasture lands and more than 17 percent more water.

“Cambodia is the largest fish eating country in the world. Get rid of the fish and you’re going to have serious problems because there is not enough livestock in Cambodia and Laos to compensate for the loss,” Trandem said.

With a total population of over 16 million, the Mekong Delta is known as the ‘rice bowl’ of Vietnam. It nurtures vast paddy fields that are responsible for 50 percent of national rice production and 70 percent of exports.

This low-lying delta depends on a natural cycle of floods and tides, with which Vietnamese farmers have long synchronised their planting and harvesting calendars.

Now, experts like Geoffrey Blate, senior advisor of landscape conservation and climate change for the World Wildlife Fund’s (WWF) Greater Mekong Programme in Thailand, say this delicate ecosystem is vulnerable to changes brought on by global warming and mega development projects.

Rising sea levels and salt water intrusion have already put Vietnamese communities in the Mekong Delta on red alert, “while sediment losses caused by upstream dams will exacerbate these problems. In addition, the increased precipitation and heavier downpours anticipated from climate change may also substantially alter flood regimes in the Delta,” Blate told IPS.

If all the dams are built, experts estimate that 220,000 to 440,000 tonnes of white fish would disappear from the local diet, causing hunger and leading to a rapid decline in rice production.

Electricity over sustainability?

Citing a shortage of energy, Thailand’s leading state-owned utility corporation, EGAT, signed an agreement to purchase 95 percent of the Xayaburi dam’s anticipated 1,285 megawatts (MW) of electricity.

Six Thai commercial banks comprise the financial muscle of the project, while construction is in the hands of Thailand’s CH. Karnchang Public Company Limited, with some support from the Laotian government.

But energy experts like Chuenchom Sangarasri Greacen, author of Thailand’s Alternative Power Development Plan, have poked holes in the claim that the dam is required to meet growing energy needs.

Thailand is a net importer of electricity, but a lot of it is utilised wastefully, she told IPS, adding that countries like Laos and Cambodia have a much more immediate need for electricity: the World Bank estimates that only 84 percent of the population in Laos and 26 percent in Cambodia have access to electricity, compared to 99.3 percent in Thailand.

But instead of developing their own generation capacities, these governments have chosen export projects that profit corporations over people.

“Thailand is creating a lot of environmental, social and food issues for local communities by extending its grid to draw power from beyond our borders,” Greacen said.

Already, 333 families from villages like Houay Souy in north-central Laos, who were moved to make way for the dam, are feeling the first hints of greater suffering to come.

Once a self-sufficient community that generated revenues via gold panning and cultivated their own riverbank gardens to produce rice, fruits and vegetables, villagers are now finding themselves without jobs, very little money and not enough food.

“The villagers’ primary source of food was fishing and agriculture. In their new location, about 17 km away from their old homes, they were given small plots of agricultural land but not enough for their daily consumption needs,” said Trandem.

“Ch. Karnchang never compensated them for lost fisheries, fruit trees or the riverbank gardens that were washed away. Their new homes were built with poor quality wood, which was quickly eaten into by termites, so what little compensation they did receive went to fixing their new homes,” she added.

These families, numbering about five members per household, are now barely surviving on 10 dollars per month and symbolise the gap between so-called poverty alleviation programmes and their impact on the ground.

“The Laos government claims that dams will generate revenue but in reality…projects like Xayaburi basically export benefits and profits away from the host country while smaller projects that are more economically sustainable are being ignored,” says Greacen.

She believes the Laotian government should explore small-scale renewable energy projects like biomass and micro-hydro plants that would attract local investment and directly serve local populations.

Blate also suggested building diversion canals for smaller dams, rather than obstructing the main stem of the Mekong River.

Sochua Mu at a CNRP demonstration in Phnom Penh. Credit: Charlotte Pert/IPS

By Michelle Tolson
PHNOM PENH, Jun 20 2013 (IPS)

The violence that defined Cambodia during the years of the Khmer Rouge (1975-1979) may have been relegated to the realm of history, but the actions of the ruling party ahead of the Jul. 28 election smack of the dirty politics that once ruled this Southeast Asian country.

Observers and analysts predict that the ruling coalition of the Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) and the FUNCINPEC Party will win, thereby adding another five-year term to Prime Minister Hun Sen’s 28-year reign.

But that has not stopped an ugly face-off between the CPP and its main competitors, the Sam Rainsy Party (SRP) and the Human Rights Party (HRP), which last year consolidated their power under the umbrella of the Cambodian National Rescue Party (CNRP) and now hold 27 out of 123 parliamentary seats.

In response, the 12-member permanent committee of the National Assembly, whose members all hail from the ruling CPP, decided on Jun. 5 to strip 29 legislators, 27 of whom belong to the opposition, of their political power, citing a constitutional clause that bans lawmakers from “party hopping” in order to form mergers.

Within days the ruling coalition had also launched a smear campaign against Kem Sokha, current acting president of the CNRP, claiming that he had denied the existence of the infamous Tuol Sleng prison where over 20,000 Cambodians were executed during the Khmer Rouge years.

CPP politicians claim to have a digital recording of Sokha calling the prison, which doubled up as a torture chamber, a hoax cooked up by the Vietnamese.

Local media outlets quickly ran with the story, but the CNRP vehemently denies the allegation.

“Kem Sokha, more than anybody else, knows about the reality of the Khmer Rouge as both his parents were killed by them,” Mu Sochua, president of SRP Women’s Wing and CNRP’s public relations executive, told IPS.

According to Sochua, the recording is a fabrication, designed to frame Sokha and weaken the growing strength of the opposition coalition, which has been drawing scores of supporters to its rallies, including most recently a 2,000-strong demonstration in the capital, Phnom Penh, and a 3,000-strong march in the northwestern city of Battambang.

Initial reactions to the allegation suggested that the attempt to discredit the opposition was working: on Jun. 9 the ruling coalition amassed 6,000 people at a protest in Phnom Penh’s Freedom Park against Sokha’s so-called “denial” of Khmer Rouge rights abuses.

But Tola Moeun, head of the Community Legal Education Centre (CLEC) who witnessed the event first-hand, said he talked to demonstrators who had been offered five dollars each to attend, a small fortune in a country where 49 percent of the population of 14 million people live on two dollars a day or less, and 26 percent lack adequate food and nutrition.

Moeun told IPS that other so-called demonstrators admitted to joining the protest simply because they had been promised a tour of the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum in the capital, and not due to any loyalty towards the CPP.

Election observers say it will take more than a smear campaign to derail the opposition, whose strong human rights platform and support of labour and land struggles parallels burgeoning nationwide grassroots movements.

Land has become a pivotal issue in a county where 80 percent of the population is involved in subsistence farming but 20 percent of agricultural families are landless, due in part to the government’s scheme of leasing millions of hectares of agricultural land to mammoth multinational corporations.

Land rights activism is on the rise: the Cambodian Grassroots People’s Assembly (CGPA) that emerged in response to lack of civil society representation at the 2012 ASEAN Summit has collaborated with the internationally renowned Boeung Kak lake activists to mobilise thousands.

The civil society group Licadho noted that 2012 was a particularly bad year for human rights. Labour violations topped the list after a provincial governor shot three factory workers during a strike in the town of Bavet, all of them members of the growing Free Trade Union.

While activist networks are careful to avoid political affiliations in order not to be seen as “anti-government”, the strength of people’s movements has not been lost on the ruling coalition, whose decision to disempower the opposition came just a few days after a major demonstration by 3,500 workers at a Nike factory in the southeastern province of Kampong Speu.

Besides their obvious popularity among activists, the CNRP has also attracted a growing number of youth, as a quick look at social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter indicates.

According to Thida Khus, executive director of SILAKA and representative of the Cambodia Women’s Caucus, youth now comprise 36 percent of the population, representing a sizeable demographic and a crucial vote bank.

The opposition has also made good use of social media to circumvent a virtual monopoly over the dissemination of information, said Sochua.

According to Freedom House, “All television and most radio stations, the main sources of information for the two-thirds of the population who are functionally illiterate, are owned or controlled by either the CPP or Prime Minister Hun Sen’s family and associates. Opposition outlets are often denied radio and television frequencies.”

But SRP has capitalised on this media blackout: as of Jun. 18, Sam Rainsy, currently in exile due to pending prison charges that human rights groups say are fabricated, was leading the social media race with 80,000 “likes” on Facebook, compared to the premier’s 68,465.

While social media has not previously been seen as a strong indicator of public opinion, Internet penetration has grown tremendously since the last National Assembly election held in 2008, and now represents a reported 2.7 million Cambodians, according to the ministry of posts and telecommunication.

Still, Khus is concerned for the safety of CNRP members, particularly since there are “no international observers for the election,” she told IPS.

Being stripped of their status as members of parliament means the opposition lawmakers have not only lost their salaries but also their parliamentary immunity, which could impact their ability to safely speak to international press against the ruling party.

On Jun. 10, a coalition of 15 civil society groups representing labour and land rights issued a joint statement condemning the ruling party’s actions, just as the U.S. Department of State made a statement calling the move a “threat to democracy.”

The CNRP meanwhile filed a complaint on Jun. 17 with the Constitutional Council that the ruling party’s actions violate Cambodia’s constitution, adding that the CNRP is considering boycotting the election if the matter is not resolved.

An eight-month-old boy with pneumonia is examined by a doctor at Amana Hospital in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Credit: Kristin Palitza/IPS

By Lucy Westcott
UNITED NATIONS, May 22 2013 (IPS)

PATH, a Seattle-based global health development organisation, is aiming to save two million lives by 2015 by jointly tackling diarrhea and pneumonia, the leading killers of children globally.

Steve Davis, president and CEO of PATH, delivered the message at the ninth annual PATH Breakfast for Global Health held in Seattle on Tuesday.

“Today we placed a bold stake in the ground, with partners around the world, to save two million lives by the end of 2015,” Davis told IPS.

PATH will begin its efforts in India, Cambodia and Ethiopia, where intervention is most urgently needed and PATH has resources. While all three countries have seen their child mortality rates from diarrhea drop, India’s pneumonia death rate remains stagnant, accounting for 24 percent of deaths of children under five, the same as in 2000, according to 2013 World Health Organisation statistics.

“No parent should have to bury a child because of something we can help prevent or treat,” Davis said.

Diarrhea and pneumonia are two diseases that overwhelmingly affect children in African and Asian countries, Davis said, with diarrhea claiming around 760,000 lives a year. And while the number of children dying in Africa before the age of five has decreased, it still vastly outnumbers all other parts of the world, according to the 2013 WHO statistics.

Melinda Gates, philanthropist and founder of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which helps fund health development and vaccines world wide, spoke at the breakfast of the importance of vaccinating children as well as “appropriate” science that meets the needs of communities in the developing countries.

“[The] developing world is littered with pilot programmes,” Gates said.

As he took to the stage, Davis pointed to a tool belt around his suit jacket. A visual aid, the belt allowed Davis to show and carry some of the tools that can prevent the deaths of so many children from diarrheal disease, tools that will be used to achieve PATH’s life-saving goal.

Clean water, soap, zinc tablets for oral rehydration therapy and the rotavirus vaccine, which stops some diarrheal diseases before they start, were all included.

But it’s not just science and vaccines that can improve the lives of communities ravaged by diarrhea. Deeply held cultural traditions and ideas about the disease have to be altered as well.

Dr. Alfred Ochola, PATH’s Technical Advisor for Child Survival and Development in Kenya, spoke about educating Kenyans on how to reduce the risk of diarrhea in their communities through hygiene practices like hand washing.

But Ochola, who lost a brother and sister to a diarrhea outbreak in Kenya as a child, has found that at first, people are reluctant to embrace change.

“A big [challenge] is combatting old beliefs that diarrhea is a curse and not an infection, and that the death of a child is an inevitable part of life. ‘God will give you another one’ is a common saying in Kenya,” Ochola said.

Many people believe a child who has diarrhea is cursed, Ochola said. Vomiting and diarrhea are welcomed because it rids the body of the evil inside it, while it should be taken as a sign that something is seriously wrong.

Poverty is another challenge in combatting the diseases. Although heart disease and diabetes are becoming the new illnesses of poverty, according to Davis, diarrhea and pneumonia still adversely affect children of developing countries in Africa and Asia.

In Africa and Southeast Asia, the percentage of child deaths are higher than the global average and have not significantly decreased in 10 years. Both regions have seen child mortality from diarrhea fall from 13 percent to 11 percent of deaths from 2000 to 2010, but in Africa, the rate of death from pneumonia has actually increased, from 16 percent to 17 percent.

“Too many people lack the financial means to seek care when it’s most needed, like paying for transportation to get to a health facility far from home… We often reach women and their children too late,” Ochola said.

Ochola told the story of Jane Wamalwa, a Kenyan woman who came to understand the reasons behind making a change in long-held practices in treating and preventing diarrhea. Wamalwa lost three children to the disease, and has now become a trusted source of information on good anti-diarrhea practice in her community, Ochola said.

“It has become her calling,” he added.

Migrants employed as construction workers in Thailand receive little training or safety equipment. Credit: Kalinga Seneviratne/IPS

By Simba Shani Kamaria Russeau
CHIANG MAI, Thailand, May 21 2013 (IPS)

On the outskirts of the northern Thai city of Chiang Mai, a group of twelve migrant families lives in a makeshift camp comprised of houses constructed from scrap metal.

They share three toilets between them, and each home consists of nothing more than a single room, whose flimsy walls and roof provide little privacy, and are no match for the heavy monsoon rains that lash northern Thailand between the months of May and November.

Sounds of splashing water fill the air as both male and female migrants, returning from a long day’s work, unwind with a shower in the rudimentary, open-air structures that contain nothing more than a rap connected to a water tank.

Most of these workers are employed on a residential construction site just north of here, where they pour cement, plaster walls, build roofs or install electrical wiring from seven in the morning until six in the evening, seven days a week. They do not have much to show for these gruelling hours on the job, returning home with as little as six dollars a day.

One of this shantytown’s residents, Nang Soi Sat, tells IPS the long working hours and paltry income are not even her biggest concerns: she is more worried about maintaining her legal status in the face of multiple challenges.

Thailand is home to an estimated 2.5 million migrant workers. The country’s economic boom – which has seen an 18.9 percent growth in gross domestic product (GDP) since 2011 – relies heavily on a constant influx of labour from neighbouring countries. Over 82 percent of the workers hail from Myanmar (Burma), 8.4 percent from Laos and 9.5 percent from Cambodia.

Those from Myanmar say ethnic strife and civil conflict sent them fleeing in search of better opportunities in the region. A network of garment and furniture factories housed in Special Economic Zones (SEZs) that dot the Thai-Myanmar border quickly absorb incoming migrants to work for a pittance.

Other key areas of employment for migrants include the seafood and agricultural sectors.

For migrants like Sai Sun Lu, the search for better opportunities did not end with his arrival here. Originally from Myanmar’s volatile Shan State, Lu works over nine hours a day at a site in Chiang Mai, constructing high rise buildings that will likely be converted into commercial centres, residential condos or offices, without a single day off.

He tells IPS he did not want to come to Thailand, but was forced to as a result of intense fighting in his home. His hopes for greener pastures on the other side of the border have been dashed and he now finds himself living in a kind of daily nightmare, toiling in what rights groups have called “appalling” conditions.

According to the U.S. State Department’s report on migration and refugees, Thailand ranks alongside some of the worst offenders of migrants’ rights, including Afghanistan, Chad, Iran and Niger.

Because migrant labourers are typically unskilled, with little awareness of occupational safety, they are easy prey for employers looking to cut corners by dismissing safety concerns.

In the construction sector, inadequate training in the proper use of machinery and a lack of protective equipment such as body harnesses or guardrail systems pose a grave threat to those who work on buildings as high as 27 to 69 stories.

On Sai Sun Lu’s construction site, “there have been many accidents and deaths. Some workers have slipped and fallen from the high rises but we receive very little or no compensation,” he said.

“As Burmese we have to be extra careful because if we make any mistakes then our employers can terminate our work without any explanation.”

Fear of this last consequence is, for many workers, second only to the fear of death, and a very common one among migrants from Myanmar who account for 75 percent of Thailand’s one million undocumented workers, according to the Institute for Population and Social Research at Mahidol University.

The 2008 National Verification Programme (NVP) was intended to legalise the status of incoming migrants and provide them with basic protections under Thai labour laws, such as access to social security schemes, official work accident compensation and the ability to apply for driving licences.

However, rights activists contend that the NVP’s registration fees are “extortionate”, often requiring three times the average worker’s monthly salary of between 100 and 167 dollars.

According to this year’s World Report, published annually by Human Rights Watch (HRW), Thai employers frequently seize migrant workers’ documents, thus rendering them bonded labourers, while government policies – like the Thai cabinet’s 2010 resolution to fine employees if their papers carry outdated information – impose severe restrictions on migrant workers’ ability to change jobs.

Even migrants with all their legal papers in hand often go to pains to avoid encounters with the police for fear of being harassed, physically abused, or arrested.

In desperation, many have turned to personal networks of friends and family members to gain access into the country.

In rural Myanmar, where most migrants come from, informal transporters linked to smugglers with networks along the border facilitate entry into Thailand. This system has led to the proliferation of so-called recruiters, or agents, who charge exorbitant fees in exchange for providing such services as remitting money, establishing communication channels between families, or securing employment.

Following allegations of rampant corruption among recruitment agencies, the Labour Ministry of Myanmar recently banned 12 agencies from sending migrant workers to Thailand, according to an internal memo obtained by ‘The Myanmar Times’.

Earlier this month, Myanmar’s Deputy Labour Minister Myint Thein assured labour activists and migrants that the state was doing everything possible to rein in illegal actors and ensure safe, affordable passage between the two countries. It has a vested interest in doing so: a 2010 ILO report found that the average migrant worker in Thailand sent home about 1,000 dollars every month, with total remittances from Thailand accounting for about five percent of Myanmar’s annual GDP.

By Michelle Tolson
KAMPOT, Cambodia, Mar 15 2013 (IPS)

Dotted with rice fields flanked by palm trees, Cambodia’s southeastern province of Kampong Speu is nothing short of picturesque.

But behind the idyllic exterior is an on-going struggle to turn this region’s natural beauty into a global attraction and improve the lot of poor local farmers, as the neighbouring beachside Kampot province did just three years ago.

Back in 2009, Kampot became to Cambodia what Champagne is to France – a region bestowed with the prestigious Geographical Indication (GI) status, which ensures a higher market value for specialty produce.

According to a report from Cambodia’s Commerce Ministry, “A GI product must have a specific quality…linked to the characteristics of its geographic production zone, and must have a well-established reputation among consumers in connection with this origin.”

GI registration also requires farmers to use natural manure in place of chemical fertilisers, bio-pesticides instead of poisonous chemicals, and to test their water source for arsenic contamination.

Here in Kampot, farmers supplying European gourmets with what is lauded as the best pepper in the world enjoy a higher daily wage than their counterparts in this Southeast Asian nation of 14 million people, 30 percent of whom live on less than a dollar a day.

Kampong Speu, whose sandy soil is unique in the region, was also awarded GI status for its palm sugar, but the region has been dogged since 2009 by the presence of mass-produced sugar cane, which has stolen the limelight from its eco-friendly cousin.

Pictures of stricken families torn from their land to make way for large sugar cane plantations became associated with the province when the European Union’s Everything but Arms (EBA) trade agreement with Cambodia spurred a surge in sugar cane exports.

As a result, the GI label has had very different results in the two neighbouring provinces. Experts believe the discrepancy is a result of how each remote region presents itself to the outside world.

Kampot instantly brings to mind tourism, with its nearby beaches, quaint French colonial buildings and farms supplying French kitchens with the “black gold of pepper”, according to the Cambodian Organic Agricultural Association (COrAA). 

The province also boasts a healthy tourism industry with 46 guesthouses of roughly 549 rooms and six hotels with 353 rooms, according to government sources.

Kampot has also innovated schemes to combine tourism with sales of pepper: for instance, motorbike taxi drivers function as a link between the farmer and consumer. Rany, a moto driver and guide told IPS he has a list of return customers who purchase pepper direct from the farmers to sell overseas.

In contrast, Kampong Speu province is recognised for agriculture and industry, and has not developed the charm capable of attracting large numbers of tourists. As a result, its star product has not gained international attention.

Sun Somnang of the export company Starling Farm and a member of both the Kampot Pepper Promotion Association (KPPA) and the Kampong Speu Palm Sugar Promotion Association (KPSA) believes there is an urgent need to publicise palm sugar and attract tourists.

Experts like Somnang and government officials seek to improve farmers’ lives in Kampong Speu, where the average gross annual income is 500 to 1,000 dollars.

Most palm sugar farmers own just one hectare of land and typically exploit an average of 16 palm trees each, according to the KPSA.

The ministries of commerce and agriculture collaborated with marketing firms by initiating the GI process to help preserve palm sugar farming.

Promoting palm

Cambodians view the palm tree as a national icon: its leaves and wood are used for housing material, while the sap is used for sugar and wine.

But producing the sugar is labour intensive, as farmers must climb trees to harvest the sap and then cook it over a fire before it turns to wine.

Unprotected palm trees have been felled in the past decade as the capital expands and the sugar cane industry seeps into the region. Since 2009, sugar cane plantations have claimed more trees according to researchers, though the numbers are not monitored.

A map published by the “clean sugar campaign” illustrates sugar cane land concessions surround palm sugar production districts in Kampong Speu.

In an effort to save the slow-growing palm trees, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen has banned them from being cut down, according to local media.  Somnang told IPS that this law has been in effect for about six months.

David Pred from Bridges Across Borders, an NGO advocating on behalf of land grab victims, said poor palm sugar farmers sometimes lose their land to concessions but they also sell it as the value of land is high owing to a massive influx of foreign direct investment (FDI).

Advocates for the estimated 20,000 families dependent on palm sugar say there is an urgent need for higher wages.

While the price of Kampot pepper has shot up from just four dollars to 16 dollars per kilo for some pepper varieties under GI status, palm sugar continues to sell at just over a dollar per kilo in upscale supermarkets.

NGOs have been assisting palm tree producers from rural Takeo, Kampong Speu and Kampong Chhnang provinces to help them increase their profits.

One national NGO concluded better marketing was needed to raise profits, using the GI status to connect farmers with wealthy international markets.

The FAO reports that farmers’ earnings per kilo rose during GI registration, from a low of 1,200 riels (0.30 dollars) to a high of 2,000 riels (0.50 dollars) for sugar paste bought by marketing organisations.

Still, a government evaluation noted Kampot pepper had better marketing than palm sugar from outside parties and a stronger international media presence.

Though it had considerable success promoting Kampot pepper, Confirel, a major Cambodian marketing firm has yet to launch a fruitful campaign for palm sugar in Europe; instead, the firm is making in-roads into Taiwan and Japan, according to COrAA.

Tom Gordon of the Pepper Project, a non-profit that has had success introducing Kampot pepper to U.S. consumers, told IPS they are initiating the import of palm sugar starting this month.

(END)