20 March 2013
By Chea Sophal[1]
After
signing the Paris Peace Accords, NGO activities continued to grow in Cambodia
through the access to donor funds, including those administered by national
government agencies and foundations. The
core principles of donor-funded NGOs adhered to social justice, participation,
equity, independence, democracy, transparency, empowerment, partnership,
accountability and rights (ICC 2010, p.5). In the remarks of
International Non-Governmental Organizations (INGO), they stated concerns over
the Draft Law on Associations and Non-Governmental Organizations and provided
key emphasis on the role of civil society as follows:
.
The
INGO community has been a dedicated partner in Cambodia’s development efforts
for decades. As the 2009 National Strategic Development Plan Update notes,
“Civil society is an important partner and many NGOs, both national and
international, play an active and vigilant role in social and economic
development efforts as well as in promotion of democracy and human rights.”
INGO’s Regards to
H.E. Hor Nam Hong, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs
and H.E. Sar Kheng, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Interior (INGO 2011,
p.1)
This
section will examine the aspects surrounding the civil society and its
influence on democratic development in Cambodia and what strategies the NGOs
used.
Civil Society and Its Influences on Development of Democracies
Prior
to the Paris Peace Accords, civil society organizations or NGOs did not play a
significant role in Cambodian society.
With the presence of UNTAC peace keeping operations to promote respect
for human rights, maintain law and order, repatriate Cambodian refugees,
rehabilitate essential infrastructure and organize free and fair elections,
many NGOs began to form. UNTAC helped
to open Cambodia and promote the growth of civil society with many numerous
NGOs established both at the national and provincial levels (AI 2011).
UNTAC
ended its mandate after the 1993 elections with the establishment of a new
coalition government and the promulgation of a new Constitution for Cambodia,
which includes human rights provisions in support of civil society, including
freedom of expression and association[2]. The Cambodian Government and donor funding agencies recognize the
crucial contribution of civil society in the rehabilitation, development and
reform of Cambodia since the UNTAC period.
The civil society organizations play a major role in providing and
supporting basic social services, often in remote areas and communities. NGOs have been vocal in advocating national
reforms to improve health, education, good governance, human rights, the legal
system and democracy.
.
The
number of international NGOs (INGOs) in the country has grown to approximately
300, up from just 25 in the early 1980s (Sunderji 2005, p.1). The U.N aid organization such as UNICEF,
World Food Program (WFP) and Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) during
this period were confined to providing emergency relief through its own
agencies. The International Committee of
the Red Cross (ICRC) was also involved in aid delivery. By 1989, the number of INGOs increased to
around 40 to facilitate the bilateral aid to Cambodia and they had an influence
on the Cambodian government’s policies and actions (Barton 2001, p.7). By 1991, the Cooperation Committee for
Cambodia (CCC) was founded to serve as the contact point for the international
NGOs looking for information to establish their offices in Cambodia in the
early 1990s followed by the first Cambodian NGO, Khemera and a human-rights
NGO, ADHOC, registered with the Government (Barton 2001, p.8).
By
2005, there were around 1,500 NGOs active in Cambodia accounting for $100
million in donor partner funds (CCC 2011, p.6). These NGOs are active in women’s rights,
health rights, and land and livelihoods and they seek to empower and strengthen
citizen engagement in democratic development. There are three main sectors that NGOs most
commonly implement programs in such as agriculture, health and education. NGOs are also active in vocational training,
natural resource management and democracy and human rights.
The
graph below illustrates the trends of International Non-Governmental
Organizations and National NGOs that have been registered with the Ministry of
Interior and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs from 1993 to 2005, based on the Mapping
Survey of NGOs Presence and Activity in Cambodia in 2006.
Source:(Rasmussen 2010, p.6)
According
to the CDC Database that recorded the presence of NGOs from 1993 to 2011, there
have been 1,719 Cambodian and Foreign NGOs[3] in
Cambodia, out of which 560 are Foreign NGOs and 1,159 are Cambodia NGOs. Among
those 1,719 NGOs, 1,030 local and international NGOs are classified in the CDC
database as “Not Reported” and 159 are defined as “Closed”.
Source: (CDC 2011)
The
re-emergence of civil society organizations in the 1990s and the current number
of NGOs was due to the establishment of a legal framework with the promulgation
of the Constitution after the 1993 elections and is in part to the availability
of international aid. Many international
NGOs had exit strategies of helping establishing civil society organization in
Cambodia transiting from the foreign-owner to Cambodian control. However, these organizations remain heavily
dependent on foreign aid (Landau 2008, p.247). The graph below shows the trend of NGO
funding disbursement from 1992 to 2011 based on the author’s consolidated data
from the Cambodian Aid Effectiveness Reports in 2007, 2008, 2010 and 2011 of
the Council for the Development of Cambodia.
In the average, NGOs spent around USD 55.81 million per year from 1992
to 2011.
.
Source: Consolidated data from the Cambodia Aid Effectiveness Reports,
2007, 2008, 2010 and 2011.
According
to the Danida Survey of NGOs done in 2006, the percentage of combined NGOs by
sector showed that only 3% each worked in the fields of advocacy/policy and
democracy and human rights while only 2% of NGOs worked in the areas of
decentralization and deconcentration.
Around 15% of them worked in the field of education and 13% for health
and sanitation (Rasmussen 2010, p.29).
Source: Danida
Survey of NGOs in Cambodia, 2006
In fulfilling its
day-to-day operations, the civil society in Cambodia faces a lot of key
challenges in the field of promotion and development of democracy. Those challenges include the following:
Limited
organizational capacity: This
involves the institutional management and governance; Lack
of recognition: The
civil society is not being adequately represented in dialogue with development
partners; Lack
of long-term funding: The
funding for civil society organizations is usually designed for a short-term
project and it is not sustainable funding; Lack
of Effective Coordination among civil society: There is no
proper coordination among the increase and diversity of NGOs since there are
overlapping activities and projects.[4]
The
major problem of development of democracy in Cambodia since 1991 is the absence
of strong civil society organizations such as mass trade unions, religious
based NGOs with an authoritative hierarchy and organizations of farmers,
organizations of taxi drivers, organizations of nurses, and organizations of
informal economy. The absence of
organizations like these, which have a mass membership among ordinary people
and an authoritative voice that can engage the government at national level,
means that politics become the preserve of elites (Hughes, Director of the Asia Research Centre and
Associate Professor of Governance Studies in the School of Social Sciences and
Humanities at Murdoch University 2012).
Strategies Used by Civil Society to Bolster the Development of Democracy
The
development of civil society in Cambodia has been concentrating on human
rights, democracy, elections and relief work.
The Cambodian civil society organizations have been political actors in
Cambodia. However, at the beginning, the
Government did not recognize NGOs as legitimate political actors until today, and
some NGOs are partly oppressed and threatened by the Government. For example, a number of NGOs such as human
rights activities of Adhoc—a local human right NGO and the Office of the High
Commissioner for Human Rights and union federations’ activists were jailed. More than 60 community activists were
imprisoned or awaiting trial during 2009 on the charges of helping to organize
and represent fellow community members facing eviction or illegal confiscation
of their land by private companies linked to high-ranking government and
military officials (HRW 2010, p.10).
.
These
NGOs address the political system to express their opinions and influence
decision makers. They address this
political system formally and informally and at high and low political
levels. One of the platforms and
strategies they used is the public forum in which there are meetings with
authorities to create a basis for policy making and peaceful conflict
resolution at the local level while there is cooperation with education
authorities and the people such as workshops, training courses and seminars. In fulfilling their activities effectively,
the civil society organizations call on donors to offer long-term funding, funds
for institutional capacity building programs, respect by the Government of NGOs
and avoidance of undue influence over their missions.[5]
In
November 2009, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen announced that an NGO law would
soon be passed to weed out “bad NGOs” who “speak too loud”, and those NGOs are
used as fronts for political or terrorist activities, or receive funding from
foreign countries to oppose the Cambodian Government.[6]
The
civil society organizations play a critical role in supporting liberal
democratic development in Cambodia. It
is through them that “good governance,” encompassing transparency,
accountability, elimination of corruption, coercion and nepotism and a respect
for human rights, is promoted (Landau 2008, p.247). The civil society spectrum has been developed
by UNTAC and by development agencies at the later stage as a means of
overcoming and transforming the traditional political and cultural dimensions
of authority and citizenship in Cambodia.
.
A
major success of the UNTAC peace keeping mission 21 years ago was to create
space for the civil society to run independently. However, with the recent
Draft Law on the Associations and Non-Governmental Organizations, the tendency
has changed in which the fourth draft required an organization to register if
it wants to obtain legal status to be able to operate in Cambodia since that
status is required to enter into legal contracts, open bank accounts, hire
staff, import materials and collaborate with partners for implementing aid
projects according to the existing laws.[7]
A
few workshops on the topic of the “Effective of Aid Management for NGOs” were
conducted in 2011 with participants from ten provinces. The workshops aimed at providing
opportunities to NGOs to develop further understanding of aid effectiveness,
sharing good lessons and strengthening cooperation between the Government and
NGOs. The workshop provided greater
awareness of the importance of the main principles of the Paris Declaration in
strengthening aid effectiveness at both national and sub-national levels as
follows(CRDB/CDC 2011, p.32):
Figure 5: Five principles of the Paris
Declaration in strengthening aid effectiveness at both National and
Sub-national Levels
Source:
Adapted from (CRDB/CDC 2011, p.32)
The elements that add influence on Cambodia to improve its records on
democracy and respect for human rights based on the principles of the Paris
Peace Accords and prosper the democratic development space in Cambodia are the
national and international organizations.
They are the social actors that deal with the grassroots levels of
promoting people’s empowerment through education and community-involved
approaches like advocacy skills and rights-awareness campaigns. To do that, they need strong support from the
donors and commitments from the Government and concerned local authorities. There
has been dramatic growth in the number of civil society organizations
established in Cambodia from 1991 to 2011 with the average annual expenditure
of USD$55.81 million.
.
To overcome their challenges (such as limited organizational capacity,
lack of recognition, lack of long-term funding, and lack of effective
coordination among civil society organizations) and bring alive the basic
principles of the Accords, the CSOs would take immediate and proper measures to
conduct synergies of their programs and activities to reduce the overlapping
issues and build a business case for showing the case to the donors so that
they can see the real impact and sustainability approach put in place. I would strongly urge the CSOs to approach
the Government more frequently in bringing change and promoting democracy
without waiting for the authorities to ask them for help or assistance. Doing that, they can build trust and
confidence among the local authorities and work towards national achievements. The government will also feel the sense of
ownership of any joint initiated program and activities.
References
AI. (2011, December 20). Cambodia's Proposed Law
on Association and Non-Governmental Organizations: A Watershed Moment?
Retrieved February 22, 2012, from Amnesty International:
http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/asset/ASA23/012/2011/en/2623882a-42e1-44de-8797-336c22702e57/asa230122011en.html
Barton, M. (2001). Empowering a New Civil
Society. Retrieved December 11, 2011, from Pact Cambodia:
http://www.pactcambodia.org/Publications/NGO_Training/empowering_a_new_civil_society.pdf
CCC. (2011, September). Busan and Beyond:
Accountability and an Enabling Environment for Non-Governmental Organizations
in Cambodia. Retrieved January 20, 2012, from Cooperation Committee for
Cambodia:
http://www.ccc-cambodia.org/downloads/aid-effective/Busan-Report.pdf
CDC. (2011). Council for the Development of
Cambodia: The Cambodia NGO Database. Retrieved August 1, 2012, from
http://cdc.khmer.biz/ngo/report/report_by_ngo.asp
CRDB/CDC. (2011). The Cambodia Development
Effectiveness Report 2011. Phnom Penh: The Cambodian Rehabilitation and
Development Board of the Council for the Development of Cambodia.
HRW. (2010). World Report. Retrieved March
10, 2012, from Human Rights Watch:
http://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/related_material/wr2010.pdf
Hughes, C. (2012, February 20). Director of the Asia
Research Centre and Associate Professor of Governance Studies in the School
of Social Sciences and Humanities at Murdoch University. (S. Chea,
Interviewer)
ICC. (2010, July 20). Civil Society
Organization’s Development Effectiveness National Consultation Forum: “Moving
from Aid Effectiveness towards Development Effectiveness”. Retrieved
December 18, 2011, from Cooperation Committee for Cambodia:
www.ccc-cambodia.org
INGO. (2011, April 06). International
Non-Governmental Organizations’ (INGO) Concerns Regarding Draft Law on
Associations and Non-Governmental Organizations. Retrieved January 30,
2012, from VSO UK:
http://www.vso.org.uk/Images/Cambodian%20law%20statement%20-%20VSO_tcm79-31603.pdf
Landau, I. (2008). Law and Civil Society in Cambodia
and Vietnam: A Gramscian Perspective. Journal of Contemporary Asia ,
Vol. 38, No. 2, May 2008, pp. 244-258.
Rasmussen, K. (2010, July). NGO Contributions to
Cambodia's Development 2004-2009. Retrieved February 11, 2012, from The
Cooperation Committee for Cambodia:
http://www.ccc-cambodia.org/downloads/publication/Final%20Report%20NGO%20Contribution%202010.pdf
Sunderji, A. (2005). Overview of Civil Society:
Cambodia. Retrieved December 15, 2011, from Asian Development Bank:
http://www.adb.org/Documents/Reports/Civil-Society-Briefs/CAM/CSB-CAM.pdf
[1] Chea Sophal is taking the Doctoral Degree of Law (LL.D) at
Pannasastra University of Cambodia in Phnom Penh. This is an extract from the term paper study
on ‘The Paris Peace Accords and the Development of Democracy in Cambodia’ as
part of the term paper submitted for the coursework under the Doctor of Law
Programme on POL 712-Transnational Relations and World Politics
[2]The Constitution of the Kingdom of Cambodia,
Art.31 and Art.41-42
[3]This number of Cambodian NGOs and Foreign
NGOs is higher than it is reported by Rasmussen,
Kristen. "NGO Contributions to Cambodia's Development 2004-2009." The
Cooperation Committee for Cambodia.
[4] When examining areas of work, for example,
human rights, there are numerous human rights organizations such as LICADHO,
ADHOC, Khmer Kampuchea Krom Human Rights Organization (KKKHRO), Khmer Kampuchea
Krom for Human Rights and Development Association (KKHRDA), The Cambodian Human
Rights Task Force (CHRTF), Cambodian Health and Human Rights Alliance (CHHRA),
and the Cambodian Centre for Protection of Children’s Rights (CCPCR). It is not easy to get everything or piece of
work coordinated among these human rights organizations since they have
different donors and focus on certain areas that fall under the other human
rights organization’s workplan.
According to the list of Cambodian Human Rights Action Committee, which
is a membership-based organization, consists of 23 organizations (CCHRAC
2006, p.4). Other coordination-structured organizations
include the Cooperation Committee for Cambodia (CCC) and the NGO Forum on
Cambodia. They work to ensure that the
voice of the civil society is heard at both national and sub-national
levels. The umbrella NOGs like CCC, NGO
Forum, Medicam, and CCHRAC would need to further consolidate coordination among
civil society organizations since they need to speak with one voice. Civil society organizations in Cambodia are
not strong and mainly focus on service delivery. These organizations do not have much
influence over policy decisions and are not able to lobby the government
directly on policy issues without intervention of external development
partners.
[5]The project life cycle is normally short, for
instance, two to three years. There are
sometimes no proper exit strategies when the closure of the project took place,
there were no sustainable approaches or activities continued to be implemented
by the concerned institutions of the government. One may consider the institutional capacity
building for the staff members from the government institutions when they took
part in the training workshop or seminars.
The missions of the NGOs were adjusted to meet the interest of the donor
funding or the priority set by the donors even though those priorities might
not fit the Cambodian context.
[6] In the past years there were accusations by
the Royal Government Cambodia of using NGOs to gain political support, for
example, the Human Rights Party, which was established after the name of one
Cambodia NGO, Cambodia Centre for Human Rights (CCHR) where Mr. Kim Sokha
worked for nearly five years before he was imprisoned for the reasons that he
and his forum criticizing the government on a number of issues raised by local
people. CCHR used local workshops to hear and air concerns and voices raised by
Cambodian people in the community where they faced for instance issues of
forced eviction and land disputes.
[7]Nearly all NGOs are not-profit organizations
that are operating in Cambodia. The NGO
draft law has been criticized by many national and international NGOs for the
reasons that the draft law would limit their rights and operation of their
projects or activities in Cambodia. I
found that it is fair enough for the government to register with the Ministry
of Interior for the legal status before beginning their activities and
projects. However, there is no need for
the government to control the flow of funding for the projects. There is also no need for the government to
control who would be hired for the NGOs.
There should be facilities provided by the government in registering
those NGOs. They should not use the
draft law as a way to block or get rid of selective NGOs that are not in favor
for the government especially those NGOs that carry out social activities or
workshops that people in the workshop express their concerns and criticize the
government.
No comments:
Post a Comment