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Summary of More Than White Cloth: Women’s Rights in Cambodia

2010-10-11T01:49:00.000-07:00

More Than White Cloth?

Women’s Rights in

Cambodia

by Nakagawa Kasumi

I. Introduction

Because of the traditional values embedded in most Cambodians’ mindset, many of women suffer from discrimination and gender inequality, deprived of the same rights and freedom as men. This inequality is widespread and can be seen in many areas and participation in governance and other matters is one. Either in the parliament, in the Supreme Court, or in other ministries, the number of working women is far outnumbered by the number of men. Besides, women are also discriminated against in terms of education. Boys are more likely to be sent to school, whereas girls, especially in rural areas, are supposed to stay home and complete household work. Moreover, Cambodian women are treated unequally when it comes to healthcare, marriage, and job opportunity. For healthcare and marriage, because of not having power to decide in family, such issues as abortion and infection with STDS and HIV/AIDS happens. For employment, in many jobs, women get less money than men although working the same amount of work. Sexual harassment in the workplace, sexual trafficking, and sexual exploitation are also common. Vulnerability to domestic violence and rape is another evidence of discrimination and gender inequality against women in Cambodia. These gender problems seem really serious, so effective solutions needs to be initiated in order to improve women’s situation, which may well be possible.

II. Women in Cambodia: History and Culture

Although, as Cambodian history shows, women’s active roles figured as important contribution to the country’s development in ancient times, women’s status in the society has started to decline since the fall of the Angkor Empire. They are subordinate to men and their rights and freedoms are very limited by traditions, belief, and the Code of Women.

In ancient times, some women held prestigious positions in the country. Women such as Queen Neak Neang, or Liv Yi in Chinese, and Queen Indradevi are perfect examples. They ruled the country and had profound influence on developing the country politically, socially, and culturally. However, since the end of the Angkor Empire, these powers of women gradually disappeared until the Sihanouk regime, when there was improvement in women’s status. Though not many women took part in politics, after a very long period of male domination, some females emerged and held leadership positions. They played some active roles, such as promoting women’s rights and gender equality. But this participation was said to be encouraged on the basis of national development, rather than on a desire to fundamentally alter gender roles. After this regime, Cambodian history was followed by three decades of civil wars, causing political struggle to women. In the Khmer Rouge regime (1075-79), women, like never before, were provided with equal political opportunities to participate in state building as men in every aspect. Women had to work as hard as men, being forced into extreme vulnerability. Things got better in the People’s Republic of Kampuchea (1979-91) and the UNTAC period (1991-93). Women’s rights were guaranteed as equal to men, and more female politicians were encouraged, but no female presence at high levels existed. Further, UNTAC brought a huge economic boom, also creating new job opportunities for women, which were, unfortunately, in the field of sex industry.

In most Cambodian’s point of view, a traditional good Cambodian woman is a gentle, soft, obedient, and shy woman, and reputation and dignity is highly valued. This factor creates barrier for women to fully use their freedoms and rights. Actually, according to Khmer literature and the Code of Women, girls and women are viewed as obedient child and excellent housewives, fully supportive, and gentle to their husbands. This gender concept is widely spread and reinforced through education or passed on at home from grandmother or mother to granddaughter or daughter. This stereotype represents a problem to Cambodian women in a way that it, for example, discourages women to ask others for help when suffering from domestic violence by her husband. She feels obliged to maintain the family’s reputation by keeping patient and remain quiet. In addition, virginity is considered the most important for a girl. Any sexual activity before marriage is regarded taboo for girls, but not at all for boys. However, as the country and people’s ideas develop, not everybody sticks to these traditional social norms, although most still do. Nowadays, two types of women can be seen in Cambodian society—one is getting more ‘modern’ and other holds on tight to the older beliefs.

III. Education

It is an inalienable right for women to get education, which can enable them to think better, make better decisions, and live a better life. It also provides a way out of poverty. For Cambodian girls, unlike most boys, the widely-accepted stereotype that girls’ education is not needful and they should stay home and do housework, the economic cost, and far distance to school have prevented many of them, especially in rural areas, from schooling or from pursuing higher education, which affects their life opportunities. Instead of studying, they help their mother doing household work, are encouraged to enter the workforce, or are even forced into arranged marriages.

Concerning education, in both domestic and international legislation, some articles of the Constitution have been established to assure free basic education for everyone regardless of sex, to ensure on a basis of equality of men and women.

IV. Reproductive Health

Knowledge about reproductive health has just been newly introduced to Cambodian women and is not widely practiced effectively yet. Many Cambodian women, especially poor women, are seen in vulnerable health condition owing to the lack of health education and the limitation of access to sufficient healthcare facilities. Also, stereotyped gender roles only provide women less decision making power to use their financial resources to seek for good healthcare. These factors results in many preventable diseases and sometimes death as a result of maternity. Actually, because of limited education, any family planning method is often ignored and the risk of having unwanted children is high, which can seriously affect the mothers’ health. Unsafe abortion may also happen. Further, women whose husbands have unsafe sex with other women in the sex industry are very vulnerable to the infection of STDs and HIV/AIDS. The gender inequality in the family in a way that women are discouraged not to negotiate with her husband for protected sex even adds to this vulnerability.

V. Politics and Decision Making

In Cambodia, women’s participation in politics is very modest. This is probably because of the existing mechanisms, political structures, or lack of women’s full access of education which would enable then to confidently participate. Plus, the traditional and cultural attitude of most Cambodians towards women somewhat obliges women to take her responsibility as a good housewife and mother rather than to enter politics. This stereotype presents women’s lack of self-confidence, lack of family support and discriminatory feelings in the society. Thus, most women remain weak, silent, and non-interfering when it comes to the political life of the country. Nowadays, although women can vote and have rights to stand for election, female representation in most areas of governance, concerning the decision-making process, stays very low, and, therefore, women’s issues are often neglected.

VI. Marriage

In spite of the establishment of laws and principles that guarantee women’s rights in marriage and divorce in both national and international legislation, many Cambodian women still undergo discrimination because of the deeply-embedded traditional norms which are biased in favor of men. The norms tell women that they must not lose her virginity before marriage, and many young girls are pressured to gratefully accept arranged marriages by their parents. Additionally, in their marriage life, women are considered lower in status and, thus, inferior to men. They, as a wife, are expected to stay faithful and obedient to their husband. So divorce, which is usually started by domestic violence, is always a difficult and intimidating procedure for most women, no matter how desperate they are for it. In many Khmer people’s mindsets, to divorce and be a widow is not a good thing; she would be surrounded by constant criticism from other people. More than that, to seek a legal divorce is time-consuming and can be very costly. Corruption in the court is also quite common.

VII. Economy

In Cambodia, just like other countries, the gender gap in access to job opportunities and payment is a serious problem because this makes women become more economically dependent and have insufficient rights to property or access to finance. Usually, women get paid less for doing the same amount of work as men. Job opportunities for women are still limited because of the traditional gender roles that women must bear most household responsibilities. This discrimination prevents women from choosing their desired occupation. Sometimes, a woman is well-educated and can get a well-paid job, but the gender stereotype might discourage her from that job. Moreover, for low-educated women, they are seen mostly engaged in labour market, in small business and in the garment industry, which is currently the biggest market for women. These jobs only provide them a little money, so many have to live in poor conditions. During their work, women sometimes undergo sexual harassment, which happens in many forms but has not been clearly identified to Cambodians yet. Nowadays, migration of one place to another in search for job opportunities is also common. This may help them earn more money, but it can be dangerous. Women might end up betrayed by the middleman or their friends and sold into prostitution. Sometimes, because of facing financial problems in their family, some women resort to the decision to enter the sex industry themselves; no-one forces them to.

VIII. Women and Criminal Justice

Many Cambodian women are suffering from violence, which happens in various forms such as domestic violence, rape, and sex exploitation. Actually, there are many cases of such violence against women, many of which are still unreported for some reasons. Because of the Khmer traditional values based on gender and the fact of not being well-educated, no matter how badly they get abused by their husbands, women are supposed to spread this family affair to no-one at all. Failing to keep silent means bringing shame to the family and themselves. Some women who got raped choose to endure pain and anger for fear that telling the authority about the rape can bring damage to family’s reputation, and, thus, the perpetrators are not brought into justice Another reason that discourages victimized women from reporting the crime is attributed to the existence of corruption and the ineffectiveness of the law enforcement; going to court is a cost and can be unjust. Concerning sex exploitation, sex industry, which is a very flourishing business, has put a lot of girls into victims. Although there are laws in the legislation preventing this, because of lax enforcement and corrupt practices by police and local authorities, this exploitation on women still continues unrelentingly. Most victims to these kinds of violence often live traumatically with isolation, shame, and very low self-esteem, while the offenders go unpunished.

IX. Conclusion

Women are as equally important to the development of the country as men; therefore, their full participation in politics and economic activities is inalienable. However, because of the traditional norms and values, the lack of adequate awareness among women relating to their fundamental rights, and the limit of efforts constitutional institutions to protect and promote their rights, many women are treated unequally; they suffer. So it is only fair that policies and laws are fully implemented and people’s discriminatory perceptions towards women are changed so that every Cambodian woman can enjoy their lives as much as men can.

CROSSING: A MEMOIR / DEIRDRE McCLOSKEY

2010-10-11T01:47:00.000-07:00

“Crossing”—by Deirdre McCloskey, a renowned economist and historian—is a memoir telling the story of the writer as a transsexual. Deirdre, who was born Donald McCloskey, had started cross dressing as a hobby since he was young, and one day he discovered that not only did he want to dress like a woman, but he also longed to become one. In his early fifties, after 30 years of happy marriage life, the struggle to become a woman began, and since then, he had undergone countless obstacles. He eventually achieved his goal, though; he became a woman both physically and mentally. However, in the process, he had sacrificed many things, even his intimate relationship with his family.

By DEIRDRE N. McCLOSKEY

Written in 266 pages

Published in the University of Chicago, 1999

Apparently, Donald was a normal boy, but he inside wanted to be a girl. From age 11, he sometimes dressed in his mother’s clothes but never got caught. And in 1925 he got married to a woman he loved, which had nothing to do with his cross-dressing or gender crossing at all; it was simply love. Three months into marriage Donald confessed to his wife about the cross-dressing, which frightened her. He told her that he just cross-dressed for fun. In fact, his wife never liked the cross-dressing, but she kept ignoring it for three decades. They had two children, and he never allowed his children see him cross-dress.

As time went on, Donald started to learn more about gender-crossing through books and the internet, and his desire to be a woman was getting stronger and stronger. And when their children grew older, he cross-dressed more often, which his wife found unacceptable. She just could not handle it to see her husband in a woman’s dress. They argued, and no matter how hard he tried to explain to her, she could never take it. Therefore, he tried not cross-dressed when she was home.

Seeing himself as a woman, Donald could never give up his cross-dressing habit. He realized that he was not a heterosexual crossdresser; all this time, he was a transsexual. He also went out to meet and learned about other cross-dresser, causing him later to cross the line and want to become a real woman, to be more than just a dress-crosser. He hankered after having a female look, despite his 6-feet tall height and muscular body. Later he decided to go for electrolysis on his face. This added to his wife’s anxiety and anger; she claimed divorce if Donald kept doing this.

At one point when the information about him being was spread, he decided to tell as many people he knew as possible about him wanting to be a woman himself. Some people could accept it; some couldn’t. His sister, a liberal professor of psychology of Harvard University, thought he was manic and demanded him to go to see a psychiatrist. And once when Donald planned some plastic surgery, because of his sister, he was arrested for mental examination a few times. She wanted him to stay confined and get treatment in the hospital for a while. However, her attempts failed and Donald was diagnosed with no mental illness.

Later, he spent his life as a woman and changed his name as Deirdre. She also received hormones to improve his femininity. One of her biggest concerns was that she was sometimes read by other people as a man in a woman’s dress; she desired to be read as a woman. One reason why she was read as a man was her big voice. She had had a few surgeries to develop female voice but failed. Besides voice operations, she had undergone cosmetic surgeries such as a facelift and a nose job. Deirdre decided to have her sex changed, too.

To Deirdre, the biggest cost of her transformation from man to woman was not the cost of cosmetic surgery or voice surgery, but it, “not to be measured, was the sacrifice of wife and son and daughter”. As a matter of fact, only her mother seemed to accept his huge change. Her wife, son, daughter, and sister were very negative about Deirdre. They felt angry, betrayed and ashamed. Her only son even celebrated his marriage without telling her a word. Since Donald’s first arrest for mental treatment, his family and Deirdre had never lived together again. Deirdre felt so alone.

The difference for Deirdre now was that, owing to the hormone replacement therapy, she became more like woman. She got less impatient, more calm, and neater, and she started to see things differently, from a woman’s perspective. She said that she was at peace as never before, being able to live a life she had always wanted.

After having read the story of Donald becoming Deirdre, I gained broader perspectives and more understanding about problems concerning transsexuality. I learned the fact that gender crossing does not have to do with homosexuality, as well as many other facts about crossing. By the way, in my opinion, I think Deirdre is a very brave person in that she dared to come out the closet and confront the world with her difference and could endure that much pain.

However, I was quite—and I am still a bit—skeptical, especially when just starting reading the story, about her desire to become a woman. Her desire, for example to dress as a woman no matter how disapproving people were of her, appeared too extreme and sometimes unacceptable. For example, one part of the book that tells that Donald would get up at 3 a.m. to cross-dress kind of shocked me. What did he do that for? Was that absolutely mandatory? It just seemed too odd and sort of outrageous. Thus, I feel I can understand the negative reactions of her wife and children; they are, to me, not very unreasonable.

All in all, this story is very good in a way that it to some extent inspires readers to accept who they really are and determine to achieve what they really want; otherwise, they will never live a happy life. Nonetheless, what I find dissatisfied with this book is probably its ways of being written, which is a bit hard for me to understand. I really wish I could comprehend every detail better.

My Impression on Backlash of Disappearing Daughters

2010-10-11T01:23:00.000-07:00

After reading the part, Backlash, of the Disappearing Daughters by Gita Aravamudan, it is clear that the story and all the information were told very well. It gave me a distinct insight into the living of people in some part of India. I can see that lives there were full of discrimination and prejudice towards females, and, consequently, those females lived a very unhappy and miserable life no better than one of a slave, oppressed by all kinds of unfair practices. Apparently, the woman who was seen as a wife, in reality, was just an absolute slave—a sex slave and a ‘son-producing machine’.

The early part of this chapter mentioned about a woman who was killed by her husband for not agreeing to sleep with all his brothers. To me, this sounds totally disgusting; nothing can be justifiable about this repugnant act at all. It seems like marriage was not in the least based on love; there was simply no emotion or sentiment the man had towards the woman besides his desire for mere sexual pleasure and for male heirs. How could he share his wife with others? How could he kill her? This is just unbelievable. Besides, I really wonder whether that man was brought to court and ended up in jail for his crime or not. If he was not, it is just too barbaric of that society.

Later in that chapter, it is more obvious that the reason of men sharing the same wife in many Indian societies is that the number of males very far outnumbers the number of females and thus it can be very expensive for poor families to afford a wife for their son. And this leads to the buying and selling of women to get married into male families. To me, it is already extremely unreasonable to sell their own daughters for money; daughters are human, too. In fact, the crisis of not having enough women results merely from the inhuman practice of sex-selection abortion. Many female fetuses or newly-born baby girls has been killed. They think having a daughter is a burden, and the daughter, although kept until fully grown-up, would never live a happy life.

All in all, it is both repulsive and sad to learn that a woman in those Indian societies has been treated this badly. She is regarded as no better than an animal which, after marriage, no longer has control over any part of her body, “let alone her womb”. This shows an extreme inequality between different genders, which is nothing but unfair for women. Anyway, it has been clear that the solution is not impossible. I think, as long as sex-selection abortion and female infanticide stops, there will be appropriate number of women to marry men, and the cost of getting a wife will not be as difficult and expensive. As a result, there will be no more need to share a wife with other brothers and this will put an end to the living death of the women.

Cambodia: The Bloodiest Domino

2010-10-10T23:51:00.000-07:00

Although not being able to watch the entire film thoroughly, I have found the movie about Cambodia: The Bloodiest Domino, a very interesting piece. It was a very good insight into the most recent civil wars in this 21st century, starting from the time Cambodia was given independence.

From watching the movie, I got to see how complicated the relationship and thread of how such disastrous events happened to this country. Taking the most notorious event of Cambodia, the Pol Pot, as an example, it would be wrong to put all the blame on just Saloth Sar; many people were behind this and there were a lot of motives; nothing was black or white. With this taken into consideration, ECCC seems like a rather unfair process as only few crime committer during the regime are being brought to court.

Besides, from the film, I have learned how true the typical description of humans as having cruel, wild, greedy nature really is. The scene where Vietnamese people were killed in Cambodia from racial discrimination, with their body cut open and their livers, taken out is extremely disturbing to me. It is shocking to learn that Cambodians, who have often self-proclaimed and been considered as a gentle people, did such repugnant acts—the acts that are so sickening and that I myself couldn’t even think of doing.

In addition, the film has ensured me what kinds of values/principles I believe are in a good leader. In the film I saw many actions taken by the leaders with all the power, which I think good leaders should never take. The fact that Prince Sihanouk ignored the warning by the US government about the upcoming bombing and let it kill many innocent lives, simply because of him expecting compensation money/aids to come in return of the destruction of the bombing afterward, was just abhorrent. Even though the leader was given the authority in governing his people, I believe he has no right in the world to compromise so many lives for such a benefit, whatsoever. All in all, I have discovered more of values in good leaders from just looking back at the history and how it was led.

In conclusion, from the documentary, I have seen many disturbing sides of the Cambodian history. Reflecting on what are projected in the film, I have learned a number of useful lessons—such as how to be a good leader by avoiding what bad leaders did/have done, how brutal and deadly humans can be in their natures, and that nothing is black or white. With these knowledge and understanding, I hope to contribute to preventing the country’s bitter history to repeat itself; especially should I happen to hold any top-leadership position.

Part 1/6

Year Zero: Silent Death of Cambodia

2010-10-10T23:32:00.000-07:00

The Khmer Rouge was over; the Democratic Kampuchea was overthrown. However, all the pains and tragedies were far from being finished, as clearly demonstrated in the documentary, Year zero: Silent death of Cambodia. Having seen so much extreme misery, especially, of the orphans of wars dying from treatable disease and starvation, it was heart-breaking. This, plus the reasons behind it (as it is shown in and can be inferred from the film), I have learned a few things.

First of all, I saw the importance of the existence of government in one country for the welfare of lives of people in that particular country. After the war, with the city restless of any exciting activities but with only the cries of pain from dying children short of food and nutritious substances to feed, Cambodia seemed like a country with no leaders, without government. If there were one, actions should have been taken, to ease down this awful situation. I could see that only a few voluntary foreigners were trying to do something, contributing what they had and making requests for international humanitarian aids, which went somehow ignored. While watching the documentary, I was asking, what on earth the government, who fought and overthrew the DK government, were doing; how could such a thing happened, seemingly with no-one in authority bothering to do anything?

Another thing I find quite remarkable from watching the documentary is the apathy of the world powers and the have’s toward the misery and hard times of the poor and the less powerful when the former’s involvement gives them no advantage. From the movie, during the famine and severe starvation among the victims of wars in Cambodia, less-than-enough humanitarian aids from the neighboring country Vietnam was the only international help to Cambodia; powerful countries such as the US and other European countries were apparently ignoring the tragedy. It was wholly a different story when the US was spending millions and millions of dollars to the Lon Nol government, seemingly under the reason that the US could ensure that Cambodia was not influenced by the communist ideology and going against the US’s democratic ideology. Therefore, the power countries were interested in the affairs of other countries when their involvement gave themselves benefits rather than when it is on the humanitarian basis like during the time right after the fall of the Khmer Rouge regime.

Besides, something even more obvious in the film is the catastrophic effects of wars. Millions of innocent lives were taken away, leaving millions abandoned and living as orphans, and the country’s economic situations and everything reached their lowest points. These disasters are the inherent results of wars. That’s why making wars should not be an option at all.

However bad and adverse making wars are, sometimes they are unavoidable. Wars in Cambodia were somehow justifiable because they happened out of revolutions, and revolutions can be good if the government and those in leadership are awful. Hence, I think such unfortunately things befell this country mainly because of the bad governance. With good governance, there would not have been revolutions, wars would not have resulted, and such a drastic number of people would not have been forced into such unbelievably appalling misery.

Cities and Government

2010-10-10T23:28:00.000-07:00

Cities today, like they have always been, are crowded; many people are living in the cities, which are much smaller in size than other areas around. This is not just an assumption or an argument; it is a fact. But the question is why this is a fact. What are so special and attractive about cities that many people choose them as where to reside over plentiful of other alternatives? Definitely, cities are the centers of commercial/economic activities, of education/knowledge, of desirable public goods/services and of multi-cultures. Cities are also the home to the government of a city, of a state, and/or of a country. And these are the reasons, in brief.

Indeed, for a country, or for a group of people, to survive, continuing its existence, let alone to flourish, its economy has got to keep moving; the constant flows of currencies, business transactions and other economic activities need to be in progress; otherwise, the country will be bankrupt, just like an individual can be. Since cities are the focal points where most stakeholders can be easily confident to establish their commercial activities thanks to the security reasons, to the assurance, with its heavy population, that there are enough numbers of customers for their products, and to the cities’ accessibilities to other parts of the world so that, with competent telecommunication and transportation systems, better communication with their partners in other countries is secured, to raise as a few examples. Therefore, there are many established businesses and organizations, whose presence can well attract not just local people, but also people from other areas that are in need of employment to earn money to finance themselves, as well as, their family’s expenses. This is why cities are like magnet that keeps crowding itself with people. People in cities can more easily be a factory worker, a waiter, a teacher, a government official, etc.

The cities are also where people can get access to standard education. In this regard, taking the case of Cambodia as an example, when finishing high schools, graduates from the country, if they want to pursue higher education in top schools in the country, which are less likely to be based at where they originally live, usually leave their hometown for Phnom Penh. Some even become permanent residents after they have graduated and seek for an appropriate job. Further, cities are also where many talents, who have a lot of experience and are very knowledgeable, live and work, having the chance to make better use of their talent and skills in big companies or organizations. Hence, to meet with, learn from, and gain mentorship from this kind of people, ones are obliged to live in the cities as well.

Apart from being a place to easily find jobs and to go for education, cities can also provide citizens with the comfort and convenience of enjoying all the public goods and services provided by the government. Usually, in cities, especially ones of developed countries, there are public buses, public trams, public subways, flyovers, complex road systems, bridges, parks etc. In terms of service, garbage-collecting service, security, assessable public service, etc. are also provided.

And it is the multi-cultural factor that makes cities even more attractive. Of course, cities has the force that keeps pulling people in—not just people in the particular country but also people from other countries. This creates diversity, making it rich in languages, food, drink, clothes, and so on. For instance, coming to Chicago, people can easily find Chinese food and typical Chinese products in China Town, Sushi (Japanese food), Italian food, Sari (Indian traditional cloth), just to name a few. For this reason in part, people come to crowd the city, hoping to enjoy more out of life and making it less routine and less boring.

After all, it does seem like cities are where there is everything; why is it so? It is mainly because of the fact that it is where the government resides. Actually, it is the government with the duties and responsibilities to take care of developing the city and the country in all areas possible. And, for one thing, as the government lives in the city, places in the city are its home and are undoubtedly where they see the most and, as the result, receive the most care and get the most developed compared to other parts of the country. This goes back to the previous points; because cities are better developed, investors are pulled in, economic activities are boosted, employment opportunity is bigger, more country people, as well as people of other nations and cultures, come in, and so forth, making cities such a desirable and important grounds for many lives.

Anyway, when it comes to the government, some say it can be dangerous. As defined in Comparative Government and Politics by Hague and Harrop (2004), “[the] government consists of institutions responsible for making collective decisions for society. More narrowly, government refers to the top political level within such institutions.” This reflects the power the government holds in decision-making—decisions that involves politics, which is about competition for power and resources. It is also a point to notice that greed and irrationalism to satisfy the greed are in human’s nature, so unless such natures are carefully controlled and rationalized, humans in power can be very dangerous. Therefore, when top people in the government structures enjoy too much of the power in their hands and are afraid to let it go, it is very likely that the government will become authoritarian or even totalitarian. To that point, the government is no longer necessarily for the people, but for itself. This point is also supported by what is written in Chapter 1 of the Comparative Government and Politics that says government can “abuse its own authority, creating more problems than it solves,” and the murder of about 130 million people by their own government during the “lethal” 20^th century is an example of how lethal a government can be (Hague & Harrop, 2004, p. 5).

In conclusion, the unbreakable relationship between the government and city where it resides provides the city with all the advantages for it to grow in a way that attracts more and more people to be its citizens. The city is a breeding ground for commerce, education, cultural diversity, and other development, which are interrelated in benefiting itself, as well as people in the city and possibly even people in the entire country. However, because the pool of importance, advantages, and ultimately, power exits in the city, the government in charge can be harmful if not properly managed by the means of, for example, the creation or adoption and enforcement of a political system that can ensure that the least power can be abused.

Reference:

Hague, R. & Harrop, M. (2004). Comparative government and politics: An introduction (6^th ed.). New York, N.Y.: Palgrave Macmillan

Steps towards Effectiveness and Accountability in terms of CEDAW

2010-10-10T01:17:00.000-07:00

As I am one of the Cambodian youths, who always long to see the Cambodian government fully capable of managing the country with more effectiveness and accountability, I would like to use what I have as a university student to express my ideas as a recommendation as to what I think are necessary and should be done in order to build a stronger and more effective Cambodian government. And as being one of Gender Studies/Women Studies students, my recommendation will be most particularly made in terms of CEDAW—a convention on women made by the United Nation (UN).

I. CEDAW

CEDAW is short for the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women. It is “an international standard-setting instrument” that was adopted by the United Nations (UN) in 1979, came into force in 1982, and was ratified by

Cambodia

in 1992. (UNIFEM.) The governments of CEDAW-adopting countries have to practice and follow the established set of rules without reservation so as to avoid any action that may represent disadvantages towards women. This convention works for women to terminate all kinds of discrimination and prejudice against them and aims to seek for equalities between males and females in all aspects, from simple household work to politics and high decision-making power. In short, the main purpose of CEDAW is to allow all women to enjoy lives with full rights and freedom as men do.

II. Problem Statement

According to what can be observed from current Cambodian society, as well as what is agreed by the UN and shown in Point 35 of the Concluding Comments of CEDAW: Cambodia (2006), which was issued by the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, the majority of women from ethnic minority groups and disabled women are facing multiple forms of discrimination with regard to access to education, employment, and healthcare.

Indeed, in addition to being inferior to their husbands or other males in their societies, women of ethnic minority groups, mainly in the eastern part of the country, such as in Ratanakiri and Mondulkiri, have been living without enough care from the government and has been discriminated against by many people of the majority group mainly because of the race they were born into. They are seen as the lower-class people, whose lives do not figure in most Cambodian’s mind. They are neglected. For example, Phnorng women do not have full access to proper health treatments when they are sick, either because there is no registered clinic or standard hospital in the area where they live or because they do not have money to pay for those treatments. In other cases, domestic violence by their husbands may befall them because traditionally they are supposed to stay obedient and not to speak up for themselves, and this violence is likely to happen without necessary interference from authorities to stop. This may result from the fact that those women, as well as their husbands, are uneducated, and the local authorized people are not bothered to educate them and prevent the violence as they do towards the majority group, Khmer women or people.

Anyway, the situation may be relatively bad for women with disability. Seeing that they cannot do certain things that normal people with good physical and emotional conditions can, they are seen as a burden—useless and unimportant—to others or to the society as a whole. Thanks to this stereotype, disabled women are ignored and thus do not receive what each woman in a society should get. Not only does this factor discourage those women from using their potentials to contribute to their own lives and to the society, but this also causes them to live miserably in depression, distress, and unhappiness.

III. My Recommendations

To be more effective and accountable in term of this particular issue, I recommend that the Cambodian government give more attention to disabled women and women from ethnic groups. As mentioned by the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women in their concluding comments to

Cambodia

, the government should integrate attention to those groups of women into national policies, plans and programmes as well as to implement specific measures to eliminate discrimination against them.

1. Measures:

Specific policies that protect the rights and freedom of women from ethnic minority groups and disabled women and promote equalities for them as compared to other groups of people should be fully established. The rules may say, “Do not discriminate against women on basis of health, race, or appearance.” “Disabled women and minor-ethnic group women have the same rights to receiving proper healthcare as everyone else.” Or, “People should be recruited for jobs regardless of the fact that they are female or disabled.” Such rules can be made into force within the government policies in all fields from education to economic activities.

After rules and regulations have been finished, they have to be taken into real actions. Therefore, various plans and programmes in terms of those established policies needs to be made and carried out. First plan to focus on is education, which is believed to be the most important assets of all nations in the world. Education here refers to spreading the knowledge and breeding it into all Cambodians to realize how vulnerable those groups of women has been in most Cambodian societies, how they should be treated, and that any form of discrimination against them is morally wrong. This can be done in many ways.

First of all, it should be done through the educational system of

Cambodia

. Subjects about women studies/gender studies should be included in the school curriculums. If possible, this should start early in primary school and continue until high school. Children need to be taught gradually to have a mindset of seeing everyone as equal human beings, which is bound to stay with them for the rest of their lives. Further, to make it even more effective, gender studies/women studies should be demanded as one of the university foundation-year subjects, just as practiced in the Pannasastra University of Cambodia. Second, the education could be achieved via the media: television, radio, newspaper, magazines and so on. In this regard, interesting spots or short movies about those groups of people’s rights should be created and then broadcast through TV or radio, which are watched or listened by thousands of people. Then, necessary information and knowledge can be spread fast and conveniently. Third, education may also work well if with various campaigns, to which public officials, students, or other volunteers can help contribute with respect to energy, time, or maybe some possible donations. The participating people, for example, can together design schemes to find funds and then travel together to remote and poor areas of the country to directly educate people, both children and adults, about the issues. With this measure, uneducated, or not-well-educated people, can get some ideas about what is right and what is wrong, what is fair and what is not fair, etc. In fact, this kind of campaign usually is small and can be done by an ordinary group of people, not necessarily by the government, but it would produce more satisfying outcomes if the government would join or just encourage and support because it is probable that more people, including me, will willingly volunteer to take part so that the process can be done faster and more effectively.

Merely educating those groups of women—women from ethnic minority group and disabled women—to know about their human rights and what they deserve and teaching others to understand them is not sufficient. The government had better allow those rights to become reality by providing them with what they can hardly manage to acquire. For women of an ethnic group in a remote area very far from the civilized world, it is almost impossible that they get full advantage of what the government provides for the general public. For example, the hospital in town is very well equipped and the policies say that everybody, no matter if they are Phnorng or Khmer, can get health service there for free. Unfortunately, the Phnorng, who live 100 or 200 km away, cannot access the hospital as easily as the local people. Not only are they mostly poorer than the locals, but they also live farther away. Thus, it is only fair that something in favor of them is done; for instance, another hospital is built near where the Phnorng live. In short, what is being explained here is to say that the government should not ignore the development of other areas besides ones in cities or towns at all. More clinics should be built. More schools are also needed to provide those women with knowledge so that they can have a better job opportunity, obtain a better living standard, and live a better life. Additionally, the government should encourage more investments in those remote areas in order to create more jobs. Although this is something very hard to accomplish for such a developing county as

Cambodia

, it would be advisable that at least something, rather than nothing, is being done. Efforts, no matter how big, need to be made even if the progress is uncomfortably slow.

Also, for disabled women, I think they struggle the most when they go to apply for jobs and get rejected merely because they are partly disabled. Concerning this issue, besides educating, or perhaps putting some pressure on those employers, one thing that the government may do is to set up, for instance, organizations or enterprises where disabled people, particularly women, are taught particular professions and then given jobs for them to earn their living. This both contributes to the country’s economy, not wasting any labour force, and gives those women a normal life despite their disability. Moreover, to show those women that they are cared about and not neglected, which can be very emotionally important to them, it would be very ideal that the government build, for example, disabled parking, disabled toilets, disabled entrances, etc. in the public places and buildings.

2. Funds:

The above recommended measures may require a lot of money to work out successfully, so where and how can the government get the needed amount of money? Actually, as

Cambodia

is a full member of the United Nations and is also one of the 180 member countries to adopt CEDAW, it is definitely possible to request for funds from UNIFEM (United Nations Development Fund for Women). Although the procedure may be complicated, as long as the schemes are well planned, organized, and convincing, I believe the UNIFEM will be more than happy to see something is being done for women and will certainly not hesitate to help. However, outside contributions alone are not adequate; the government and the Cambodians in general have to use their own money, time, energy, and willingness into the action, too.

IV. Conclusion

In the name of a young Cambodian, what I think I can do is to recommend to the government that it make efforts to eliminate all forms of discrimination against women from ethnic minority groups, as well as disabled women, and those efforts, first, should include educating people of all ages and statuses not to discriminate, which can be done through the available media or through outdoor campaigns. Second, the government have to show that the welfare of those women are well taken into consideration by trying to develop where they live as much as in other places, creating jobs for them, and, for the disabled women, building facilities that can ease their lifestyle. Although these are just a small part of what can be done about our country now, I strongly believe that it is really worth trying and, if goals achieved, the Cambodian government will, without a shadow of a doubt, move one step closer to becoming an effective and accountable State party.

Reference:

Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, UN. Concluding Comments of the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women:

Cambodia

(2006).

UNIFEM, UN. Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW).

Report on a Presentation about Extra-ordinary Chamber in the Court of Cambodia

2010-10-10T01:04:00.000-07:00

I. Introduction:

On November 20, 2008, our group of the Logics and Critical Thinking class had an honor to join a presentation by a group of people from the Extra-ordinary Chamber in the Court of Cambodia (ECCC) on a topic about the prosecution of people behind the genocidal acts during the Khmer Rouge regime. The presentation focused mainly on the background of the Khmer Rouge regime, the creation of ECCC, its structure, its procedure, its key features, some of its challenges, defense structure, and the defense rights of the accused.

Il. Background of the Democratic Kampuchea

After five years of civil wars (1970-1975), April 1975 marked the starting point of the Khmer Rouge regime. On April 17, Cambodian people were evacuated from major cities to country sides by the Khmer Rouge soldiers telling that the US would very soon bomb Phnom Penh city. Also, all foreigners in Cambodia were expelled to go back to their own countries. After being evacuated, people were living a very hard life. For example, there was an abolition of property ownership and the banning of money and religions. They were forced to work on the farmland with little time to rest and meager food to eat. As a result, the population confronted starvation and other medical problems, leading to many deaths. Besides, the presenter also talked about the S21 Security Centre, of which Duch was the prison commander. It was the place where 13,000 people were captured, interrogated, tortured, and killed. Furthermore, in December 1978, the Khmer Rouge invaded part of Vietnam in the purpose of fighting back the land over dispute with VN. Vietnamese soldier fought back and won the war, causing the collapse of the Khmer Rouge regime on January 7, 1979.

III. Creation of ECCC

In 2003, ECCC was settled in order, firstly, to bring formal justice to Cambodian people who lost their lives and relatives, secondly, to bring better understanding over the issues to the next generations and lastly, to leave some forms of legacy, which are the common aims on both national and international levels.

IV. Structure of ECCC

The structure of ECCC is as follows: Judges (Co-investigating Judges, Pre-trial Chamber, Trial Chamber, and Supreme Court), Chambers (3 Cambodians and 2 internationals), Co-prosecutors (1 Cambodian and 1 international), Victims, Witnesses, and the Accused. Regarding this structure, it was mentioned that Cambodian people are the majority in most positions. Anyway, the structure is based on the civil law and the traditional system of Cambodian societies. And all processes in ECCC has a huge degree of flexibility; everything is not “terribly” sure yet.

V. Procedure of ECCC

Initially, there is the preliminary investigation, which is carried by the prosecutors. In this regard, it mainly depends on the information and data collected for some years by the Documentation Center of Cambodia (DC-Cam). Next is introductory submission, in which the prosecutors compile all the documents and submit them to the court. After that, the document will be examined and the judicial investigation will start. Then, the judges will issue the closing order, with which the accused do not have to agree. And the steps of Trials and Appeal follow respectively.

VI. Key Features

The first key features of ECCC is supermajority, which means in order for each decision to be made there must be majority + 1. For instance, if there are 7 judges, 5 must agree on the motion so that the decision can be officially accepted. Other key features are civil parties, which represent victims, and investigating judges.

VII. Challenges

As the genocide happened nearly 30 years ago, time is the first problem. This is because, for example, it is hard for victims or witnesses to recall back stories that they experienced at the time the crime was being committed. Another challenge is the old age of the accused and witnesses. Nuon Chea, Brother Number 2, who is alleged for war crime and crime against humanity, is 82 years old already—the age so old that his death in a day or two might not be a surprise at all. Besides, it is the presumption of guilt. Since the crime is serious—millions of lives were taken, and most Cambodians absolutely abhors the Pol Pot regime, although, for some, even without the clear knowledge of what the truth and the real problems are, guilt is automatically presumed by the majority. Transparency is another issue because, as said by many, everything has been done behind closed door. That is, not everyone has access to witness how everything is done inside the court. Other problems are as: Cambodian judiciary and corruption and mismanagement.

VIII. Defense Structure

In the defense structure of ECCC, there are co-lawyers, defense team, and defense support section. For co-lawyers, one is Cambodian; another is foreign. For defense team, it includes consultant lawyers, interns, and experts. On the other hand, defense support section has the roles of providing support to the defense team, give legal support and administrative support, and conduct various trainings for the team.

IX. Defense Rights

Defense rights refer to the rights and freedom the accused are supposed to have. Everything is done to ensure just trial and fairness for the accused. In this point, ICCPR rights were mentioned. In ICCPR rights, there is the presumption of innocence, which means “the accused is innocent until the prosecution proves otherwise.” Also, before being brought to face the trial, the accused must be fully notified of the charge in advance. Adequate time and facilities the defendants find necessary to prove against the accusation are also given. They have rights to enough resources—to lawyers to defense the case and to time to prepare everything so that the defense can be made in the best interests of the accused. Other rights liable to the defendants are as: a right to a not-delayed trial, to a trial in their presence, and so on.

X. The Accused People and Their Allegation

1. Kang Gech Iev (known as Duch)

Allegation: - Crime against humanity

- War Crime

2. Nuon Chea

Allegation: - Crime against humanity

- War Crime

3. Kiev Somphorn

Allegation: - Crime against humanity

- War Crime

4. Ieng Sary

Allegation: - Grave breaches

- Crime against humanity

5. Ieng Thirith

Allegation: - Crime against humanity

XI. Conclusion:

It was definitely a great opportunity for us, students, to learn what every Cambodian is expected to know. The whole time before stepping into Hall A last Thursday and right after stepping out of that same room, although with only about one and a half hour different, bear a tremendous increase in terms of our understanding about one of the hottest issues in Cambodia as well as in the world as a whole. That is, after that informative presentation, we have gained a lot of knowledge about how everything is processed in the current Khmer Rouge Tribunal, the historical event that we used to only hear and know very little about.

By:

An Polin

Chhom Sotheary

Tang Rothana

Yi Longdy

Reflection on a Presentation about The Extra-ordinary Chamber in the Court of Cambodia (ECCC)

2010-10-10T00:59:00.000-07:00

A group of people from ECCC did a fairly good job presenting to us one of the most fascinating topics among most Cambodian people. The topic of the Khmer Rouge Tribunal to bring justice to the victims of the most brutal act of crime against humanity in the history of Cambodia and, at the same time, to prosecute those who were involved in the conduct of this inhumane behaviour was brought onto the table for us to see and better understand. As part of the audience, our group is particularly interested in one issue as to the reason why, despite the consumption of a huge amount of resources—in terms of both money and time, this case is still quite far from being fully completed.

Based on our understanding about the presentation, this massive consumption of resources, both time and money, is the result of corruption and mismanagement of people working in the court. As said by one of the presenter, “some people in the court are living a very easy life.” Apparently, they are paid very high salaries, but some do very little work. The judges, for example, tend to work very slowly and spend a lot of time making decisions even on very small issues. This factor shows ineffectiveness and inefficiency in the way they work. Some may argue that those people intend to make the case continue as long as possible so that they can keep on taking advantage of their high salary. Anyway, despite the seeming concern and dissatisfaction of the speaker, who is one of the international employees in ECCC, on how the court is being processed, he sounded as there could not do anything much to fasten this prolonged procedure. Almost everything and power is in the hand of the local people.

In addition to the matter of corruption and mismanagement, it is also due to the presumption of guilt that makes it so hard to bring an end to this prosecution. Because the Khmer Rouge genocide is such an enormous issue and almost every Cambodian of the current generations is, to a great extent, educated to deem this act as so repugnant and inhumane to a point where everyone contributing—no matter how much—the making of the regime is automatically thought to be automatically wrong and deserve appropriate punishment and no further consideration and investigation is needed. In short, because of its being very infamous, guilt is automatically presumed upon everyone involved. This is why, in both international and national perspectives, decisions in the prosecution of the five persons being accused cannot be swiftly made.

Seeing the slow progress of this tribunal, doubts and negative opinions about it appear to have taken shape among some of us. Over the period of more than three years since the existence of ECCC, more than 100 million US dollars has been used up in the process. It has been definitely a very big investment that is not likely to earn back any appropriate result. There does not seem to be any success in prospect. Although successful, the impact the tribunal would make would be just to reduce the anger of some Cambodian people and bring some justice to those who are already dead. All that is done to punish the offenders, who are already very old and almost die, would be simply life imprisonment, which means just a few years, or even a few months, before natural death strikes them.

However, it is better to do something that is somehow impactful rather than doing nothing at all. In spite of the spending of millions of dollars and years of time, at least, ECCC has brought about some justice to Cambodian people who have lost their lives and to those whose beloved relatives and friends were killed in the regime. Also, ECCC has provided the new generations of Cambodians with better understandings and deeper insight into the issues, which is believed to discourage such atrocious acts from happening in the land of Cambodia ever again. For us, the Critical Thinking, this presentation has at least given us something to reflect upon and practice thinking critically about.

By:

An Polin

Chhom Sotheary

Tang Rothana

Yi Longdy

Scavengers at Stung Meanchey Municipal Waste Dump

2010-10-10T00:53:00.000-07:00

I. Introduction:

As Cambodia is developing, apparent improvements have emerged in a remarkable way. Everywhere in Phnom Penh, as far as the eyes can see, bigger roads have been constructed; big luxurious cars are moving along the roads; beautiful buildings and houses start to rise; people travel around, some in their professional uniforms and some in clean fashionable, colorful clothes, looking handsome and beautiful. It seems that a whole new world has come and Cambodia is on its right way towards development. However, many of us fail to notice some of the most miserable sights this city has to offer.

At the southwest of Phnom Penh lies a huge ‘smoky’ mountain of waste, where refuse from almost every household in Phnom Penh is dumped; it is the Stung Meanchey dump site. More than being just a dump site, it is also the working place where several hundred Cambodians are dwelling on. Every day, people—some are children aged 7, 10, 13 and all ages in between (Barboza)—scavenge through piles of extremely foul and awfully stinky rubbish in search for pieces of material that can be sold for a few hundred riels—the amount which is little but crucial for survival of the scavengers and their families. The sight of the vulnerable scavengers and their situation are so unpleasant that, if compared to the razzmatazz of the city, it is a totally different world.

While there are hundreds, or even thousands, currently living in such a sad condition, having almost nothing to eat, many other Cambodians are taking everything around them for granted. For instance, habits of ordering too many courses of food for a meal to eat when going to restaurants and then leaving plenty unfinished and eventually thrown into rubbish bins are not rare at all among some rich people. Such wrong deeds should be changed, and that is why our group of the class, Personal Growth and Development, has come to a unanimous agreement and chosen the topic about scavengers at Stung Meanchey dump site as the second assignment to present to the whole class. This is a social issue that is definitely happening in our country, which should certainly be taken into our consideration. Our group’s effort to bring this issue onto the table will hopefully help open the eyes of other Cambodians to some of the facts that our group believes will be improved as long as the problem is deeply realized and understood.

Based on our discussion, fieldwork, research from the internet, and our communication with a few organizations whose missions are to help better lives of those pitiful scavengers, this paper will look at the findings about the scavengers and their lifestyle, some of the root causes as to why they resort to taking up this activity as a way of living, as well as some potential dangers to themselves and to the Cambodian society as a whole. Some viable solutions that the Cambodian government, non-governmental organizations, and individuals have done and can do to curb this massive problem will also be thrown into focus.

II. Facts and Statistics:

Located in the southwestern outskirts of Phnom Penh (Tale of Asia), in the same-name district, Stung Mean Chey, the Stung Mean Chey dump site exists as the biggest garbage dump in Cambodia, covering the area of 1000 acre (Dakowicz, 2005). Literally, Stung Mean Chey is where refuse and all the waste carried from almost every household in Phnom Penh are collected and dumped on a daily basis. Although supposedly regarded as waste and no longer wanted by many, those unwanted materials are deemed as life-savers by a group of people, known as scavengers. To them, seeing approaching trucks of waste about to be dumped is like anticipating valuable opportunities for their survivals.

Regardless of whether it is weekday, weekend, or holiday, according to an article written by Dakowicz (2005), an approximate number of 2000 people, about 600 of whom are children, live and work there, on the dump. Some have their ragged, makeshift shacks on the nearby land charged with little rent by the landowners; some even build their huts on the mountain of garbage. According to the same article, they are either people from Phnom Penh or those who came to Phnom Penh to seek for jobs but ended up in the slums. To support their living, from day to day, they go through particularly filthy piles of newly released dumps looking for plastic bags, tin cans and other recyclable materials (Barboza, 2003), which they can further sell for meager amount of money. As cited in Dakowics’ article (2005), based on the source from The Centre for Children’s Happiness (CCH), on average, adult rubbish pickers can earn around 4500 riels (1.12$) a day; on the other hand, children can earn about half that amount, which is roughly around 50 cents.

Although the money amounted each day from all members of the family picking through rubbish is more than it was in some of the scavengers’ rural village, from which they originated (CCH, as cited by Dakowics (2005)), they are actually suffering from all kinds of misery and are also prone to many potential dangers to their health and lives. For example, because of financial difficulties and demand of work force for survival of the family, many children in the slumps are deprived of going to school and of their rights for formal education—a fundamental aspect of lives as a child. They live in the extremely polluted environment, where diseases and other dangerous, toxic substances are highly exposed. (The causes and effects from living such lives will be discussed in details later in this paper.)

Seeing such appalling conditions of the scavengers, there have been a number of measures and actions taken by the government, NGOs, and even individual Cambodians. One of the NGOs, which have been working for the welfare of the poor in the slump since 1995 and which has brought tremendous change to many lives, is a French organization named Pour un Sourire d'Enfant (PSE) (For Children’s Smiling, in English). Born from pure feeling of sympathy and willingness to help of a French woman, the organization mainly aims, as its name suggests, to bring out the hearted smiles from vulnerable children and, as yet, has helped over 6000 people, according to an employee working full-time at PSE (personal communication, January 23, 2009).

III. Causes

There are many factors behind the fact that there exist many people picking up rubbish for a living at Stung Meanchey, and the paper will look at 4 main root causes.

a. Poverty and Ignorance:

It is certain that people do not resort to living in such a bad-conditioned life because they want to and, of course, rich people with a lot of money will never get close to even thinking about picking through unhealthy and disgusting rubbish; only the very poor do. That is, one of the primary causes is poverty. Indeed, many families in Cambodia are living under poverty line, and some are so destitute that, to them, either they live with whatever this mountain of refuse has to offer or lives would not even go on for themselves, for their relatives and/or for their children.

Adding to them being financially very poor, it is believed that it is their ignorance and the fact that very few of them get some kind of good education that keep them grounded in this poverty with no easy ways of getting out. First, because the parents leading the family are not educated at all or have very low education, it is extremely hard for them to find jobs with decent pay. One of the common jobs among such uneducated people is, for example, hauling 50-kilogram bags of cements, and the wage received from this kind of work, although the tasks are very tiring, is usually very skimpy—so skimpy that these wages alone will not be able to cover the costs for all the family’s basic needs, such as shelter and food. This leads that the children of the family have to go out to the dump and pick through rubbish for some income. Secondly, when the parents are uneducated, their ignorance is likely to prevent them from seeing any benefits in education at all; that is why some do not even bother to seek for ways to send their children to school rather than to send them to work in the garbage dump. They have no plans, they have no ambition, they succumb to their destiny, they do not feel the need to fight hard for change and difference for their lives and for the lives of their children, they take no initiatives to improve themselves, and they are stuck in this garbage. Ignorance blocks it all.

b. Domestic Issues:

The fact of alcoholism, domestic violence and other domestic issues also play a part in forcing many people into being rubbish pickers. In some families, because, for example, the father is useless, is not earning any money at all, and is always drinking and staying high, and at the same time, the mother is sick and/or disabled to work long hours to earn, which can result from the drunken husband’s use of violence towards her, for sons and/or daughters, who are still young and incapable of finding any other jobs, going around the dump site adjacent to their houses and looking for recyclable and sellable goods may be the only choice they have. In this situation, if the children do not help and take some kinds of responsibilities, the whole family may be starved to death.

c. Impoverishment by Wars and Diseased Parents/Guardians

Well-known for its many years of civil wars and most recently, the most notorious and inhuman era of Pol Pot Regime, Cambodia has been left with many types of tragedy, some of which is still alive as yet. After wars—the factor, according to our group’s personal interview with a full-time employee at Pour un Sourire d'Enfant (PSE) (personal communication, January 23, 2009), deemed as one of the key reasons behind being scavengers at Stung Meanchey, there left many soldiers who became jobless and some were disabled and handicapped. Literally, those soldiers, because of being disabled and unable to get hired for an occupation and/or because of having no other skills or professions other than how to fight in a battlefield, became very impoverished. As seen sometimes along the streets or at some public places, some people in their military uniform are begging for money.

In some other families, since one or both parents are no longer living, the children become worse in poverty and destitution. Because they are still young and unable to do what most adults can, they have no choice but to adopt scavenging as a mean for their survival. In this regard, according to the website of Tale of Asia, Phoeun’s life is a very good example. Phoeun’s family used to include a father and two other sisters, but they all have passed away, leaving her, her older sister, and a younger brother living with only a mother, who had unfortunately became incapacitated due to an accident during her work. Therefore, Phoeun—who had been one of the scavengers since she was nine years old—and her older sister had to work to provide money. Phoeun then chose to scavenge Stung Meanchey rubbish every day, often earning only about a thousand riels per day. It was that Phoeun had to do this, or her family would not have enough to eat.

d. Less Advanced Technology and Poor Waste Management

Actually, when talking about what has causes scavenging to happen, it is also relevant to look at what make it possible. Of course, if there is no rubbish, there is no rubbish scavenging, and, likewise, if the rubbish is properly controlled and set out of access of anyone attempting to scavenge, scavenging activities will not be possible either. And this is the problem, as unlike highly-developed or industrialized countries such as the US, Japan, and other European countries, Cambodia is still unable to afford needed technology for waste disposal management and waste and refuse are usually dumped inappropriately with no rules or punishment having been effectively applied yet. In the case of Stung Meanchey, tons and tons of waste are dumped in the open air with no modern types of recycling at all. This is what makes and even encourage the very poor living around to get on and comb through mounds of rubbish in hope of finding something valuable to their lives.

IV. Effects:

There are loads of miseries around the globe because of unbalanced distribution of resources. While the riches are wasting resources, the poor are suffering through starvation and shortage. For this reason, it is impossible to live in an ideal world because the poor could bring many unpleasant and immoral problems to the society, and a good example of that group of people is scavengers. Thus, what are the effects that the scavengers could bring to themselves, their families, and their society?

a. To the scavengers themselves:

Individually, scavengers could face many challenges in nearly all aspects of their living. Firstly, they are the most vulnerable citizens to respiratory diseases since working in the dumping sites, they daily inhale highly toxic chemicals into their bodies. A Japanese study has found that there is a high level of dioxin in the smoke, which comes from burning chemicals in the waste; dioxin is a highly toxic chemical that can cause cancer if inhaled over a certain period of time. As a result, bad coughs, frequent headaches, and dizziness are common among the scavengers (Dakowicz, 2005).

Moreover, according to The New York Times by Barboza published on August 25, 2003, most of the children who scavenge are barefooted and shirtless while they are searching for recyclable products such as bottles, milk cartons, detergent and condoms. Thus, it is very unsafe for them since the waste is sometimes soggy or even flooded during rainy season. According to the same source, it illustrates that once those children showed up at the local clinics, they are often found with rashes, infections, cuts, and bruises on their skin.

Additionally, the scavengers’ lifestyle often lacks of hygiene because of poor water supply. For example, a young scavenger may rush home and have their lunch without having a bath or even cleaning their hands.

A 53-year-old commune chief at Stung Meanchey said: “I am worried about the health of the kids and accidents can happen any time when they are picking up trash. Trucks have run over some children and bulldozers have buried some kids under the trash.” Many scavengers also face sleeping deprivation since they have to overwork in order for enough money to support their livings. According to Barboza (2003), many children at Stung Meanchey begin at around 3 a.m., when some of the first garbage trucks arrive, and they leave after 7 p.m. For this reason, they do not get enough sleep; thus, it weakens their immune system.

Besides health problem, some children cannot get adequate or proper education because they have to earn money to feed their family’s stomachs. Even though some children get the opportunity to study at school, they cannot perform it so well since they are somehow concerned about their family’s financial situation and they do not have time to revise their lessons or do their homework. For instance, a 13-year-old Sear Kim, who was interviewed by Mr. Nay Camnap, World Vision Cambodia Communication Officer, has had to scavenge since the age of nine because her mother has a heart disease, so she just stays at home and looks after her younger siblings (Nay, March 2008). Anyway, when deprived of being educated, children themselves are probable to be affected by many other indirect results, which vary from having very limited, narrow knowledge about the world and developing no ideas of which paths to walk so that they can get out of this situation of poverty to having no needful qualifications to find other jobs.

b. To Their Family:

Since the income of the scavengers is very low, the families have to live in a down-and-out situation—living in a ragged shack, having little to eat and sometimes not having sufficient food to fill their hungry stomachs, wearing dirty, smelly clothes, etc. Besides, the family of scavengers is often fragile and is vulnerable as the life of each member usually hangs in the balance. This is true due to the fact that the environment where they work and live is very dangerous. In the article about Stung Meanchey in the Tale of Asia website, it was written that “many families [at the dumpsite] are no longer intact, death being the most frequent cause.” They are prone to many kinds of diseases and injuries, and when they fall ill to any of the diseases or injuries, if not treated properly, the worst case, death, can occur. Death of members can destroy the entire family; not only can it bring emotional breakdown, but if the dead are the parents, who are the main breadwinners of the family, the family will also lose the backbone. Then, the destiny of the rest of this family will hang by a thread.

c. To The Society:

Families and individuals are founding cells of the society. If one or more cells are damaged or dead, it somehow has the impact on the whole society. One of the impacts is that when a group of people are uneducated and they are working in such an impoverished condition as scavengers, they are not doing anything that can potentially contribute to the development in the country. For example, if they are not earning a lot, they therefore cannot be spending a lot also, which means they are not contributing anything, or almost anything, to the flow of the economy of Cambodia, accordingly. Further, scavengers’ being humans and being Cambodian citizens are not put into full use. Let us imagine if those scavengers were not what they are now, there would chance that they can study and work as some of the human resources to improve Cambodia, to some extent.

What's more, Stung Meanchey dumpsite is also a breeding ground for some criminal acts and various illegal behaviours, which can definitely affect the stability and well-being of the society. Indeed, one of the root causes that lead people to resort to theft, robbery, drug abuse etc. is poverty, and all of the people picking Stung Meanchey rubbish for a living are, without a shadow of doubt, living in poverty. Therefore, it is logical to conclude that they can be forced to cause insecurity to Cambodia. For example, some can fall into drugs and glue-sniffing and then get so intoxicated that they dare to do anything, let alone fighting each other, stealing others’ properties, and robbing, just to name a few possibilities.

Besides, it is definitely a bag image scavenging in Stung Meanchey has made to our city and to our Cambodian society. Of course, it does not look good at all when there are people walking down the streets wearing filthy clothes, carrying a bag of rubbish, and from head to toes, looking physically wracked. Also, the minute that the scene of people in such a hellish condition like one of the scavengers reaches the eyes of the foreigners, they are likely to feel moved and kind of disturbed, which may give Cambodia the reputation of poverty, poor social welfare, bad governance, unreliable social accountability, and all the negativity, which are the kinds of reputation or image our society or our country do not in the slightest want to be thrust upon.

V. Reflection

As mentioned above, vulnerable scavengers who are living far away from the modern world of the city, but how are they different from us in term of the way of thinking—how do they reflect upon their lives and what do they see their lives to be into the future? With this question in mind, after we had worked through contents, our team decided to add this point, reflection, as one of the assignment’s major sections. In this section, we will examine two things, one of which is the vision of scavengers themselves and another is our vision concerning this major social issue.

a. Vision of the Scavengers

Sleeping with all tiredness late at night and waking up early in the morning is normally the habit of scavengers. To them, living this way seems like satisfying life-condition as long as they have enough to fill their stomach. They would agree to spend what is left of their lives every day at the dump-site with little or no complaint. We may find it uncivilized and unreasonably unambitious, but to them, the dump site is like a private company offering an acceptable pay that they can happily accept.

As already described, many scavengers, especially children, were born and ascribed with work in the dump site. Some were not provided choices from birth chiefly because they were born in a very poor family having no better work options than garbage pickers. Since their birth they have been trapped in the world of scavengers, giving no ideas as how to get out of this life. It is also possible that to them, the way they are living is not misery at all; it may be just a normal life, as they have very little knowledge about the world outside. For this group of scavenging children, it is likely that they do not even know about education—one of the ways by which they move on to a better life. As what is written in the article about Stung Meanchey in Tale of Asia website, “Ambition is non-existent. Though many teenagers express an interest to go to school, none has offered any ideas as to what they would study or what they would do with an education.” Some other children working there may have heard about education and other things other than their scavenging aspects of life and have the wish to get formal education, but apparently the problem is they do not know how.

Parents of some scavenging families do not seem to be happy and willing to participate in activities of NGOs to help educate their children. With a 15 minutes interview with the project manager of Promoting Access to Primary Education (a scenario to VCAO-Vulnerable Children Assistance Organization) on January 23, 2009, we have learnt that the children themselves can be very difficult to be convinced to join the organization’s project concerning informal education or vocational training. This is because the family of the target group is deeply in poverty. They would rather spend their valuable time to earn money than to study. They think it’s a big loss for sending one member of the family out of the participation in their job. It seems that they need a fair share from each family member to keep their whole family stable.

b. Our Vision

Although sharing the same planet and the same country with those pitiful scavengers, we are a group of people who live and are provided with much better opportunities. It is obvious, we have our own house, we have expensive clothes to wear, we have good schools to attend, we have knowledge and qualifications to work and earn money, and some even own cars, but they do not at all. Scavengers do not have ability to make choices as we do. They do not have any will and ambition to make things better for their daily lives that can be comparable to ours. Though they do, there might be little or no possibility for those wills and ambitions to be realized anyway.

On the other hand, we do have all these opportunities and choices. We are much luckier that those scavengers, so it is only fair that we give this fortunate life full appreciation. We have to bear with ourselves the attitude of not taking anything that we are given and have for granted so that we can fully capitalize on everything we have and live optimistically. We must be the master of ourselves, be confident and be productive.

VI. Solutions

Such social issue, although seeming to affect only that vulnerable group of people, can actually have implication on the whole image of the Cambodian society as a whole. Hence, it is necessary that everybody take part in eliminating or at least curbing this problem, in order that we can have a better Phnom Penh and a better Cambodia. It is not just those in authority, not just non-governmental organizations, and not just any individuals either. Solutions can be carried out by individuals, NGOs, and the government.

a. Individuals:

Many of those scavengers are just small children, but they have to earn money to support their families in such a dirty, hazardous environment. Though we are just students, we individuals can help them as well by just giving a little or some of our own time and our energy. We can spend some time and energy and/or a small amount of money to, for example:

- go directly to local NGOs that work with Stung Meanchey children and volunteer to teach them general knowledge such as one about health protection, no matter if it is done part-time, full time, or just once in a while;

- form a group and together initiate a project in favor of the people in Stung Meanchey garbage dump, which can be cooperated with local NGOs or financially supported and sponsored by donors and philanthropists interested in the project;

- go and meet with the children and motivate them, as well as—if possible—their parents, to realize the value of education and going to school;

- donate money to various causes that aims to earn for the benefits of those scavengers;

- make the suffering of scavengers known to other people, to seek for their contribution, support, and their understanding rather than their discrimination;

- participate in charitable events organized by NGOs or any group to help those scavengers and so on.

All the point raised above can be better clarified and explained in two of the activities having already done by some individuals or groups of individuals in Cambodia:

A group of student visiting children at Stung Meanchey waste dump:

According to Miss Sroeng Dany and Mr. Sum Sovan Panha—two of the participating students, a few months ago, a group of students from Paññāsāstra University of Cambodia and from the Royal University of Phnom Penh took initiatives, planned their own charitable event, and went directly to an organization located right next to the Stung Meanchey dump site to give children a decent lunch, some studying materials, and a friendly and educational visit (personal communication, January 23, 2009).

With some contributions from each student, the event was a success. The students were warmly welcomed by the organization, as well as by the children. They also got chance to have fun with those children and at the same time, to teach them some general knowledge concerning hygiene lifestyle, in particular. Even though it was just a three or four hour event, the visit was described as very rewarding; it gave the students the feeling of joy and satisfaction from having done something for others and for their society.

Food Program by Initiatives of Changes Association (ICA)

ICA is a non-governmental association located in Battambong and Phnom Penh, and one of the program of ICA in Phnom Penh being conducted monthly is Food Program. This program is usually done at the weekend at the end of each month, and the program is about volunteers from various places, not necessarily people working or volunteering at ICA, gathering together and cooking food for the poor. Volunteers in this program are not required to contribute any money to buying food at all; budgets behind the program are from anyone willing and volunteering to donate. Usually, what each participant of the program does is to cook and pack the food into boxes so that it can be distributed as a meal to those in need, those who are poor, which also include some scavengers.

Although apparently, such acts would not make any big changes or differences to our society, at least, it presents to other Cambodian some good deeds of love and sharing among people in the same society. Also, their small acts of charity also give those who get the food some kinds of a sense of love, care, and inspiration to live on; it can be a form of emotional support for them.

b. Non-governmental organizations

Cambodia is somewhat still a poor country that needs donation and assistance from the outside world; therefore, NGOs—especially ones financially supported by overseas philanthropic donors—play crucial roles in improving the condition of people scavenging at Stung Meanchey. There are many NGOs in Cambodia that work in connection with the Stung Meanchey Municipal Waste Dump, but we would like to simply take one particular NGO, which our group have visited and studied about, into discussion—the one which has been working outstandingly hard and well in helping the children in Stung Meanchey. It is Pour un Sourire d'Enfant (PSE).

Pour un Sourire d’Enfant (PSE) (For Children’s Smiling, in English):

PSE is a French non-profit organization, which since its establishment in 1995 has working very closely with and for the disadvantaged, destitute, and uneducated people who scavenge at the dump site of Stung Meanchey to survive.

Based on an interview conducted by our group with an employee at PSE, who asked not to be named, we have collected certain information concerning some work of this French organization. The information we received was as follow:

1. Education:

One primary aspect of work of PSE is to provide education for those unfortunate people. It has established schools, in which education is offered in two main ways. First, education provision is done in the form of general education, in which classes range from kindergarten to grade 12, of which standards are comparable and accepted by the Ministry of Education. This means that those in grade twelve in PSE are eligible to take part in the national high school examinations. Further, a few students who are outstanding are able to go for their higher education in local universities in Cambodia. The second main way to educate those vulnerable people is through special training programs (which is for people who are 19 or older). There are classes of cookery, bakery, secretary, gardening etc.

Besides these two main ways, PSE also has programs of financially supporting underprivileged children to go to public schools; 52 public schools are currently working with PSE on this program. In such programs, the children do not have to come to classes at PSE; they only need to go to their own respective school and study.

2. Food and accommodation:

An approximate number of 80 female children, whose conditions in their families are comparatively worse than others in a way that there are, for instance, severe cases of domestic violence etc, are provided with a place to reside in, food to eat, and all other necessities to live. In this regard, those girls usually stay in the organization and do not live in their house with their families at all; the organization is literally their house.

For other categories of people helped by the organization, on the other hand, they are only given a place to study, some to eat, and sometimes some financial support, and they still have to live by themselves with their families.

All in all, Pour un Sourire d’Enfant aims to give breed happiness in the living of those scavengers, to get them out of the living hell, and most importantly, to bring out the hearted smiles on the faces of those vulnerable people—children in particular.

c. Government and those in authority

If people and NGOs alone work but the government do not cooperate or work alongside, the efforts are not likely go smoothly. Therefore, the government also is an important part to solve this problem and help those poor children and others involved.

First, the corporation of the government with NGOs is very necessary in a way that, for example, the government can provide the land for NGOs to build schools and/or centers for educating those children and for accommodating homeless children as well. In this respect, the helpful and cooperative government is a factor to encourage people living overseas or international organizations to give out and use their funds and budgets to establish various non-profit NGOs and work towards the welfare of people like those scavengers at Stung Meanchey. Moreover, the government can, too, support them by providing them with some money that can be used to assist their living.

In addition, the government should find and implement a variety of measures to create more jobs available for the poor so that parents of those scavenging families can earn money to feed the families without the demand of their children having to work. To achieve this, matters such as foreign direct investment should be among some of top priorities to achieve in the government’s agenda. For example, policies should be made less bureaucratic and the system less corrupt so that foreign investors are more willing to come to Cambodia and use their money to establish businesses, which will, in turn, provides thousands of jobs for Cambodian people.

VII. Recommendation

In fact, the most important message we are trying to convey in writing this paper is to make known to everybody in the class the truth about lives full of hardship, misery and emptiness of some of the Cambodians, who day after day live on what considered by most as useless and rubbishy. It is also to wake us all up to the fact that life is precious, and because we are not living like those in the garbage dump, it is even a thousand times more justifiable for us to value what our lives have to offer and to never take anything around us for granted. It is good to realize and remember that the bowl of rice that we can easily pour into the rubbish bin can actually save a life that is living in starvation.

We also hope our presentation, to an extent, inspires other students to get more involved in volunteer work, in which some kind of help is given to the poor. As clearly indicated earlier in this writing about what individuals can do to help better the lives of those rubbish pickers, we hope to witness inspired actions carried out in some ways by other Cambodians, especially those who have not known about, cared to do, and done anything of this volunteer type before. We believe that it is worthwhile to realize our power in making a difference. Without each and every of us, who have been referred to as individuals, both the governments and other NGOs cannot advance. We are the fundamental particles of the NGOs, of the government, of our community, and of our entire country. According to this reason, we believe that we, individuals, possess in our small hands the power to make big change and big difference, if “we are the change that we want to see”.

References

Barboza, D. (2003, August 25). Phnom Penh Journal; Children scavenge a life, of sorts, in the garbage. The New York Times. Retrieved January 1, 2009, from http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html

Dakowicz, M. (2005). The garbage dump in Phnom Penh. Retrieved January 24, 2009, from http://www.pbase.com/maciekda/stungmeanchey2005

Hazardous and harmful child labour (2002.) Retrieved January 24, 2009, from Global Fund for Children website: http://www.globalfundforchildren.org/pdfs/gfc_harmful_labor.pdf

Nay, C. (2008, March). The happiest moment for a scrap collection girl. Retrieved January 2, 2009, from http://worldvisioncambodia.org/featuredet.aspx?id=100

Tales of Asia (Last updated on January 2002). Stung Mean Chey. Retrieved January 24, 2009, from http://www.talesofasia.com/25cambodia-stungmeanchey.htm

Written and prepared by:

YI Longdy
KAING Muyleang
KONG Samphy
PHANG Sokpove
UCH Kong Leakhena
YI Solida

Stock Market

2010-10-10T00:19:00.000-07:00

To quote its definition exactly as it is written by Bonello in the Microsoft Encarta 2008, a stock market, also known as a stock exchange or a bourse, refers to “organized market for buying and selling financial instruments known as securities, which include stocks, bonds, options, and futures.” Basically, it is where one can sell and buy stocks or other derivatives at agreed prices, which are described in Wikipedia webpage as “securities listed on a stock exchange as well as those only traded privately” (Wikipedia, June 2009).

“Most stock exchanges have specific locations where the trades are completed.” (Bonello, 2007). For a company to have its stocks traded at these exchanges, it is a must that the stocks be listed, and to be listed requires certain criteria to be met and satisfied (Bonello). However, there are also stocks that are not sold and bought at a particular site; unlisted stocks are not. Rather than at a specific exchange, unlisted stocks are usually traded by telephone or by computer; in other words, they are traded over the counter (Bonello).

The stock exchange acts more like “a gathering forum” where investors and the general public put their money into whatever companies they trust to earn them back profits. Those companies, on the other hand, can sell their stocks/shares to anyone and take the money as loans (The Mirror, 2009). The money is then used by the companies to further invest in extending their activities to earn more profits. The stock clients, who can become shareholders and co-owners of the companies who sell shares, can always gain benefits from their buying as long as the companies are profitable.

Importance of stock exchanges

So why were stock exchanges created? What are the benefits of their existence? Actually, as already mentioned in the description of a stock exchange, stock exchanges allows investors and the general public to earn profits out of lending their money to companies and companies to use the money to generate more incomes. However, stock exchanges bear importance that goes beyond just the making profits of individuals and enterprises; they also make up crucial part of the economy of a country, as well as of the world.

Importance to individuals and companies:

The stock market is described in Wikipedia as “the most important sources for companies to raise money” (Wikipedia, 2009). When investors or the general public spend their money to buy shares of ownership sold at stock the company or corporation, the money can be used as additional funds for the company/corporation’s expansion. The more money there is to use as capital, more business activities can be performed, which is likely to result in more returns to the company, as well as to the purchasers of its stocks. In reciprocation, the stock buyers can get benefits depending on how many shares they have of the corporation that is making profits. Further, as the businesses are doing better and better, the stock prices rise accordingly, making the stockholders wealthier and wealthier as they can sell the stocks in a higher price than when they first bought them. In fact, there are many people who have made millions of dollars out of this stock investment, one of whom is Warren Buffett. As quoted by Wikipedia (2009) from the preface to a published biography about Buffett, a “long-term value-oriented” stock investor, Buffett started his career with just $ 100 and ended up building himself as a multi-billionaire from the end of the 20^th century to the beginning of the 21^st century.

Besides, “exchanges also act as the clearinghouse for each transaction” (Wikipedia, 2009). That is, they guarantee that they sellers get payment for their sold securities, collecting and delivering the shares. In this manner, the risk of the counterparty defaulting on the transaction that might happen to an individual buyer or seller can be curbed or eliminated (2009).

Finally, one of the factors about stock exchanges that can greatly benefit individuals is the large-scale employment that is inherent with its existence. Stock markets create a lot of speculators, arbitragers, and stock brokers, just to name a few. With good understanding of the economic situations, intelligence, plus decisiveness, these professionals can make a lot of money. Other than this, for employment in general, for a stock exchange institution to run, many people are hired, creating thousands of jobs, ranging from blue-collar work, such as ones of security guards, to white-collar profession of skilled labourers and top-level management.

Importance of stock markets on larger scales:

The positive power that bears with stock markets does not only affect individual person or businesses involved; it can influence the economies of the countries where stock markets resides and even of the world as a whole.

Activities in stock exchanges are crucial forces that stimulate development or change within economic activity, and can “influence or be an indicator of social mood” (Wikipedia, 2009). The condition of stock exchanges is often a primary indicator of the strength, healthiness, development of an economy. An economy with stock market doing well, or “on the rise”, that economy is regarded as “an up and coming economy” (2009). That is, increasing prices of stocks, for example, indicate extended business investment, and thus more productive activities, of companies or corporations and vice versa.

Also, when all these activities, which come with the running of stock markets, function smoothly, economic growth can be facilitated. Actually, when companies or corporations are doing well with high productivity indicated by the rising prices of their stocks, they tend to produce more goods and services, one advantage of which is giving themselves the advantages of economies of scales. Further, as mentioned earlier about stock exchanges acting as clearing house to eliminate or fight against risks for both sellers and buyers of stocks, the businesses are operating with lower levels of risks. “[L]ower costs and lower enterprise risks promotes the production of goods and services as well as employment. In this way the financial system contributes to increased prosperity” (Wikipedia, 2009).

Bibliography

Bonello, Frank J. “Stock Exchange.” Microsoft ® Student 2008 [DVD]. Redmond, WA: Microsoft Corporation, 2007

The Mirror, (2009, January 21). Cambodia will start the first stock market in December, but will not be successful as planned. Retrieved July 06, 2009, from http://cambodiamirror.wordpress.com/2009/01/22/cambodia-will-start-the-first-stock-market-in-december-but-will-not-be-successful-as-planned-wednesday-2112009/

Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Retrieved Retrieved July 6, 2009, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stock_market

Potential Benefits Stock Market Would Bring to Cambodia

2010-10-10T00:10:00.000-07:00

“Lifeblood of a capitalist economy” is what was called of the securities market by the very own Prime Minister Hun Sen, who is a big supporter of the government’s plan to set up the stock market in Cambodia (Postlewaite, 2007). The Prime Minister, when speaking of the significance of the financial market, said, “The introduction of a financial market is very important. It can help to mobilize financial resources for long term investment in social, economic and infrastructure projects in Cambodia” (Vannara, 2007).

Some items of the importance of the stock market for Cambodia are as:

1. Increased capital for businesses:

In current economic environment in Cambodia, banks only allow limited amounts for lending to entrepreneurs and businesspeople to build and expand their businesses. “[T]hey are hungry for capital that the banks—small themselves—can’t or won’t provide” (Postlewaite, 2007). Also, the lending rates are very high, making having access to capital for those businesspeople quite an “impossibility” (2007). Therefore, with the stock exchange in existence in Cambodia, access to capital can be made easier and thus businesses in Cambodia can do more of their activities and grow, which can influence the prosperity of Cambodia’s economy as a whole. Sok Kong, chairman of the private Sokimex Group, complained about the limited amount of money lent at high interest rates by local banks and hoped to list Sokimex on the new stock market so that Sokimex could use the capital to, for example, to “build more rooms for the tourists flocking to the Kingdom’s beaches and temples” (2007).

Likewise, the president and chief executive officer of Acleda Bank (“Cambodia’s leading microfinance lender”), In Channy, expressed his perspective of hoping to capitalize on the chance provided by the stock market to “raise money to expand this bank’s activities to many more villages” (Postlewaite, 2007). He was quoted as saying, “We want to list on the market so we can grow and grow. We need to raise capital. Investors need to be able to invest,…” (2007).

This will also be an effective attraction for investors in other countries to come invest in Cambodia, enlarging the economic activities in Cambodia.

2. Improved transparency, fairness and accountability in Cambodia

According to Huot Pum, “the future stock exchange would play a key part in getting rid of the evils of Cambodian economy” (Ros & Gouanvic, 2008). Indeed, to be listed on the stock market, enterprises must meet and satisfy specific requirements. They need to improve their accounting systems, for example by getting their financial reports official audited, so that it is more transparent to citizens, which is crucial for winning the public’s confidence and trust. In other words, the companies need to get rid of “corruption and come clean” (Ros & Gouanvic, 2008). In this way, corruption in Cambodia can be curbed and reduced, as agreed by Inpyo Lee, the director of the general commercial development project of Korea Exchange.

3. Improved financial standing of citizens:

Once transparency and accountability ensured, trust and confidence from citizens will be drawn and improved. This encourages Cambodia citizens to use their savings, which has always been hidden “under the mats,” and use them for their benefits. With their money invested in the stock market, there is a good chance they will make profits, which can be consumed to better their living conditions.

The financial markets would also provide a lot of job opportunities for Cambodians. They can work in stock-market related fields, from being staff in the institution itself to being independent arbitragers, speculators, and brokers. Besides, because stock exchanges invite foreign investments, Cambodian citizens can also work for those new businesses in Cambodia.

4. Cambodia’s increased independence of international aid

“Hang Chuon Naron, secretary general of Cambodia’s Ministry of Economy and Finance, told the Phnom Penh Post that he hopes a stock market will provide a more long-term source of finance than the foreign aid (around $600m annually) that the country is currently reliant upon” (The Asia File, 2008). He was quoted as saying, “We hope the stock exchange will provide longer-term finance compared to what we have relied on in the past, such as banks, national budgets, foreign aid and foreign investment. I think in five or ten years, the stock exchange will play a key role in strengthening Cambodia’s financial sector, but we must proceed carefully to build trust from our people and investors.”

Bibliography

Postlewaite, S. (2007, October 25). Coming soon: A Cambodian stock exchange. The BusinessWeek. Retrieved July 6, 2009, from http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/oct2007/gb20071025_950280.htm

The Asia File (2008, Oct 28). Is Cambodia ready for its own stock markets? Retrieved July 6, 2009, from http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/finance/theasiafile/5492975/Is_Cambodia_ready_for _its_own_stock_market/

Vannara. (2007, June 13). Cambodia Stock Market Launches in 2009. Retrieved July 06, 2009, from http://vannara.wordpress.com/2007/06/13/cambodia-stock-market-launches-in-2009/

Stock Exchange in Cambodia: Is Cambodia Ready for Stock Market?

2010-10-10T00:02:00.000-07:00

For the last several years, the economy of Cambodia has undergone quite an improvement, with Cambodia’s GDP currently standing at $ 11.2 billion in 2008, according to Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs of the U.S. Department of States (May 2009). This figure may seem so superficial if compared to ones of developed countries with huge economy such as the US with the 2005 GDP of ($ 12 trillion) (Watts, n.d.); however, if examining Cambodia’s economy some years ago (for example, in 2005 Cambodia’s economy was sized only $ 6.2 billion in GDP) (Chandler & Rooney, n.d.), it has been definitely an impressive progress. But with this, one might ask how healthy this economy is; is economy with GDP currently at $ 11.2 billion enough for the country with the population (2008 census) of 13.4 million (Chandler & Rooney, n.d.) and the geographical size of 181,035 km². Is it strong enough to take up other type of economical institutions that have played significant parts in most developed and some developing economies, such as the stock market?

With regards to the recent attempt of the Cambodian government to introduce and set up stock market in this country, this paper will mainly look at various aspects of the Cambodian’s current situations, both encouraging and discouraging for the establishment and existence of a stock market. This will be done through the analysis of opinions and evidences raised by various groups of people, from independent economists to government officials. This paper will also give the records of some of the ideas expressed by a few of the public regarding their general perception about the stock markets and its introduction into Cambodia. Basically, this paper is designed to test if Cambodia is ready for stock market.

[...]

Stock Market in Cambodia

Cambodia may be small in terms of its newly-born economy but in terms of ambition, it is rather big. With countries sharing the same continent surging ahead in Asian markets, Cambodia is “rushing to join the crowd,” according to an article, published in the BusinessWeek, by Susan Postlewaite, an international business writer based in Phnom Penh (Postelwaite, 2007). According to the same writer, “the country has been moving full speed ahead since September 6, when it announced an agreement with the Korea Exchange to launch a Cambodian stock exchange by 2009—and a handful of the country’s biggest corporate players are lining up to get in first.”

The project of a stock market in Cambodia was initiated in 2005 (Ros & Gouanvic, 2008), but it was in late 2006, when the Korea Exchange (KRX), which runs South Korea’s stock market and assisted Vietnam to develop Vietnam’s financial markets, signed and sent a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to the government of Cambodia to set up a jointed venture to manage and develop the stock market, as reported by The Cambodian Press Review (VietNamNet/Xinhuanet, 2006). As expressed in the same source, with this MOU signed, the government, according to Mr. Chea Penh Chheang, Secretary of State at the Ministry of Finance, started working on a draft law on the stock market, which would come into effect in 2007, and the stock market was planned to be opened in 2009. Following this, in September 2007, the Cambodian government announced a stock market project, after which the Cambodian Securities and Stock Exchange Law was adopted and a Securities Commission of Cambodia created (The Mirror, 2009). These conditions were favourable for the creation of the stock exchange, which would issue shares and take action against whatever companies violating the law (2009).

“The Cambodian government [would] own a minimum 51 percent in the new bourse while KRX [would] hold as much as 49 percent” (Rhee, 2008, Jan 22).

Preparations for the coming of the stock market:

To make well-prepared for the coming of stock markets into Cambodia, the Cambodian government, with funds and technical support from South Korea, has performed series of steps, one of which was that, because in order for companies/enterprises to be listed they must meet specific requirements, the government began to put into force a law demanding firms to undergo financial audits (The Associated Press, 2007). In this initial stage, as Ngy Tayi, an undersecretary of state for Cambodia’s Ministry of Finance, was quoted, about 400 enterprises were obliged to submit their financial reports to independent auditors by December 2007 (2007, August). With regard to the same article, companies subject to auditing need to meet at least two of three criteria—“having annual turnover of three billion riel (US $ 731,700), total assets of two billion riel (US $ 487,800) and 100 employees”—according to a regulation issued by the Finance Ministry.

Besides, Cambodia has also been prepared materially. With $ 1.8 million promised by South Korea in 2007 to pay on trainings and helping set up the modern stock market in Cambodia (Rhee, 2008, Jan 22), the building set has been architecturally designed to host Cambodia securities market. Plus, computing and other general equipment has already been purchased. Moreover, other than material resources, the Cambodian government has, too, taken care of human resources to make the scheme possible. The Securities and Exchange Commission of Cambodia (SECC) is in operation, with a contact with the Ministry of Justice having been established (Ros & Gouanvic, 2008). The minister told, “The training of ‘employees and future collaborators, both coming from the public and private sectors’ is being carried out” (2008, Oct.).

Who would be participating?

As indicated by Huot Pum, Deputy Director General of the Securities and Exchange Commission of Cambodia (SECC), companies that could participate could be either foreign or Cambodian, and the local companies would be comprised of banks and big groups such as Sokimex; for foreign enterprises, ones from Korea, Thailand and Vietnam have shown their interests (Ros & Gouanvic, 2008).

Furthermore, according to an article in China View, as said by KRX manager Inpyo Lee, the main source of liquidity in the early stages of the stock market would be institutional investors and foreigners. And during these early stages, before the exchange was “operating ‘normally,’” there would be 30 companies listed.

[...]

Is Cambodia ready to handle stock market?

“The financial crisis, which set off in the United States and is still shaking countries all over the world, did not spare a single Asian stock market. But Cambodia, right in the middle of this financial crisis situation, is about to launch its own stock exchange, and plans it for 2009” (Ros & Gouanvic, 2008).

This is definitely controversial. In fact, the initiatives of bringing a stock market into Cambodia have not always been well received; many have shown their negative opinions. Economists, one of whom is Kang Chandararoth, expressed their concern about the future of the newly-created exchange if it happens to fail winning the trust of the public and the institutions” (Ros & Gouanvic, 2008). However, a lot of good words, uttered with optimism, were also heard. The authorities and the Securities and Exchange Commission of Cambodia (SECC) both held a much more positive perspective, perceiving it as “the right moment to create a new financial market which, so they hope, will play a leading part in the kingdom's economy” (2008).

Hence, it is only fair that we take time considering arguments from both sides.

Points against the introduction of the stock market into Cambodia:

There may be a boom in Cambodia’s economy for the past several years, but this progress is still largely dependent on massive amount of funds “pumped into the country each year in the form of international aid…” This economic growth that Cambodia has been enjoying, however, seems to take a decreasing trend. Also, “the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said that Cambodia's economy will come under intense pressure in 2009 as tourism, garments and construction take a hit from the global economic meltdown” (Xinhua, 2009).

Sam Rainsy, the leader of the Cambodia opposition party, who used to be a former finance minister himself, is strongly against the government’s ambition to set up the stock market (ABC Radio Australia, 2007). One point to support this standpoint of his is the prevailing state of corruption in Cambodian societies (Cambodia was ranked number 162 out of 180 most corrupt countries by the Transparency International (Postlewaite, 2007)); Cambodia still has yet to adopt the anti-corruption law —a factor that can present hazards to investors. He claimed, “As long as we don’t ensure the rule of law, as long as we don’t really fight against corruption, any stock exchange in Cambodia will not function properly.” He also expressed his concern that the corrupted, with the authority they have, would “manipulate the market” and unfairly capitalize on the stock market and make money at the expenses made by “the poor, innocent investors,” with reference to the same source. On this point, the Director of the Cambodia Institute of Development Studies, Kang Chandararath, agreed that corruption would lead to various misconducts, such as “hiding facts in financial reports about capital, losses, and profits” (The Mirror, 2009), which is an obvious disadvantage to the investors.

With such issues as corruption and bribery, attaining trust from the general public is made even more difficult. Kang Chandararoth asserted, “Before taking any action, we must gradually inspire confidence among the public. Then, and only then, we will be able to create the stock market. The contrary would be wrong: creating the market and then gaining people’s trust….” (Ros & Gouanvic, 2008). Gaining trust can only be done slowly, little by little, leaving very little hope that the stock market can be launched as planned in 2009. On the other hand, rushing into establishing an exchange prematurely would result in the risk of losing investors’ confidence, he said.

Besides, convincing companies is no easy task either. Earlier in the process, based on the studies carried out by the Securities and Exchange Commission of Cambodia (SECC), many companies seemed to show interest and would like to take part in this; however, after they having been informed of the “strict regulations” to be applied, those who had claimed to be listed on the market, seemed “to retract” (Ros & Gouanvic, 2008). Also, reluctance of companies to participate in the market can also be related to the current crisis of the world’s economy.

Another potential problem that the stock market in Cambodia would face can be attributed to the current attitude of investors these days. Indeed, at present, during one of the worst global crises in the history, which has turned quite a number of companies and businesses around the world into bankruptcy, “many owners of shares sold their shares in order to recoup [as much as is left of their] original capital, and many other potential customers give up their intentions to invest in the stock market” (The Mirror). This points out the possibility of few people interested in investing their money in the Cambodian stock market.

Furthermore, lack of experts and competences to handle stock exchange-related work and insufficiency of “complex technical basis to meet operations of a stock market” is another hurdle, as coined by Soum Chanthy, an advisory of the National Accounting Council and Finance professor of the Royal University of Laws and Economics (The Mirror, 2009). There is no “a firm legal system and courts with high capabilities to quickly and justly solve issues related to doing businesses in a stock market.”

Points for the introduction of the stock market into Cambodia:

It can be argued that Cambodia is no longer a politically unstable country; there is no more war, sectors such as tourism are doing outstandingly well in boosting the country’s economy with Cambodia’s temples, beaches, and numerous sites of natural attractions, plus a “potential multibillion-dollar oil project under exploration off its south coast” (Postlewaite, 2007). And according to the International Monetary Fund, there has been a constant growth in the economy of Cambodia, as well as in the finance sector, and new banks were set up one after the others in Cambodia, with approximately 40 percent in increase of bank loans and deposits. Even though ones might stress the fact that this nation still has many problems, Cambodia’s GDP growth rate hit 10.8 % in 2006 on top of 13.3 % the year before, and despite the global financial downturn, stayed at 10.2% and 6.8 % in 2007 and 2008, respectively, based on the data issued by the Cambodia’s Ministry of Economy and Finance. This improvement can somehow justify Cambodia’s ambition to establish her own stock exchange.

Besides, Cambodia is not doing this alone with her infant experience; the South Korean government and the organization Korea Exchange, whose stock market achieve a world-top10 place of stock and securities markets (Ros & Gouanvic, 2008), have given full support, both in terms of funds and technical support. For one thing, people would be made ready for the coming of the stock exchange. Plans were under way to send future staff to Seoul for trainings, to organize workshops for privates companies that might list, and to offer investment seminars to Cambodians (Postlewaite, 2007). In-Pyo Lee, the Korea Exchange project director, having been working since July 2007 in the Ministry of Economy and Finance Cambodia, was quoted as saying, “I am sure they will be ready” (2007).

One may use the fact of the non-existence of a Court of Commerce in Cambodia and the lack of knowledge and competences in the current world economic crisis to argue against the establishment of stock market in Cambodia. In response to the former, Huot Pum, Deputy Director General of the Securities and Exchange Commission of Cambodia (SECC) and in charge of the establishment of the stock market, although admitting that no decision has been settled yet about this matter, was quoted as saying, “But even though it does not exist yet, and authority or a commission could organize and gather the required abilities and thus try the settle the conflicts” (Ros & Gouanvi, 2008). Additionally, with regards to the issue of not having competences in the current crisis situation, Huot Pum also expressed his opinion by comparing Cambodia to developed nations that are badly affected by the crisis, “imitat[ing] that Cambodia was no less ready for the crisis than developed countries were: ‘Developed countries are also faced with problems and their political decision-makers are trying to find solutions to them. In the event of a crisis, measures can always be taken…. Saying that we will be spared by all the financial crises would be wrong. Once the stock market will be created, we too will be faced with such problems. We therefore have to organize things step by step in order to avoid such a situation, and when it does happen, we must be able to lessen its impact and limit the effects on the economy of Cambodia’” (2008).
With all these affirmative beliefs held by the government, it is not suggesting that the government of Cambodia did not reflect upon and thus ignored potential problems. According to Keat Chhon, the Cambodian Minister of Economy and Finance, the government did oversee the negative impacts that the “current amplified frailty of the financial environment” that the world is confronting might bring about, but it also did not want to abandon its original objective to launch a stock exchange in Cambodia in 2009. Consequently, balancing the two factors, the government needed to be “twice as cautious” (Postlewaite, 2007). “Cambodia’s stock market will not be delayed because of the world financial crisis and will be brought forward as planned: little by little, starting with the laying of solid bases. Cambodia must be very careful in the process of establishing its securities market, and must continue to set up the necessary infrastructures. What we are doing right now is meant to last long,” His Excellency was quoted as saying in the Conference on Initial Public Offering and Securities Exchange Establishment, taking place in Phnom Penh on October 16-17, 2007 (2007).

There may be still many factors in Cambodia that remain fairly discouraging for the existence of the stock market, but this situation is easily comparable to one of Vietnam about a decade ago, when a stock market was launched in Vietnam. Things were difficult for the first several years, when only 5 to 10 companies listing shares, but the market then “doubled” in the past years (Postlewaite, 2007). The stock markets in Cambodia can take similar path.

Have things gone well according to plans of the government?

Unfortunately, no. Despite all the optimism and careful preparations, Cambodia’s ambition to launch a stock market in the middle of global financial crisis did not really pay off. On January 12, 2009, it was published in The Phnom Penh Post, one of English-language daily newspapers, that “Cambodia’s much-touted stock exchange market has been delayed indefinitely due to the worsening global economic slowdown”.

Indeed, “Cambodia has been affected by the global financial crisis especially in terms of real estate and garment exports. Therefore, the plan to open our own stock market has been postponed, and no specific schedule is set for it,” as quoted being said by Mey Vann, Director of the Department of Finance Industry of the Ministry of Finance and Economy. He attributed the problems to impact of the financial crisis, making it necessary that Cambodia give more focus to developing and strengthening her economy rather than trying to push the establishment of the stock market without “a solid foundation” (Beijing Time, 2009).

Voices of the public:

A big part of this paper has been devoted to describing what the government agencies and those who would directly involved with the activities of the stock market once it’s established. Now let us hear what the public has to say.

- Mr. Him Sophal, a second year student majoring in Finance and Banking at the Royal University of Laws and Economics:

Sophal thinks the presence of the stock market in Cambodia is very important for the country’s economy. He said, “The important thing is that foreign investors can finance for their capital by issuing bonds or stocks. Bonds are issued to receive loans from citizen—bond holders. And stocks are issued to get capital from share holders. However, both bonds and stocks are issued in order to collect cash as a capital for their plans. […] Thus with small amount of money, all foreign and domestic investors can still operate their businesses. Then, the number of investments is increased. This will, as a result, pleasantly contribute to our country’s economy; for example, unemployment will be decreased.”

But does Sophal think this plan of the stock market established in Cambodia will be successful? Yes, he does. “According to an economy minister, the plan of establishing a stock market will be done with a Korean company’s cooperation by December 2009, although the initial plan to launch it in January 2009 was halted by the economic crisis,” he was positive to say.

As just a university student himself, how much does he care about its existence in Cambodia? In response to this question, he raised his concerns about the Cambodia’s auditing system. “Auditing plays an important role if a financial statement of a company is to be reliable,” he said. “I care because in the future, if I buy 100 of 50-dollar shares, I will get dividend at fiscal date. And how much is the dividend is completely dependent on the income statement, one of financial statements.”

- Ms. Long Tavy, having received a bachelor’s degree in Finance from Arizona State University and currently working on her MBA at Thunderbird School of Global Management:

Being asked about the prospect/future of the stock market in Cambodia, a lot of questions seemed to suddenly appear in Tavy’s mind. Her immediate questions are as: “Is Cambodia ready for this? Are the physical structures in place? Are the institutions (government, financial intermediaries, administration, etc..) set up? Are the companies ready for IPOs? Who are the investors? Do these investors, administration and government understand about investing? Are there strict laws protecting the rights of the investors?”

With these doubts in mind, she is firm that there is “a good indication that Cambodia is not entirely ready.” She asserted, “The near future may not be too bright (as with anything new), but it should improve with time when current issues get ironed out.” Despite her doubts and worries, she still expressed her optimism, seeing this first step as a sign of progress.

Her realization and understanding of the advantages the presence of a stock market in Cambodia apparently gives rise to this optimism of hers.”[The stock market] is important because it provides access to capital. When an investor looks at a country with a stock exchange, they may think, "ah, there is access to capital...I can finance my business." The other thing about having the exchange is that it allows potential investors to re-evaluate Cambodian companies in terms of transparency and corruption. Since these companies require audited financial statements, registrations, and surveillance before getting listed, they somewhat put investors at ease (at least at first glance),” Tavy explained.

However, when asked if in her opinion the stock market would be successful, some uncertainty seemed apparent in her utterance, “In the long, long-term when all the administrative and logistic (non-systematic, financially driven) issues are ironed out it may be successful, but in the short-term, many issues still need to be addressed.

Tavy asserted, “[Its existence in Cambodia] is critical to the economic development of a country. Key factors that attract foreign direct investments include educated labor force, efficient government (no corruption), infrastructure (Cambodia is still lacking) and access to capital. If Cambodia wants to compete on the global stage with Vietnam and Thailand, development of infrastructure and sound financial institution/system is critical.

How about her thoughts about how involved in the stock market Cambodians will be in future? In response to this question, “Ideally, there should be mutual benefits between all parties in a joint venture (whether it be between a foreign firm and a local firm, a foreign firm and a government, etc...). I am assuming one of the benefits to the Khmer government […] is the transfer of knowledge and technology, which is equal to development. I am not sure how many Khmers are involved, but even if there are currently more Koreans, the knowledge transfer will take place with time...and before you know it...it might be all Khmer owned...Again I am being optimistic.”

Conclusion

Introduction of this powerful tool of the globalized economy is no easy task; it has come with all the controversies. The government has been firmed in their position with the excitement of the fruitful results the stock market would bring to Cambodia; however, there are many other people that see it differently, fearing that regarding the uninviting conditions having embedded in this country, this step may be too big for Cambodia to take, which would bring more harms than advantages. After all, although it is an all-agreed proposition that the stock market is good for Cambodia’s economy, according to the progress made so far with the plans of the government and all the arguments raised by the proponents of those plans, the right time to set up the stock market in Cambodia is not now; this country is simply not ready for it yet.

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