World Bank admits some fault in forced evictions

The World Bank admitted some fault from a botched land title project in Cambodia. The project has led to thousands of forced evictions for people living in a slum that borders Boeung Kak lake. The slum is making way for a series of office towers and villas.

From the Inter Press Service, writer Irwin Loy decribes how a World Bank fact finding mission uncovered how their negligence resulted in the forced evictions.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cambodia attempts to strictly regulate NGOs

Cambodia has drafted a law that will impose strict regulations on Non-Governmental Organizations that operate in the country. If passed, the law will give Cambodia the ability to shut down NGOs without any chance to appeal. The law has been broadly criticized as a move to restrict public freedom.

From Reuters, writer Prak Chan Thul describes the bill and how this is part of a troubling trend in Cambodia.

Cambodia says it wants to regulate more than 3,000 foreign and local NGOs and civil society groups, but opponents argue the law will give the state powers to shut them down for no reason and with no right of appeal.

The draft follows the passage of draconian laws in the past 18 months that increased punishment for defamation and placed restrictions on protests. Rights groups say that is designed to intimidate government critics and the political opposition.

Ou Virak, director of the Cambodian Center for Human Rights, said the law would give the Interior Ministry "boundless discretition" to disband any body it disagreed with and many organisations would be unable to meet registration requirements.

"Such a result will have chilling repercussions for the freedom of association and expression of ordinary people and will significantly reduce the democratic space in Cambodia," he said. Cambodia, one of Asia's poorest countries, is enjoying an unprecedented period of stability and economic growth after decades of civil war.

But critics and aid donors say its democratic credentials are still lagging those of other Asian countries and that its human rights record is worsening.

Diabetes - the silent killer of Cambodia

From IRIN, a story on the hidden yet major health problem of diabetes in Cambodia.

When 46-year-old Cambodian motorbike taxi driver Gao Savvy broke his leg, he did not realize he would have to have it amputated, but he has had diabetes for five years and recently developed a condition called stenosis, a narrowing of the blood vessels, meaning doctors had no option but to amputate the injured leg.

“Now I only have my wife to take care of me. I don’t know what we’ll do next,” said Gao, who earned just US$50 a month.

Rapid lifestyle changes over the past two decades combined with poverty in Cambodia (according to government statistics, a third of the population lives below the national poverty line of 75 US cents a day) mean diabetes has become a major health problem.

The number of people with the disease is rising: Of the country’s 14.5 million inhabitants, about 352,000 adults live with diabetes, according to the 2009 Diabetes Atlas published by the Belgium-based International Diabetes Federation.

In 2005, about 255,000 people suffered from diabetes, according to an article published that year in the Lancet, a UK-based medical journal. Two-thirds of all cases went undiagnosed before the survey.

In 2010, Cambodia had about 8,000 diabetes-related deaths, according to the International Diabetes Federation. By contrast, the government records more than 200 malaria deaths per year, and has calculated over 1,000 HIV/AIDS-related deaths each year since the most recent prevalence data were collected in 2006.

“It’s a silent killer,” said Lim Keuky, an author of the 2005 study and head of the Cambodian Diabetes Association. “You don’t know about it until the symptoms appear, and then it might already be too late.”

Keuky’s study found a surprisingly high prevalence (5 percent) in Siem Reap, a province in the northwest, and 11 percent in Kampong Cham Province in eastern-central Cambodia.

The relatively high rates of diabetes in Cambodia were surprising, the study said, given that the country is poor, and lifestyles are still fairly traditional.

Lifestyle changes

However, economic growth and urbanization mean many of Cambodia’s poor are eating processed food and not exercising enough, according to Denmark-based NGO the World Diabetes Foundation (WDF).

These lifestyle changes have taken place on top of the hunger and desolation of the 1980s, the group said.

“Most processed and unhealthy food is the cheapest option while healthy foods have become increasingly costly and beyond the reach of the poor, so the poor have no control over the risk factors,” said WDF head Anil Kapur.

Meanwhile, campaigners say diabetes is not getting enough attention from international donors.

“Foremost is the misconception among donor agencies that these [non-communicable] diseases are diseases related to affluence, and do not affect the poor, which is completely untrue,” Kapur told IRIN.

About 80 percent of all diabetes cases are in low- and middle-income countries, affecting mostly people aged 45-64, says the World Health Organization (WHO).

Globally, about four million deaths are attributed to diabetes every year, compared to three million for AIDS-related illnesses and one million for malaria. Diabetes is responsible for about 5 percent of all deaths globally each year and the figure could rise by more than 50 percent in the next 10 years if urgent action is not taken, says WHO.

According to new research published by the Lancet, chronic diseases such as diabetes could kill up to 4.2 million people annually in Southeast Asia by the year 2030.

Overnight links for December 28th include missions project in Sierra Leone, Cambodia's dependence on foreign aid, and Amnesty's 50th

Many groups in the Dallas, Texas area teamed together to create a medical facility in Sierra Leone. Writer Leigh Munsil of the Dallas Morning News says that Hope Center also provides educational facilities for the unemployed.


Cambodia has taken big strides in reducing the number HIV positive people within its borders. The country is on track to meeting the Millennium Development Goal for cutting AIDS in half. However, a new study warns that Cambodia's dependence on foreign aid might hurt future gains against the disease. From the IPS, writer Marwaan Macan-Markar details the new report.

Amnesty International will soon be marking their 50th anniversary. Writer Sir John Tusa of the BBC tells us how the organization's focus has changed over the years, resulting in what the writer terms as a "mid life crisis" for Amnesty.

Traffic accidents becoming a humanitarian problem in Cambodia

From IRIN, a story on how traffic accidents in Cambodia have become a humanitarian problem.

Cheng Heng’s wound was minor, but the impact on his family severe. The 31-year-old garment factory worker was riding his motorbike to work, when he collided with a bicycle 30km west of the capital, Phnom Penh.

His broken clavicle required surgery, costing US$250, leaving him out of work for almost a month and forcing him into debt.

As the primary breadwinner for his family of 10, contributing half the total income of $300 a month, it will take at least three months to pay off his debts.

Cheng hopes they will manage by working at nearby factories. “I didn't get any help either from NGOs or my factory,” he said.

Traffic crash “crisis”

In Cambodia, economic growth and urbanization have prompted people to migrate to the crowded capital, where a surfeit of automobiles, lax enforcement of traffic laws, and scant understanding of road safety take their toll. On average, 4.7 people die in accidents each day, according to a report by the Cambodian government and Handicap International Belgium, an NGO in Phnom Penh.

Over the past five years, the number of accidents increased by more than 200 percent, and the number of fatalities nearly doubled to 1,717 last year.

“We’re seeing more road crashes in outskirt areas, where there’s more speeding,” Socheata Sann, road safety programme manager at Handicap International Belgium, said.

The numbers are part of a troubling trend in Southeast Asia countries. In Vietnam, more than 11,000 people die in traffic accidents each year, 2,100 died in Myanmar last year.

In 2009, 1.4 million motor vehicles were registered in Cambodia, more than double the half million registered five years earlier.

Traffic accidents tend to affect vulnerable Cambodians, many of whom are poor. About 90 percent of crash victims ride vehicles motorbikes and bicycles, or are pedestrians, according to the report.

Last year, road accidents cost Cambodia $248 million, according to a study by Handicap International Belgium and Hasselt University in Belgium, against $116 million in 2003.

Men who are family breadwinners are often injured or killed, taking a toll on families and communities. About 80 percent of accident casualties are in the “economically active” portion of the population, and the peak age group is 20-29 years old, states a government report.

Families “can be tipped into poverty by costs of medical care, the loss of the family breadwinner’s income, funeral costs”, and can suffer social and psychological problems, Ryan Duly, Mekong regional programme manager at the Global Road Safety Partnership, a Geneva-based network of road safety groups, told IRIN from Bangkok.

“It is often the poorest households that are most affected as they do not have a safety net to absorb this loss of income,” he said.

Children also face high risks; in the 5-14 age group, road accidents are the most common cause of injury-related mortality and morbidity.

Cutting accident rate

In the next 10 years, the Cambodian government hopes to reduce the number of road fatalities by 30 percent to 2,240 deaths from the 3,200 deaths that authorities predict.

The government passed a law in 2006 requiring motorcycle drivers to wear helmets. No legislation, however, requires passengers to wear helmets. Inconsistent enforcement also hampered the law’s effectiveness, Sann told IRIN.

When police began enforcing the law in early 2009, about 90 percent of drivers in Phnom Penh wore helmets, whereas around 12 percent of passengers did so, according to Handicap. Fewer than half of drivers wore helmets at night, when they were not as visible and police officers less likely to be present.

Malaysian model

Some specialists say Cambodian officials should look to Malaysia for its traffic safety model, which combines tough enforcement, education and transport planning.

That country used to have a “serious problem” with motorcycles, Law Teik Hua, a civil engineering lecturer at the Putra University Malaysia in Selangor, Malaysia, told IRIN in Phnom Penh.

In the past three decades, the country has reduced traffic fatalities by about 30 percent, although the number of fatalities last year nudged up by 3.3 percent from 2008.

But he concedes changes in Cambodia, like in any country, will be difficult. “It takes a generation to change peoples’ perceptions.”

According to the World Health Organization, about 1.3 million people die in road accidents each year. More than 90 percent of those deaths are in low- and middle-income countries, taking a particularly high toll on the young and poor

Catching butterflys for Cambodian tourists

The Siem Reap area of Cambodia is a tourist attraction, but it is also one of the poorest regions of the country. People travel to Siem Reap to see the ornate temples, but the money made from the tourism goes to the government and an oil company. Some people make a living by supporting the tourist industry, but few of the tourist's dollars go back into the area.

From the Guardian, writer Ben Doherty visited two boys who work to supply the tourist industry in a unique way.

The butterflies they catch – usually between 60 and 100 between them – they bring to the Butterflies Garden Restaurant in Siem Reap town. They are released inside the restaurant's massive net, to flutter around the diners sitting in the garden café. For their toil, the children are paid about 5,000 riel (80p) each.

"But still, we don't all go to school," Boa says. "Some have to stay home to help the family. But everyone has to help catch butterflies."Despite the annual flood of international tourists to the Angkor temples and the estimated £380m they are predicted to bring this year, Siem Reap remains one of the poorest parts of Cambodia.

More than half of all families live below the poverty line, surviving on less than 80p a day. Four villages in 10 have no access to safe drinking water and 53% of all children are malnourished. Literacy rates are some of the lowest in the country, at 64%, and just 10% of children finish high school. "Siem Reap is one of the poorest provinces of Cambodia, which is a bit weird seeing the number of tourists going there," said Philippe Delanghe, the head of the UN's culture unit in Cambodia. "I only hope that in the future we might be able to help people living around Angkor Wat to improve their livelihoods, which hasn't really been the case until now."

The majority of tourists' money is spent with foreign-owned hotels, tour companies and restaurants. Many package tourists spend a week in Siem Reap without visiting a local business.

Guest Voices: Cambodian Mother of Five Becomes an Agent of Change

Continuing our series of guest posts from Concern Worldwide, the story of a mother of five who is making a positive change in Cambodia. This piece is written by Concern worker Stewart Gee.

I have been in Cambodia for just nine months now, and the hectic nature of the lifestyle in Phnom Penh is matched only by the sheer volume of work that needs to be tackled on a weekly basis.

Then again, I have come to expect this when working with Concern, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

It is easy, particularly in an office-based role such as mine, to get immersed in the Mekong-like flood of different things coming across your desk.

I guess it’s the same in most jobs. But one thing that’s distinct about working for Concern is that, frequently, things remind you why you left your family and friends to work in an far-away, unfamiliar place, and why you left the cool weather. ( Irishmen were not built for 400C!)

Recently, our local partner organization Support Association for Rural Farmers Organization (SARF) shared a story with me about a woman named Mrs Sokhom. It never ceases to amaze me how when you have nothing, something very small can make a difference that affects everything.

Mrs. Sokhom is a widow living in Chheuteal Kpus village, in Pursat Province. Her husband died from HIV and AIDS in 2004. She was left alone to provide for their five children, one of whom died from a fever at the age of one. Before he died, her husband was the family’s main breadwinner. However, his medical treatment was expensive, and paying for it slowly pushed the family into debt before he died.

After her husband’s death, Mrs. Sokhom was only able to earn $6 – $8 per month (26 cents per day): but it cost more than $15 per month to support her family. She tried to scrape together income by rice cultivation, growing vegetables and selling firewood that she had gathered, but it was not enough and she slipped further into debt as the months went on.

Mrs. Sokhom came to the point at which she could not provide enough food for her family, and she was forced to take three of her children out of school so they could help her earn extra income by herding livestock. In 2006, she decided to send two of her daughters to work in a clothes factory in Phnom Penh, but still found that she was unable to rise above the family debt.

In March 2007, Mrs. Sokhom was selected to participate in a Concern-supported livelihoods project. First, the program gave her training in rattan mat weaving, and later gave her skills and support to allow her to begin raising chickens. She received a grant of $50 to get started in this enterprise, and was able to earn $10 per month from selling chickens and vegetables. This in turn allowed her to save some money and reduce her debt.

A year later, Mrs. Sokhom went to a Concern-supported Farmer Field School in a nearby village where she learned ways to expand her business. Concern’s Farmer Field Schools empower the poorest farmers to manage their own resources, improve planting techniques, diversify crops, and increase their harvests. Participants receive training from Concern program staff in a number of agricultural methods, and there is a strong focus on women farmers.

In August 2008, Mrs Sokhom’s own community selected her to be a “model farmer.” As part of the program, she received another grant of just over $100 to build a chicken house, buy more chickens, and expand her vegetable plot.

Where is Mrs. Sokhom today? Her life has been transformed and she has become an agent of change. Her family no longer faces food shortages and they no longer have to cut down trees and sell firewood for extra income. She is raising chickens and growing vegetables and earning about $50 per month.

In addition, she has shared her experience and learning with five other families in her village. As a result of visiting her model farm, these families are now also part of Concern’s program. Mrs. Sokhom has promised that as she grows her business, she will coach and help other participants to grow theirs.

Smiling, Mrs. Sokhom said, “I am very happy, proud and thankful for the support from Concern and SARF. I never hoped to escape the life I had, and get the opportunity to build a new house. But now everything has changed through effort and patience. Again, I wish SARF and Concern success, health and prosperity to support the poor so that they can leave poverty behind for good.”

Festival food for prisoners in Cambodia

An annual festival in Cambodia will no longer have it's food go to waste thanks to the efforts of young woman.Thanks to the efforts of Sek Sarom, leftover rice cakes from the Pchum Ben festival will go to the prisoners of Battambang, Cambodia. Sarom determined the need for after seeing many malnourished prisoners through her volunteer work in the prisons.

From the Phnom Penh Post, writer Roth Meas tells us how Sarom got the effort started.

The morning sunshine splays over Pok Chhma primary school in Battambang, giving the orange robes of the monks who work there an especially vivid sheen. The festival of Pchum Ben has only just finished, but there will be no rest for these holy men.

The monks, along with many other volunteers, tend giant grills set up to dry thousands of rice cakes left over from the festival of the dead. These savoury treats will ultimately be distributed to prisons all over Battambang, where they will feed famished inmates.

Battambang’s Dhammayietra centre runs the initiative, which is the brainchild of one of its workers, 30-year-old Sek Sarom. She conceived the idea in 2000, while working as a volunteer language tutor in Battambang’s prisons.

“We taught languages to the prisoners, and in that time I observed that people did not have enough food in the prison. I know that after every Bonn Pchum Ben, there is a great deal of waste in terms of food at the pagodas, so we decided to begin collecting rice cakes for prisoners,” she said.
Sek Sarom felt there was not enough understanding from the wider community when it came to the inmates. This manifested itself in a great deal of hostility when she first floated the idea almost a decade ago – something for which she was not prepared.

A labour of empathy
“When I first sent letters to ask for rice cakes, even some monks complained and asked why we should help them. Prisoners are the bad guys; they attack, rape and even kill people, they said. Some monks even cursed me before handing over the rice cakes,” she said.
Yet Sek Sarom was determined to get her idea off the ground, with much of her resolve emanating from an empathy she was able to build for the inmates while teaching them.

“I think prisoners are human beings, just like me. I noticed that most of the prisoners are from poor backgrounds, and many of them fell into crime because of poverty and a lack of education,” she said.

Leaving everything for Cambodia

A family from the Louisville, Kentucky area left all the comforts of America to work in a hospital in Cambodia. Drs. Lori and Bill Housworth and their three children left for Cambodia after a volunteer visit to the country in 2002 moved them to do more.

The family fights with mosquitoes daily, and one of the children almost got taken away by an elephant, but the family says that have received more from the Cambodian people than they have given.

From the Courier Journal, writer Laura Ungar tells us the Housworth's story.

Living and working in Cambodia, the Housworths are reminded each day of why they are there.

The terrible legacy of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge regime remains. According to Friends Without a Border, 1.5 million people were executed, starved or died as the result of forced labor at their hands in the 1970s. "The genocide left the country's infrastructure decimated and her people orphaned," the organization wrote. "Today, many Cambodians still struggle to reconstruct their lives, while battling abject poverty."

Children suffering everything from dengue fever to heart defects come to Angkor from 60-190 miles away, often coming by ox-cart and motor scooters and selling belongings or borrowing money for travel expenses.

Bill recalled a girl who fell out of a tree. As her chest filled with blood, her family traveled 60 miles down a bumpy dirt road to the hospital, where she spent a week, but survived.

Bill said the hospital sees 400 children a day, and every evening the staff must make hard decisions about who is sickest and can stay. Many families set up camp on the grounds while children are treated, cooking food rations the hospital gives them.

Bill spends about a fifth of his time doctoring and the rest teaching residents and overseeing a mostly-Cambodian staff of 240, including 30 doctors and 100 nurses. Under his leadership, the hospital recently launched a heart surgery program in which donors pay for congenital defect repairs costing about $6,000. Six surgeries have been done so far, one on a little girl named Mey who had a hole in the wall between the two upper chambers of her heart.

Cambodia to see the worst increase in poverty: World Bank

A new study from the World Bank says that Cambodia will see the biggest increase in poverty in the Asia Pacific region.The study examines the effects of the global recession on that part of the world.

The World Bank blames a narrow economic base and over dependency on imports as the reasons for why Cambodia will be the hardest hit.

From the Phnom Penh Post, reporter Steve Finch breaks down the World Bank study.

Cambodia is set to be the country hardest hit this year by the global economic crisis in the Asia-Pacific region, the World Bank said today, placing the Kingdom among only four countries projected "to experience absolute increases in poverty".

In a report released today, the bank said that Cambodia - along with Malaysia, Thailand and East Timor - would see contractions in per capita income and therefore increased poverty, noting that the Kingdom's weaker GDP growth, which the bank again revised downwards to -1 percent for 2009, would slow poverty reduction across the region.

"Cambodia is the country with the largest projected increase in the number of poor people," the World Bank said.

It projected 200,000 additional people in the Kingdom this year would be pushed below the poverty line - defined by the bank as US$1.25 a day - compared to East Timor, where a further 25,000 were forecast to sink into poverty.

The World Bank in February said that Cambodia had reduced poverty from 45 percent to 50 percent in 1993-1994 - a figure that improved to around 30 percent by 2007.

The report also said that Cambodia would see the greatest GDP growth reversal in the region.

"An expansion of 10.2 percent in 2007 stands in stark contrast to a contraction of 1 percent projected for 2009," it said.

"The difference (11.7 percent) over two years is the largest in the region, and arises from a sudden drop in garment exports and tourist arrivals."

The slowing textile industry in Cambodia

Foreign investors invaded Cambodia with cash to establish a thriving textile industry in the 1990's. The jobs in the clothing factories helped to bring many Cambodians over the poverty level.

Now with the global recession slowing down demand for clothes, many jobs in Cambodia are being lost. Some factories are shutting down while owing their workers back pay.

From this exaustive Reuters story on textiles in Cambodia, writer Ek Madra shows us the impact on the nations poverty line.

The sector represents about 16 percent of Cambodia's GDP, so the factory closures will hurt, with a ripple effect in the countryside as the money sent home by garment workers dries up.

The International Monetary Fund says the economy could shrink 0.5 percent in 2009 and the garment trade slump is a big factor.

But Kang Chandararot, director of the Cambodian Institute of Development Study (CIDS), said even if the double-digit growth of recent years was out of reach, 4 or 5 percent may be possible thanks to a bountiful rice crop in 2008/09 and the record $950 million in aid pledged by international donors for 2009.

"Cambodia could use the aid of nearly $1 billon to invest in infrastructures to stimulate its economy," Chandararot said.

People surviving on less than $1 a day are deemed to be living in poverty. Garment workers earn on average $2.7 a day so the loss of these jobs will hurt.

"More people will be pushed into poverty," said Huot Chea of the World Bank in Cambodia.

Historical data is lacking in Cambodia, but the World Bank says 45 to 50 percent of the people lived in poverty in 1994. Prime Minister Hun Sen says that was cut to 30 percent by 2008 thanks to the garment sector, tourism and agriculture.

Calling on Cambodia to use oil revenue for anti-poverty efforts

An anti-corruption awareness group Global Witness is calling on Cambodia to be more transparent on oil revenues. The group says the amount of money that is generated from oil is only known by a few people, and is kept secret at the expense of the country. Global Witness calls on the government of Cambodia to use the money for anti-poverty efforts instead of keeping the money hidden.

The Global Witness report on Cambodia was covered by IRIN, in their story IRIN relates the oil corruption to what occurred to Cambodia's timber industry in the 1990's.

The long-term effects could fuel corruption and contribute to a "resource curse", whereby a tiny elite soaks up the profits instead of using oil and mining revenues to alleviate poverty, London-based Global Witness states in Country for Sale.

Cambodia is Southeast Asia’s second-poorest country after East Timor, with 35 percent of its population living on less than US$1 a day, according to government statistics.

Revenues from the 2005 oil find, which could total more than $1.5 billion annually, according to some estimates, should be directed to achieving its 2015 Millennium Development Goals, say critics.

"I see the rise of Cambodia's mining and oil sectors as just one part of the wholesale diversification of natural resource and state asset exploitation in Cambodia," Eleanor Nichols, a campaigner for Global Witness, told IRIN.

"Historically, the revenue generated by their misappropriation has reinforced the position and impunity of elites, further strengthening their hold on the levers of power," she said.

Global Witness has had a rocky relationship with the government, having closed its office in Phnom Penh in 2005 after threats over a report implicating top officials of illegal logging.

The Nobel-prize nominated group first monitored the country's forestry resources in the 1990s when international donors urged logging reform.

You can download the full report on Cambodia's corruption from the Global Witness website. The page explaining the report includes the press release, also hi and lo resolution versions of the document are available to download.

Survey says that most Cambodian people don't know what the MDGs are

I thought that this was only true for the US.

A survey released today by an economic think tank says that a majority of Cambodian people don't know what the Millennium Development Goals are. The survey from the Economic Institute of Cambodia says that 59 percent of the countries people have never heard of the MDGs.

Nguon Sovan a writer for the Phnom Penh Post, reports on this analysis of the survey.

"The study found that the awareness about the CMDG at the local level was remarkably low, as most respondents were either not aware of them or had only a limited understanding," the survey said.

"Fifty-nine percent of respondents had never heard of them."

The survey also found that "only two percent of respondents could correctly explain the CMDG and their purpose". While awareness was low, almost all participants in the survey agreed that the program was important in guiding the development of the country, and that the media played an important role in spreading awareness about it.

EIC President Sok Hach told the Post the three-month study involved 317 people (30 percent of them women) comprising commune council officials, educators, health officials and monks from Phnom Penh and from Kandal, Kampong Cham and Battambang provinces.

Chea Chantum, director of the Planning Ministry's Social Planning Department, accepted the survey's findings but said there were problems in the study's methodology.

"The sample size was relatively small and could not fully represent a given province or the whole country, though the results seem to indicate they do represent the whole province or country," he said.

$35 million in food aid misused in Cambodia

An emergency food aid project in Cambodia has been tainted by corruption. The Asian Development Bank says that 35 million dollars (US) in aid has been abused. Many poor Cambodians have complained that rice from the food aid program has not been given out fairly.

In this "breaking news" story found in The Straits Times from Malaysia, the people blame village chiefs for giving it out to better off friends.

The Straits Times November 6th

Up to three hundred Cambodians complained to the ADB that they had not received rice handouts while village chiefs have registered relatives and political supporters for the project, the bank said.

'I think that some people have been left out. Some of the village chiefs have not followed procedures properly,' the ADB's Piseth Long, implementation officer for the project, told AFP.

'Procedures need to be followed for the targeted people - the 20 per cent poorest should receive aid,' he said, adding that the bank was reviewing how many complaints were genuine and attempting to get aid to those who deserve it.

Cambodian human rights groups have said more than 1,000 poor families in several provinces have complained of corruption by village chiefs in the rice distribution project.

Mr Piseth Long, however, stopped short of saying that fraud had been found in the process and noted that 'to a certain extent the project has fulfilled its goal' of handing out rice to the poorest of the poor.

The project began last month to help hundreds of thousands of impoverished Cambodians in rural areas and slums over the next three years amid soaring inflation, food and fuel prices.

How the global credit crisis is effecting Cambodia

The global credit crisis seems to effect the fortunes of developing nations in two ways. First, aid to those countries decrease. For countries like Cambodia, they depend on aid to meet their government budgets. Later, export sales will slow down. As the rich countries who were hit hard by the credit crisis will have less money to buy goods from the developed world.

Cambodia has had a respectable growth rate in recent years. However, the country has a steep inflation rate of 25%.

As found in the Phnom Penh Post, government officials explained why the credit crisis will keep them from sustaining their growth this year.

GLOBAL financial turmoil and rising domestic inflation likely will keep Cambodia from reaching its poverty-reduction target this year, Commerce Minister Cham Prasidh has said, adding that a worsening economy has pushed more Cambodians below the poverty line.

"Every year we have been able to lower poverty by one percent, but the global financial crisis could affect this," Cham Prasidh said.

While Cambodia continues to post impressive economic growth estimated at around 6.5 percent, roughly a third of the population are still living on less than US$1 a day.

Cham Prasidh, speaking Tuesday at a gathering of industry and trade officials, said that one percent of Cambodians - around 140,000 people - have fallen below the poverty line this year.

However, the Asian Development Bank, in an update of its 2008 economic outlook assessment released in September, presented a dramatically higher figure, saying, "preliminary evidence suggests that as many as two million people may have slipped below the poverty line, in addition to 4.5 million already in poverty".

Some officials fear the global market turmoil could impact the ability of donors to continue doling out massive aid packages to poor nations like Cambodia, which depends on international funds for a significant percentage of its national budget.

Planning to provide water and sanitation in Asia

Money has been raised to help draw up plans for a major water and sanitation project.

The Asian Development Bank helped to pool together several loans to help fund the project. The total money that will be loaned is 1.5 million dollars.

The money will be used to draw up plans for water and sanitation for an area in Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam. As the local governments don't have the money to do a big project themselves.


200,000 people in 9 different towns will benefit from the project. The bank believes those towns could become tourism or transportation hubs when the right infrastructure is in place.

Again, this is just for drawing up the plans, I imagine more fund raising will have to be done to actually install the water works.

Here is a snippet from the ADB's press release that details the poor condition of the towns, and some more details about the project.

The towns identified for the planned project have high poverty levels and poor, or even non-existent, water supply and sanitation services. With improved infrastructure, they have the potential to develop into transport and tourism hubs.

The technical assistance will be used to determine the services needed for each town, the appropriate level of user charges, and the financial and technical capacity of participating public utilities and local governments, in order to design a project that is both realistic and sustainable.

At present, many local governments are unable to provide potable water and sanitation services 24 hours a day because of the high investment costs involved. At the same time, consumers face high tariffs that many cannot afford, or are unwilling to pay, making the rollout of new services financially unsustainable.

Major emphasis will also be given to improving sanitation services as few local governments in developing towns consider it a priority. Sanitation plans will be drawn up for each town, identifying cost-effective technologies, investment requirements, implementation and operating needs, and other actions needed to improve sanitation and promote hygiene.

Christian Children's Fund expands work in Cambodia

Cambodia has been in the news a lot recently. It's a country where 1 in 3 people live in poverty. On top of that, the nation's poverty line is quite low, only 45 cents a day.

The World Bank recently announced emergency aid to the country to combat rising prices of everything. Now, aid organizations follow suit. Christian Children's Fund has announced a new project that is in cooperation with Australia's Child Fund. The snippet comes from their press release.

from Christian Children's Fund

The project, which officially launched Oct. 8, is in the Svay Yea Community Development in the Svay Chrum district of Svay Rieng province, 78 miles from Cambodia’s capital.

About 92 percent of the area’s households live without toilets and more than 43 percent have to boil water before using it for drinking. More than 61,000, or nearly 40 percent, of Svay Chrum’s population is under the age of 17. Less than 50 percent of pre-school aged children attend kindergarten.

To help combat this, the new program includes constructing primary schools. Kindergartens will be established at each community-based primary school. Teachers will be locally recruited, mentored and trained.

Svay Yea Community Development will establish child clubs to give children life skills training and opportunities to explore and develop their sporting, cultural, musical and artistic talents. Children and youth will receive leadership training to increase their voice in their community.

Christian Children's Fund is another one of our favorite NGO's Here is a link to their website.

Cambodia gets $35 million in emergency food aid

from the Boston Globe

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia --The Asian Development Bank announced Wednesday $35 million in emergency food aid to ease the burden of soaring food prices among some of Cambodia's poorest people.

The assistance will provide free rice, seed and fertilizer to 500,000 Cambodians, the poorest of the poor among the country's 14 million people, the bank said.

The recipients include slum residents in the capital, Phnom Penh, and farmers in seven provinces around the country's Tonle Sap lake.

"When the food price inflation spike came, these communities were already in a fragile state. It drove them more sharply over the edge into food poverty," said Arjun Goswami, the bank's country director.

The program will run through September 2011.

Over the past year rice prices in Cambodia have doubled, the ADB said in a statement. It added that the price of meat and fish has risen 30 to 50 percent, and farmers have been hit hard by an almost tripling in fertilizer prices.

About one-in-three Cambodians live below the national poverty line of just 45 cents a day.

Mahfuz Ahmed, the bank official in charge of the food project, said that of Cambodia's 14 million people, about 2.6 million sometimes go hungry and suffer from malnutrition.

Link to full article. May expire in future.

CAMBODIA: Gambling fuels poverty

from IRIN

They even bet on the weather in Cambodia. This story profiles the country's unregulated gambiling indusrty. - Kale

POI PET - In a dimly lit room in a frontier town along the Thai-Cambodian border, a man slaps down a card on the table, having bet all his daily earnings as a motorbike taxi driver.

He loses the US$4 he earned that day. To quell his anger, he sniffs a bowl of glue - a daily habit to boost his stamina to work through the oppressive heat.

"How am I going to pay off the police tomorrow?!" he exclaims in a flurry of curses, referring to the daily cuts demanded by the border officers.

Gambling addiction poses a huge problem in Southeast Asia's second-poorest nation, and those afflicted can rarely find help. In a country where 33 percent of the population live on 50 cents a day, according to Cambodian government statistics, gambling is only worsening the poverty cycle.

However, the Ministry of Interior, whose mandate includes overseeing Cambodia's largely unregulated gaming industry, does not even recognise gambling addiction as a problem.

"It [gambling addiction and gambling-related crime] doesn't happen here," said one police commander at the Ministry of Interior in Poi Pet, who refused to give his name. "Maybe in countries around Cambodia, but definitely not here." Poi Pet is a small town along the Cambodian-Thai border known for its casinos.

"If people want to gamble legally, it's their choice," he said. But there are no counselling or mental-health services for gambling addicts in the town.

Poi Pet is home to a special border zone between Thailand and Cambodia with regulated gaming, popular among Thai gamblers, as casinos are outlawed and gambling tightly regulated in Thailand.

The Cambodian government has outlawed informal gambling in Poi Pet. But gamblers claim the police abuse the law, demanding exorbitant bribes when caught.

Savuth, 27, who did not want his surname revealed, said Poi Pet police demanded up to two-thirds of illicit gambling earnings when caught.

That added heavily to the weekly "corruption tax" as he put it, which involves paying another cut to the police just to avoid harassment.

Rock bottom

A thief-turned-casino employee, Savuth claims he was once drawn by the glamour and potential of big gambling years ago in Phnom Penh and lost everything. One night, he promised himself he would play only three times at the city's Naga Casino, but bet $1,500 and his motorbike – crucial to his career as a taxi driver.

As a result, he became a thief in the capital, and developed an addiction to hard drugs. He kept gambling to sustain his addiction and soon lost his house.

His commune intervened, donating $50 a month to his personal expenses until he found a new job. Instead, he gambled it away.

"I went crazy at that point. I couldn't find help anywhere, because everyone was so angry at me," he told IRIN. "And I was homeless."

With his family and friends having abandoned him, Savuth shaved his head - signifying a promise for purification – and succeeded in beating his gambling habit but not drugs. He migrated to the border where, ironically, he found work at a casino.

With a lack of services for gambling addicts, such stories are common. "I've known some people who lose everything, can't repay their debts, and are hunted down by criminals and killed," he said. "Sometimes their children must repay the debts."

Link to full article. May expire in future.

Land seizures in Cambodia make thousands homeless

from the New York Times

As cities expand in Cambodia, the government forces outlying colony's out of their homes. - Kale
By SETH MYDANS

ANDONG, Cambodia — When the monsoon rain pours through Mao Sein’s torn thatch roof, she pulls a straw sleeping mat over herself and her three small children and waits until it stops.

She and her children sit on a low table as floodwater rises, bringing with it the sewage that runs along the mud paths outside their shack.

Ms. Mao Sein, 34, was resettled by the government here in an empty field two years ago, when the police raided the squatters’ colony where she lived in Phnom Penh, the capital, 12 miles away.

She is a widow and a scavenger. The area where she lives has no clean water or electricity, no paved roads or permanent buildings. But there is land to live on, and that has drawn scores of new homeless families to settle here, squatting among the squatters.

With its shacks and its sewage, Andong looks very much like the refugee camps that were home to those who were forced from their homes by the brutal Communist Khmer Rouge three decades ago.

Like tens of thousands of people around the country, those living here are victims of what experts say has become the most serious human rights abuse in the country: land seizures that lead to evictions and homelessness.

“Expropriation of the land of Cambodia’s poor is reaching a disastrous level,” Basil Fernando, executive director of the Asian Human Rights Commission in Hong Kong, a private monitoring group, said in December. “The courts are politicized and corrupt, and impunity for human rights violators remains the norm.”

With the economy on the rise, land is being seized for logging, agriculture, mining, tourism and fisheries, and in Phnom Penh, soaring land prices have touched off what one official called a frenzy of land grabs by the rich and powerful. The seizures can be violent, including late-night raids by the police and military. Sometimes, shanty neighborhoods burn down, apparently victims of arson.

“They came at 2 a.m.,” said Ku Srey, 37, who was evicted with Ms. Mao Sein and most of their neighbors in June 2006.

“They were vicious,” Ms. Ku Srey said of the police and soldiers who evicted her.

“They had electric batons” — and she imitated the sound made by the devices: “chk-chk-chk-chk.” She said, “They pushed us into trucks, they threw all our stuff into trucks and they brought us here.”

In a report in February, Amnesty International estimated that 150,000 people around the country were now at risk of forcible eviction as a result of land disputes, land seizures and new development projects.

These include 4,000 families who live around a lake in the center of Phnom Penh, Boeung Kak Lake, which is the city’s main catchment for monsoon rains and is being filled in for upscale development.

“If these communities are forced to move, it would be the most large-scale displacement of Cambodians since the times of the Khmer Rouge,” said Brittis Edman, a researcher with Amnesty International, which is based in London.

That, in a way, would bring history full circle.

Like other ailments of society — political and social violence, poverty and a culture of impunity for those with power — the land issues have roots in Cambodia’s tormented past of slaughter, civil war and social disruptions.

The brutal rule of the Khmer Rouge, during which 1.7 million people are estimated to have died, began in 1975 with an evacuation of Phnom Penh, forcing millions of people into the countryside and emptying the city. It ended in 1979 when the Khmer Rouge was driven from power by a Vietnamese invasion, sending hundreds of thousands of refugees into Thailand.

Many of the refugees returned in the 1990s, joining a rootless population displaced by the Khmer Rouge and the decade of civil war that followed in the 1980s. Many ended their journeys in Phnom Penh, creating huge colonies of squatters.

Now, many of these people are being forced to move again, from Phnom Penh and from around the country, victims of the latest scourge of the poor: national prosperity.

Whichever way the winds of history blow, some people here say, life only gets worse for the poor. If it is not “pakdivat,” revolution, that is buffeting the poor, they say, it is “akdivat,” development.

The Cambodian economy has at last started to grow, at an estimated 9 percent last year. And Phnom Penh is starting to transform itself with modern buildings, modest malls and plans for skyscrapers. It is one of the last Asian capitals to begin to pave over its past.

From 1993 to 1999, Amnesty International said in its report in February, the government granted commercial development rights for about one-third of the country’s most productive land for commercial development to private companies.

In Phnom Penh from 1998 through 2003, the city government forced 11,000 families from their homes, the World Bank said in a statement quoted by Amnesty International.

Since then, the human rights group said, evictions have reportedly displaced at least 30,000 more families.

Link to full article. May expire in future.