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Address at the 30th Anniversary of the Partnership Between The Royal Government,
Non-Governmental Organizations and the People of Cambodia 1979 – 2009
National Institute of Education,
November 24, 2009
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Excellencies,
Ladies and Gentlemen!
I am delighted
to be here celebrating the “30th Anniversary of the Partnership
Between the Royal Government, Non-Governmental Organizations and the People of
Cambodia 1979 – 2009” with Your Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen,
representatives from national and international NGOs. This event is being held
while the regional and global economy are showing some signs of recovery. In
spite of this encouraging trend, we must continue to pool contribution from all
sources in our society, including the role of national and international NGOs,
which is a major catalyst for accelerating development progress. In this sense,
I think this ceremony is a great opportunity for reassessing our weaknesses and
strengths, what have been done and what have not been done to allow us to set
direction for more aggressive, more vibrant and more efficient implementation in
the future. The exchange of dialogue on the role of NGOs in socio-economic
development, prolific partnership and the proper and efficient use of fund will
indeed help us fine-tune and customize our operation in order to accommodate the
people’s actual needs and various national development plans and strategies,
especially the National Strategic Development Plan and the Rectangular Strategy Phase II.
Along with this,
today’s event will also allow us to look at our partnership development and
define the strategic direction for tighter, more harmonized, and more
predictable collaboration to ensure further results. These include: i) the
acknowledgement of contribution and achievement of NGOs for the past 30 years
(1979 – 2009) in economic restoration and development effort, ii) the reflection
of experience and good partnership between the Royal Government, NGOs and the
people of Cambodia, and iii) looking forward to prolific cooperation and
partnership between the Royal Government, NGOs and the people of Cambodia to
jointly address challenges in the next decade.
Taking this
opportunity, on behalf of the Royal Government of Cambodia, I would like to show
my appreciation to the organizing committee for the successful and smooth
running of the event. Also, I would like to extend my profound thanks to the
management and staff of both national and international NGOs as well as aid
agencies and all the Cambodian people for their untiring work in the last 30
years dedicating to charitable and humanitarian work and national development.
In this spirit, I am confident that national and international NGOs and
stakeholders will remain committed to strengthening cooperation and partnership
and playing a key role in development progress to bring about prosperity,
development and harmony to Cambodia.
While we are
gathering today to evaluate the progress of our partnership, I would like to
bring up the history of socio-economic development after the collapse of Pol Pot
Regime on 7 January 1979 and the contribution from NGOs in the last 30 years as
follows:
We all know that
the Pol Pot Regime toppled the Khmer Republic Regime on 17 April 1975 and forced
the people to desert Phnom Penh. The people became slaves and prisoners of
wall-less prison. Millions died of hunger, inadequate health care, forced labor,
and massacre. After 7 January 1979, Cambodia was left with nothing from the last
regime, contrary to the Lun Nol’s Khmer Republic Regime which inherited abundant
resources from the People’s Socialist Community. Left behind by the Pol Pot
Regime were the separation of family members, ruins, death of millions of
people, destruction of economic infrastructure, and countless residual problems.
In the Pol Pot
Regime, people worked and ate collectively. There were no longer private
property, currency, market, relationship, trade and whatsoever. The only
workplace was rice field, more specifically, people had to work extremely hard
in exchange of little food while their rights and ownership were stripped.
People owned nothing ranging from agricultural means and equipments, houses,
utilities to spoons, bowls, plates and cooking utensils. Their only property was
the clothes they wear. The outcome of their hard work was managed by the
“Organization”.
Moreover,
factories, enterprises, commercial buildings, schools, pagodas, governmental
institutions were closed or destroyed. The authority at that time did not allow
the circulation of currency and trade transaction. We can call the regime
“Slavery Era” in which the “Organization” was the lord and the people were the
slave. Everyone live with the anticipation of their execution or death by hunger
and illness.
During the Pol Pot Regime, everyone heard the word “Organization” but they did not know what this “Organization” referred to. The higher authority used the word “Organization” to suppress their subordinates and threaten the people, especially those accused
of being enemy. The people were frightened and doubtful of the word “Organization”, especially the phrase “Organization
called someone to go to study” as those who went to study would never return or disappeared forever. The
disappearance meant those who went to study had been killed by the
“Organization”. The word “Organization” indeed refers to the organization
structure of the military and politics of the Pol Pot Regime. What this
organization did contradict the people’s wishes, hence it goes against
democracy, and against the respect of human right and dignity. Therefore, the
regime did not last long and finally collapsed because the mass killings and
lost the support from its people, even their own cadre members.
January 7th, 1979 was the last day of Pol Pot regime,
and a new day of victory for the nation and Cambodian people. That’s why
Cambodian people across the country consider the January 7th was the
big historic victory day as well as their second birthday. After the liberation,
the United National Front for Liberation and Salvation of Kampuchea had
fulfilled its duties in saving people lives, prevented the return of genocidal
regime, defended national territories , resolved the starvation for its people,
and facilitated the repatriation and family reunion to their homeland. The other
demanding duty was to set up the administrative authorities at all levels, all
sectors in order to lead the country-we did not even have a village chief at
that time. In such difficult situation, The People’s Republic of Kampuchea was
established and the new regime had strong hope and commitment to defense and
reconstruct Cambodia of all sectors in order to help people to live in peace and
development.
At that time, starvation had threatened people’s lives, not at a
single family, a village, a commune, a district or a province, but the entire
country. So the urgent task for us was to raise people’ standard of living back
to normalcy and stability. Along the small streets, big streets, at cities urban
and rural areas across the country we met people with similar condition, we met
crowds of people walked from place to place with tired, no energy, thin, pale
and hopelessness conditions. People walked with old clothes, some even without
shoes, carried their little bag of belongings from Pol Pot’s controlled areas
with their surviving children moving toward their homeland for family reunion.
In summary, the collapsed of Pol Pot’s genocidal regime on
January 7th 1979 led to new pathway for politics, economy, social and
culture for Cambodia. Thereafter, Cambodian people started their new journey of
life, raised their living standard, rebuild the economy and society of all
sectors. We started from nothing, from the hill of ashes where almost everything
were destroyed- physically and morally. For the last 30 years, after the
collapsed of Pol Pot’s genocidal regime, our motherland had gone through
complexities, obstacles- politically and economically. The re-establishment of
new administrative authority from nothing was challenging in all sectors,
including human resources and materials. In such situation, we noticed that many
NGOs arrived, especially after 1979 and started implement many activities with
the government to help resolve many problems with the government, mainly in food
supplies and social affairs, while some other developed countries closed their
eyes for the suffering of Cambodian people and also put pressure on politics and
economic embargo to the country and Cambodian people.
In order to rescue the people out of starvation across the
country and to re-establish administrative authority, we used total measures to
tackle those problems. We did not have materials and budget at all, except some
foods we collected from Pol Pot, we distributed some foods to our armed forces
and state’s institutions and the rest for the people.
In such difficult situation, the support from the Vietnamese
people was very valuable. The Vietnamese government immediately provided foods,
medicines and other equipments to Cambodian people who were lack of everything.
Later on, in 1980, Laos, Soviet Union, India and other INGOs also provided
urgent charitable aids to Cambodia, in addition to existing charitable aids from
the government and Vietnamese people.
From 1979 to 1980, we had fifteen INGOs from Western countries
that fund raised more than US$100 million for its operational activities to
tackle pressing problems in Cambodia. The most important priority at that time
was to solve hunger problem, because crops and food warehouses were completely
destroyed by the Khmer Rouge when they chased out people from cities and urban
areas to rural areas. In such circumstance, NGOs were mainly focused on
humanitarian activities rather than political affairs.
During that phase, NGOs were strongly focused on two important
priorities: salvation/support and reconstruction, their activities such as
supplied of foods, medicines, rice and vegetable seeds, fertilizers, wells,
vaccination of animals, tools for repairing agricultural machines, spare parts
for repairing textile factory, soap factory, school materials, equipments for
school buildings, production of chalks, …bridges, equipments for pediatric
hospital, orphanages and others.
Remarkably, NGOs played important role as key messengers to the
outside world by sharing about the sufferings of Cambodian people when Cambodia
was isolated by politics and economy embargo from other western countries.
With strong determination and commitment of all Cambodian people,
together with supports from foreign friends and NGOs, we made good progress in
reducing hunger problem. Also despite the natural disaster in 1979-1980, the
result of our food production was satisfactory which helped us to end hunger
problem historically that left over by Pol Pot’s regime and set foundation for
our development today.
The presence of NGOs started with programs and activities
responded to the real needs of Cambodian people as well as the government wants
The key results were shown on the improvement of social affairs and public
health.
As a matter of fact, after the collapsed of Pol Pot’s regime, the
serious problem we faced and needed immediate response was social affairs-
orphanages, elderly people, people with disabilities, homeless people and
windows who have children, without labor force support. Based on statistics in
1981, we had 207,105 orphans, out of which 6,242 orphans lived in 34 orphanage
centers and other 200,863 orphans lived with their relatives, aunts, uncles,
their parent’s friends and kind families. These figures did not include orphans
who lost either a mother or a father.
In fact, these big social problems could not be tackled by the
government of People’s Republic of Kampuchea alone within the short of period of
time. Thus, the joint activities between the government and its people and INGOs
were a must. Together, we were able to tackle the problems successfully with
great pride. More importantly, with the support of local authorities, foreign
friends of Cambodia and INGOs, all orphanage centers were able to provide
vocational training skills to orphans such as sewing, embroidery, weaving,
carpentry, mechanics and farming.etc. Through those trainings we could confirm
that none of the orphans who lived in orphanage centers were illiterate, except
orphans who have neurological disorder. Moreover, most of those orphans
completed lower-secondary education and vocational training skills. Orphans who
lived with their relatives could also attend schools and most of them attained
good education. In summary, we noted that there was the highest number of orphan
in our new society compared to the previous regimes, however, in general none of
those orphans were homeless or engaged in crime.
Along with this,
the work on health sector at that time has started from the scratch. We had to
face with many difficulties in re-organizing the health system. Although we
have re-organized the hospitals we are lack of materials, equipments, medicines
and managers and doctors …etc. At the same time, there were a lot of patients
with different types and the most serious case 3 was malaria and malnutrition.
In order to solve this problem, friend countries had continually donated,
especially since the 1980s we had received the health donation from Soviet
Union, India and other Socialist Countries and we had also received more aid
from international organizations on which the support from the International Red
Cross and UNICEF and some other countries in emergency aid program for Cambodia,
including the teams of medical doctors to work in a number of provincial
hospitals. Moreover, there were international non-governmental organizations
(NGOs) and a number of countries have directly helped in building and operating
a number of hospitals such as French Aid Organization, World Vision, Swiss Red
Cross, Sweden and France…etc. In fact, the aid for health sector at that time
was for the necessity and paid more attention to the salvation and restoration
of people’s health, but failed to focus more on the capacity and institutional
building and other development projects.
The contribution
above has continued, but until 1989 the presence of the NGOs had not been more
developed yet. Political and economic development in between 1988 and 1991 in
Cambodia had considerably contributed to the creation and increase of presence
of the NGOs in Cambodia. In 1988 and 1991, there were three main events in
Cambodia: (1) the start of peace seeking process through the meeting between
Sihanouk and Hun Sen and other subsequent meetings, (2) the withdrawal of
Vietnamese troops from Cambodia, and (3) the internal reform, especially the
process of liberalization towards market economy. These three significant
events have contributed significantly to the creation of NGOs in Cambodia. The
assistance program of the NGOs to Cambodia has increased double at that time and
expanded its scope and targeted areas.
At the mean
time, programs of NGOs have been diverted from the short-term to long-term
activities. As for the employees of the NGOs have also acted freely in
provinces/cities in training government officials and have initiated development
projects activities in communes and improve the participation of the local
people to be the owner for their development projects.
It should be
noted that the development situation of Cambodia have been different in some
stages according to the phases of history in between 1989 and 1993 and from 1993
to the present time. In this regard, the progress of NGOs in this new situation
is also divided into continuous stages according to the historical evolution.
In fact, in 1989 we had about 40 NGOs and in the year 2003 there were more than
300 international agencies and about 20 local NGOs were set up with programs and
working activities in the field of human rights, women’s welfare, education and
rural development. The presence of international NGOs and the establishment of
local NGOs happened at the time of positive signal and hope about peace
settlement for Cambodia and the preparation for assembly election organized by
UNTAC.
The noticeable
issue at that time was the positive progress of peace negotiation process among
all rival factions. At that time NGOs that acted in the refugee camps along the
border and inside Cambodia had exchanged studies tour in order to study about
how to prepare to repatriate Cambodian people living along the border back to
the country and had them integrated into the national fold. As a result, NGOs
in the border and local NGOs had played significant roles in coordinating the
integration of 250, 00 people who were living along the border to come and
settle down in Cambodia after the Paris Peace Agreement.
On the other
hand, after the Paris Peace Agreement and during the UNTAC period, a lot of NGOs
had been created and most of them were created by Cambodian people living abroad
and returned back to Cambodia to participate in restoring and rebuilding the
nation. Of course, this movement brought back the resources, skills and
experiences for Cambodia. However, this movement brought about the increase in
many NGOs because of the availability of funds and donors at that time to
implement their programs without consulting with the government.
We have noted
that in general NGOs have particularly contributed to achieve considerable
results in the work of social development and improvement of Cambodia’s prestige
in international arena through various programs such as demining, improving
gender and women. The valuable contribution of the Cambodian NGOs have been
reflected through the active participation in many activities such as preparing
the plan of action, and preparing Cambodian women to attend the international
conference on women in Beijing in 1996 and the opinion fighting campaign of
Cambodian NGOs related to the Ottawa Agreement on Prohibition of Mine
Plantation, which became the international law in 1999…etc.
Based on the
experiences so far, especially during the decades of 1980s and early 1990s, we
have observed that NGOs had tried their best to work hard in partnership with
the government. In fact, the Royal Government and NGOs had common objectives
which were to enhance the humanitarian principles, respect of human rights and
dignity through democracy and socio-economic development. For this objective,
partnership between government and NGOs is truly important. Working together
for 30 years has allowed us to find many positives points on partnership between
government and NGOs, which we all have to pay high attention to for
implementation or keeping as a lesson learnt in implementing programs in the
future. We have a lot of examples about the good implementation as a partner
between the Royal Government and NGOs in many important sectors such as
education, health, governance, agriculture and others. For instance, National
Education Partnership Organization established in 2000 has contributed
significantly in the discussion between the Royal Government and the NGOs on
education, research and report publication. MediCam organization, which consists
of 121 organizations of the members of organizations in the health sector, has
essentially participated in various formal meetings related to the issue of
health through which it provided opportunities for NGOs to share in constructing
policy in implementing health reform since 1996. Moreover, many other NGOs have
been actively working in partnership with the Ministry of Interior in the
program of decentralization and de-concentration…etc.
Therefore, there
is not doubt that during this new stage, partnership between government, NGOs
and people of Cambodia are still crucial for the development of Cambodia. In
fact, roles of the NGOs have been evolved in many phases, which include
providing aid and salvage, restoring and developing the nation as well as
advocacy according to the development situation of the country. Since 1979
until early 1990s, NGOs have been working in many areas such as emergency relief
there occurred disaster, capacity and human resource development, human right
protection, good governance, technology development, poverty reduction, health
education, microfinance, sustainable natural resource management, community
development, contribution to national policy formulation and reform
programs…etc… Furthermore, the attendance of NGOs at international meetings and
forums also significantly promote understanding of Cambodia by international
community. For over the last 3 decades, we have noted that international NGOs
had change activity direction from direct project implementers into
organizations which provide support to and strengthen capacity of local NGOs and
civil societies. This is another to-be-welcome tendency of positive change
because it makes contribution to capacity building in Cambodia.
At the present,
there are up to thousands of NGOs in Cambodia. Some even claimed that Cambodia
is the paradise for NGOs. This raises a question about their roles in Cambodia.
Indeed, for the last 3 decades along with the evolution and development of the
nation, NGOs has undergone many changes both quantitatively and qualitatively.
However, the achievement we have made and those positive changes have not
eliminated the challenges in management and coordination of activities of NGOs
in the framework of democracy and rules of law. We are aware that good democracy
must entail the participation of NGOs. Nevertheless, while our democracy becomes
more and more matured, NGOs must also go mature along with the system and
framework.
In this
conference we are together steadfastly committed to build partnership, but we
also admit that we would face a number of challenges given a huge number of
NGOs. Therefore, while commemorating 30th anniversary of NGOs in
Cambodia, the conference shall also pay great attention to indentifying methods
for future joint task as partner by ensuring that all activities and cooperation
of NGOs will be conducted in a framework which is transparent, accountable and
highly responsible in conformity to the principle of democracy and rule of law
and provide maximum benefits to Cambodian people and the whole society. In this
spirit, I am of the view that now is a very appropriate time for the government
to have “Law on NGOs and Association” in effect as inscribed in the “Rectangular Strategy-Phase II”.
For future
partnership, I contend that we are obliged to sharpen our attention to some key
dimensions especially building capacity of human resource and institution as
well as increasing efficiency of program implementation and grant fund
utilization of NGOs who are key elements for socio-economic development and
poverty reduction of our people. In this regard, I would like to provide
ministry/institutions, authorities of all level and NGOs a number of
recommendations to cooperatively center attention to priority goals for
short-term and mid-term as follows:
1. Building capacity and raising professional qualification of NGOs through strengthening capacity of institution and personnel and good
understanding of law and regulation especially strict adhering to code of
conduct and dignity as true coordinator and as service provider to
beneficiaries.
2. Increase cooperation for implementing programs by aligning with national
development programs through information sharing, discussion for exchanging ideas, division of role
and responsibility and participating necessary activities aiming at ensuring
those development programs be responsive to real need of the people and help
ease the burden of the government.
3. Increase the responsibility and efficiency of fund management before donor, beneficiaries and competence authorities particularly through
preparation and dissemination of activity and financial report that reveals
efficacy of fund used for project implementation. In this connection, a
monitoring and evaluation mechanism shall be established with participation from
relevant ministries/institutions especially the Ministry of Interior, local
authorities and NGOs themselves in order to review, discuss and evaluate
efficiency of grant usage of NGOs as required and regularly.
4. Establishing national and sub-national forum between the government and NGOs.
So far we have mechanism for some regular meetings particular at provincial
level viz. provincial cabinet and NGOs. In this sense, I would like to request
this kind of mechanism be extended to sub-national level to review and discuss
progress and contribution of NGOs to development works and strengthen
partnership. Along with, the Ministry of Interior should consider creation of
forum or a mechanism allowing ministry and NGOs chance to review and discuss
development works and bolster partnership.
5. Adhering to the principle of partnership in executing initiatives or programs by giving great attention to the following
points:
1) Providing appropriate solutions as demanded by the community and beneficiaries by checking and ensuring that any initiatives or programs of the NGOs share
long-term vision and goal that are common or similar to those of the government.
Furthermore, means and implementation activities shall be agreed by
ministries/institution concerned especially local authorities and provide
solution to concrete demand and concern.
2) Promoting the participation of partners in planning and implementing initiatives by reviewing and ascertaining that initiatives and programs of NGOs would be
prepared with support and involvement of ministries/institutions concerned
especially local authorities as partner with clear division of respective role
and responsibility of NGOs and partners as well as demonstrate possible
engagement of partner concerned in project monitoring and evaluation.
3) Showing counterpart’s good will for more cooperation by reviewing and ensuring that initiatives and programs of NGOs entail open
communication mechanism between all partners with mutual respect.
4) Acknowledging and promoting participation of beneficiaries in any decision making process relating to planning, project implementation and
ensuring facilitating mechanism for communication channel between beneficiaries
and all partners and giving them opportunity to participate directly project
implementation.
I believe that Your
Excellencies, ladies, and gentlemen who are the representatives of NGOs will
consider the above mentioned recommendations and to try further to increase
partnership between the RGC and NGOs and the people of Cambodia aiming at
achieving development and poverty reduction according to the National Strategic
Development Program and various other reform programs of the RGC.
Before ending my
remark, on behalf of the RGC I would like to once again praise Your
Excellencies, Lok Chumteav, ladies, and gentlemen who are leaders, and officials
of the national and international NGOs as well as development partners and
friend countries for joining with the government and people of Cambodia in
carrying out humanitarian work and achieving successful and proud outcomes,
especially with regard to socio-economic development and poverty reduction
during the last 30 years. The RGC very much looking to the humanity spirit of
NGOs and the firm and effective partnership with all relevant stakeholders in
reducing people’s poverty and promoting national development on a sustainable
path within the framework of democracy and state of law with transparency,
accountability, and high sense of responsibility for the next 30 years.
Finally, I wish
Your Excellencies, ladies, and gentlemen with Four Gems of Buddhist Blessing.
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