Congratulations to Comfrel's Koul Panha, a recipient of the prestigious Ramon Magsaysay Awards

Koul Panha (2nd from Left) during a Voice of Civil Society boradcast (Photo: Koul Panha)

Winners of Asia’s Version of Nobel Prize Revealed

Thursday, July 28th, 2011
Voice of America

Two Indian philanthropists and a Philippine non-profit development organization are among the winners of the Philippines prestigious Ramon Magsaysay Awards.

The annual awards, named after a popular Philippine president who was killed in a plane crash in 1957, are widely seen as Asia's equivalent of the Nobel Prizes.

Harish Hande, a U.S. trained engineer and entrepreneur, was cited by the foundation that administers the awards for his passionate and pragmatic efforts” to provide affordable solar power to over one million poor and rural Indians.

Nileema Mishra has established a center that provides small loans to farmers, plus self-help projects for small villages.

The Alternative Indigenous Development Foundation, based in the central Philippine province of Negros Occidental, was also cited for its work in combating rural poverty. The organization has introduced an environmentally-friendly pumping system that provides villages easy access to clean water.

Other winners of the 2011 Ramon Magsaysay Awards include Cambodian Koul Panha, the founder of a group that advocates for free and fair elections in his country's nascent democracy; Indonesian entrepreneur Tri Mumpuni, who has built community-run hydropower plants in rural communities; and her compatriot Hasanain Juaini, who has established an Islamic boarding school for girls.

The winners will receive a medallion and cash prize at an awards ceremony in the Philippines on August 31.

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CITATION for Koul Panha

Ramon Magsaysay Award Presentation Ceremonies
31 August 2011, Manila, Philippines

In many places in the world today, citizens are engaged in a historic struggle to democratize their societies, often under conditions of extreme difficulty and danger. One such place is Cambodia. The country was traumatized by decades of war and the genocide perpetrated by the Khmer Rouge, which left 1.7 million Cambodians dead. Cambodia took its first step to establishing a "multi-party liberal democracy" when it proclaimed a new constitution and embarked on its first democratic elections in 1993. Cambodians have gone through five national and local elections since then. But democracy's progress has been slow and turbulent, and elections have been undermined by factionalism, fraud, violence, and the threat of a return to authoritarian rule. Many know that the central challenge is for Cambodians to claim the electoral process as their own, by protecting it as an instrument for building a democracy. One of those who has bravely stepped up to this challenge is a Cambodian engineer named Koul Panha.

Panha knew firsthand what brutalities are possible in the absence of a true democracy. He was eight years old when his father and relatives were killed by the Khmer Rouge. The indescribable trauma impelled him to dedicate himself to changing his society. He finished his university degree, taught in Phnom Penh, and was already involved in the human rights movement even in the time of the dictatorship. When Cambodia embarked on its first free elections in 1993, he joined the non-partisan "Task Force on Cambodian Elections," and was one of the organizers when this task force became the Committee for Free and Fair Elections (COMFREL) in 1997. Panha assumed the role of COMFREL executive director in 1998; returning home after earning a master's degree in the Politics of Alternative Development, he threw himself fulltime into COMFREL's mission of assuring that Cambodian elections are free and fair.

Under his leadership, COMFREL has become the country's leading independent organization on electoral issues. It aggressively campaigns for responsible voting and electoral reforms, using all available media. In protecting the 2008 electoral process, COMFREL and its partners trained and deployed over 10,000 volunteers, covering 95% of the country's polling stations. For the first time in Cambodia, a citizens' parallel "quick count" initiated by COMFREL helped forestall the manipulation of results by establishing voting trends three days after the elections. They have also proactively campaigned for the wider political participation of women, who constitute half of Cambodia's population, a campaign that has seen an increase of women in public office.

Based in Phnom Penh, COMFREL maintains a nationwide network of partners and has mobilized, since its inception, over 50,000 election volunteers; more than 150,000 Cambodians have participated in COMFREL's training programs, workshops and other activities. This is an impressive show of civic participation in a democracy still so young. Even more significant is how COMFREL has gone beyond elections--into post-election issues of governance. It actively lobbies for reforms in matters like election campaign finance and the national budget. In 2003 it initiated "Parliamentary Watch," which monitors the performance of legislators and officials using benchmarks and concrete indicators in grading government performance at both local and national levels. COMFTREL's monitoring reports are publicly disseminated.

Democracy in Cambodia remains fragile, and the situation complex and dangerous. Panha has experienced harassment, and he knows he has to walk a tightrope for COMFREL to continue doing its work. But despite the fears of friends and family, he remains committed to using every inch of democratic space to empower his people in building a homeland that is democratic and free. Recalling the tragic experience of Cambodians and his own family, the soft-spoken Panha says: "I think Cambodia has suffered enough. This pushes me to do something as a citizen of Cambodia, to make sure the suffering does not happen again."

In electing Koul Panha to receive the 2011 Ramon Magsaysay Award, the board of trustees recognizes his determined and courageous leadership of the sustained campaign to build an enlightened, organized and vigilant citizenry who will ensure fair and free elections--as well as demand accountable governance by their elected officials--in Cambodia's nascent democracy.