By Craig Guthrie
Asia Times Online (Hong Kong)
PHNOM PENH - With an overwhelming electoral mandate, robust economy and a potential bounty of oil and gas revenues, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen feels in a strong enough position to move against the non-governmental organizations (NGOs) which have been a perennial thorn in the strongman's side since he took power more than two decades ago.
In late September he called for the revival of a controversial law which would require the country's more than 2,000 associations and NGOs to complete a complex registration process and submit to stringent financial reporting requirements. The draft law is expected to be passed by Hun Sen’s Cambodia People's Party (CPP)-dominated National Assembly in the coming months.
"Cambodia has been heaven for NGOs for too long," he said in a speech broadcast on national radio on September 26, adding that he had given up hope of reading any positive reports written by international or local NGOs. "The NGOs are out of control ... they insult the government just to ensure their financial survival."
By enacting the law, Hun Sen could recalibrate the government's terms of engagement with the Western-led aid community, on which his government has heavily relied for decades to finance its budget. The move comes as private-led foreign investment has fueled the country's economic rise, led in the main by China and South Korea.
"Many of the services provided by NGOs today will one day either be privatized or the revenues of the government will grow to such an extent that the functions currently being done by NGOs will be taken over by the government," said Brett Sciaroni, chairman of Cambodia's International Business Association.
The NGO law's enactment would be a symbolic power shift between Hun Sen's CPP-led government, further emboldened by its landslide victory in this year's general election, and the Western-backed NGOs which have long chastised it over human-rights abuses and corruption allegations.
International aid agencies have for decades held the purse strings on the aid which has sustained the national economy since it emerged from the horrors of the Khmer Rouge, the ultra-Maoist regime which systematically attempted to transform Cambodia into an agricultural utopia between 1975 and 1979, and a subsequent decade-plus of civil war.
Some contend it was the Khmer Rouge's economic failures, including a devastating countrywide famine that killed many and stalked the regime's traumatized survivors, which set the stage for Cambodia's now decades-long dependence on foreign aid.
The British aid agency Oxfam began programs soon after the Khmer Rouge's 1979 ouster, despite incurring the wrath of the United States and the United Kingdom governments for helping the Hanoi-sponsored regime put in place by the invading Vietnamese.
Jacques Beaumont from the United Nations Children's Fund, and Francois Bugnion from the International Red Cross (IRC), who both arrived in Phnom Penh in 1979, were pivotal players in that humanitarian effort. They finally persuaded the IRC, which was fearful of being seen as compromising its political neutrality, into launching what turned into its most significant relief operation since World War II.
But the comprehensive aid experiment did not begin in earnest until after the signing of the 1991 Paris Peace Accords, which by and large ended the country's debilitating civil war. Since then myriad NGOs have come to Cambodia to work on everything from demining to microfinance, orphanages to agri-business, public health issues to snaring globe-trotting pedophiles.
The demining NGOs in particular made great progress, clearing an estimated 25,000 hectares of mined territory between 1992-2003. Cambodia has also been hailed as a global success story in fighting HIV/AIDs transmission, led by NGO-organized education programs and health aid. Prevalence rates have fallen by nearly half, from 3% in 1997 to 1.6% in 2006.
Fractious relations
But Hun Sen's government's relationship with NGOs and international aid agencies has often been fractious, epitomized by its tumultuous interactions with the environmental watchdog Global Witness over its consistent accusations of high-level government links to illegal logging, and with the UK-based rights lobby Amnesty International for its criticism of state-sponsored forced evictions across the country.
The World Bank also suspended US$11.9 million in funds in 2006 for seven sanitation projects when it found evidence of rampant extortion, bribe-taking, bid-rigging and procurement manipulation, leading Hun Sen to claim the multilateral lender was trying to tarnish his government's credibility. The bank only agreed to unfreeze the projects' funding in 2007 after the government promised to strengthen anti-corruption measures.
Despite Cambodia's recent economic boom, including a skyrocketing average 11% gross domestic product (GDP) growth over the past three years, a sizable portion of the nation's real income still derives directly from donor nations in amounts wrangled out each year at annual Consultative Group meetings.
The meetings were for years characterized by vague promises from the Cambodian government in response to weak demands by donors for reform, including the long-delayed adoption of an anti-corruption law. But in the past two years these demands have become less relevant with the surge in aid from China, which typically has less good governance or transparency conditions attached.
While Chinese aid is generally funneled through vast infrastructure projects - including hydropower and road projects - usually contracted to Chinese companies, Western nations' share of the average US$600 million in annual aid arrives through international aid agencies and NGOs. The process has been widely cast as a corrupt, inefficient gravy train, giving some traction to Hun Sen's complaints.
"In the 1980s, there was a popular T-shirt satirizing US Army recruitment commercials with the slogan, 'Join the army. Travel to exotic, distant lands. Meet exciting, unusual people. And kill them'," Brad Adams, executive director for Human Rights Watch's Asia Program, was quoted saying to Action Aid in 2005. "In the new millennium, it could be rephrased, 'Join the aid community. Travel to exotic, distant lands. Meet exciting, unusual people. And make a killing'."
This is still the case in Cambodia, Adams told Asia Times Online. "You can start with all the foreign consultants making more than $10,000 per month, almost always tax free. This is a huge drain on the aid budget for Cambodia and in many cases the consultants produce nothing of value for the country."
Many analysts and expatriates agree that NGOs and their workers suffer from an image crisis among the Cambodian public, partly due to their comparatively high salaries and lifestyles, which are far adrift from the 35% of the population which lives on less than $0.50 a day.
Country directors for prominent international aid agencies typically receive a $250,000 annual package, which includes a spacious villa in the capital's upmarket "NGO-ville" area, a four-wheel-drive vehicle - usually emblazoned with the logo of their donor agency or charity - and fees paid for the capital's better international schools.
The aid watchdog Action Aid estimated in 2005 that the 700 or so international consultants working for NGOs in the country earned more than Cambodia's 160,000 civil servants put together. "In 1993, yes, 99% of foreign consultants were justified; now, 5% are justifiable. The others are embedding and enabling the mentality of dependency," Center of Social Development director Theary Seng said in June.
Arne Sahlen, a founding member of the Cambodia Support Group, a 25-year-old volunteer organization, echoes Hun Sen's comments that fundraising has overtaken the focus on the actual progress of several NGO projects. According to Sahlen, "vast" resources are being swallowed up on pursuing donors that could be invested on direct project needs. "The need to please donors has warped the focus to not necessarily what is best for the project but what may look best on an application," said Sahlen.
Others contend that several NGOs are actually impeding the development of a self-sustaining private sector, mainly through the alleged abuse of their not-for-profit status to pursue business opportunities. That status helps them avoid taxes and other unofficial costs that private businesses pay, giving non-profit an unfair competitive advantage in the market, they say.
Cambodians now understand the word NGO, especially in the local context, to be a for-profit enterprise, said Sophal Ear, the author of The Political Economy of Cambodia, Aid and Governance. "It's all a business and this is just another way to avoid taxes," he said. "When not covered by donors, capital costs for NGOs have largely been privatized, through an extensive network of 'donations' to the ruling party by Oknhas [politically connected tycoons] politicians, and civil servants."
Discretionary powers
The NGO law, known formally as the Law on Organizations, was first written over a decade ago and aims to address such complaints. It would require NGOs to submit for government approval documents detailing their structure, goals, funding resources, properties and even logos. It also entails fines and imprisonment for any NGO which fails to submit annual reports to the Ministry of Economy and Finance.
Many fear the discretionary powers the law will give the government in monitoring and sanctioning NGOs - rather than vice versa. Hun Sen no doubt had his one good eye on the anticipated bounty of future oil and gas revenues when calling for the controversial law's revival. Chevron, the US energy giant, discovered oil off Cambodia southwestern coast in 2005 and analysts have predicted the find could generate anywhere between $200 million and $2 billion in annual revenues for the government when full-scale production begins in 2010.
The government is still awaiting a key assessment from Chevron of the supposed find, and both sides have more recently played down expectations. Nonetheless, NGOS are already warning of a possible "resource curse" similar to places like Nigeria, where corrupt governments pilfered and wasted earnings derived from energy exports.
"NGOs are trying to tell us how to use the oil money, but this is of no interest to us. What is important is how to make our resources profitable," Hun Sen said in a recent radio broadcast speech.
Despite his criticisms, there are reasons for concern. A new NGO coalition has begun work to oversee the transparency of the management of future oil funds. Led by the NGO Forum, it has given little information on its structure, but has said it plans to ensure the potential financial benefits from the windfall are managed in a socially responsible manner, and that benefits filter down to the impoverished grassroots.
The World Bank, which also aims to monitor the government's oil revenue management, noted in May that international aid is often poorly managed in key sectors, with the problem of "fragmented" assistance especially acute in health and education.
In the health sector, 22 donors are currently working with over 100 NGOs to deliver $110 million in Official Development Assistance (ODA) per year through 109 projects - yet use of the national system remains at just between 13% to 18%, said the bank. The vast majority of rural Cambodians are forced to use an expensive yet rudimentary private healthcare system which is more reminiscent of poorer African than neighboring Asian nations.
The education system is also beset by severe underfunding, with thousands of graduates churned out from poorly regulated "international" universities with degrees that often leave them ill-prepared to enter the job market. Until now, the only paying option for many graduates was to work in donor agencies and international NGOs. But if Chinese and South Korean private investment flows hold up and the country's hoped-for energy bonanza is realized, that may all soon change if Hun Sen has his NGO-curbing way.
Craig Guthrie is a former reporter for the Mekong Times newspaper in Phnom Penh. He has covered Cambodian affairs since 2004.
In late September he called for the revival of a controversial law which would require the country's more than 2,000 associations and NGOs to complete a complex registration process and submit to stringent financial reporting requirements. The draft law is expected to be passed by Hun Sen’s Cambodia People's Party (CPP)-dominated National Assembly in the coming months.
"Cambodia has been heaven for NGOs for too long," he said in a speech broadcast on national radio on September 26, adding that he had given up hope of reading any positive reports written by international or local NGOs. "The NGOs are out of control ... they insult the government just to ensure their financial survival."
By enacting the law, Hun Sen could recalibrate the government's terms of engagement with the Western-led aid community, on which his government has heavily relied for decades to finance its budget. The move comes as private-led foreign investment has fueled the country's economic rise, led in the main by China and South Korea.
"Many of the services provided by NGOs today will one day either be privatized or the revenues of the government will grow to such an extent that the functions currently being done by NGOs will be taken over by the government," said Brett Sciaroni, chairman of Cambodia's International Business Association.
The NGO law's enactment would be a symbolic power shift between Hun Sen's CPP-led government, further emboldened by its landslide victory in this year's general election, and the Western-backed NGOs which have long chastised it over human-rights abuses and corruption allegations.
International aid agencies have for decades held the purse strings on the aid which has sustained the national economy since it emerged from the horrors of the Khmer Rouge, the ultra-Maoist regime which systematically attempted to transform Cambodia into an agricultural utopia between 1975 and 1979, and a subsequent decade-plus of civil war.
Some contend it was the Khmer Rouge's economic failures, including a devastating countrywide famine that killed many and stalked the regime's traumatized survivors, which set the stage for Cambodia's now decades-long dependence on foreign aid.
The British aid agency Oxfam began programs soon after the Khmer Rouge's 1979 ouster, despite incurring the wrath of the United States and the United Kingdom governments for helping the Hanoi-sponsored regime put in place by the invading Vietnamese.
Jacques Beaumont from the United Nations Children's Fund, and Francois Bugnion from the International Red Cross (IRC), who both arrived in Phnom Penh in 1979, were pivotal players in that humanitarian effort. They finally persuaded the IRC, which was fearful of being seen as compromising its political neutrality, into launching what turned into its most significant relief operation since World War II.
But the comprehensive aid experiment did not begin in earnest until after the signing of the 1991 Paris Peace Accords, which by and large ended the country's debilitating civil war. Since then myriad NGOs have come to Cambodia to work on everything from demining to microfinance, orphanages to agri-business, public health issues to snaring globe-trotting pedophiles.
The demining NGOs in particular made great progress, clearing an estimated 25,000 hectares of mined territory between 1992-2003. Cambodia has also been hailed as a global success story in fighting HIV/AIDs transmission, led by NGO-organized education programs and health aid. Prevalence rates have fallen by nearly half, from 3% in 1997 to 1.6% in 2006.
Fractious relations
But Hun Sen's government's relationship with NGOs and international aid agencies has often been fractious, epitomized by its tumultuous interactions with the environmental watchdog Global Witness over its consistent accusations of high-level government links to illegal logging, and with the UK-based rights lobby Amnesty International for its criticism of state-sponsored forced evictions across the country.
The World Bank also suspended US$11.9 million in funds in 2006 for seven sanitation projects when it found evidence of rampant extortion, bribe-taking, bid-rigging and procurement manipulation, leading Hun Sen to claim the multilateral lender was trying to tarnish his government's credibility. The bank only agreed to unfreeze the projects' funding in 2007 after the government promised to strengthen anti-corruption measures.
Despite Cambodia's recent economic boom, including a skyrocketing average 11% gross domestic product (GDP) growth over the past three years, a sizable portion of the nation's real income still derives directly from donor nations in amounts wrangled out each year at annual Consultative Group meetings.
The meetings were for years characterized by vague promises from the Cambodian government in response to weak demands by donors for reform, including the long-delayed adoption of an anti-corruption law. But in the past two years these demands have become less relevant with the surge in aid from China, which typically has less good governance or transparency conditions attached.
While Chinese aid is generally funneled through vast infrastructure projects - including hydropower and road projects - usually contracted to Chinese companies, Western nations' share of the average US$600 million in annual aid arrives through international aid agencies and NGOs. The process has been widely cast as a corrupt, inefficient gravy train, giving some traction to Hun Sen's complaints.
"In the 1980s, there was a popular T-shirt satirizing US Army recruitment commercials with the slogan, 'Join the army. Travel to exotic, distant lands. Meet exciting, unusual people. And kill them'," Brad Adams, executive director for Human Rights Watch's Asia Program, was quoted saying to Action Aid in 2005. "In the new millennium, it could be rephrased, 'Join the aid community. Travel to exotic, distant lands. Meet exciting, unusual people. And make a killing'."
This is still the case in Cambodia, Adams told Asia Times Online. "You can start with all the foreign consultants making more than $10,000 per month, almost always tax free. This is a huge drain on the aid budget for Cambodia and in many cases the consultants produce nothing of value for the country."
Many analysts and expatriates agree that NGOs and their workers suffer from an image crisis among the Cambodian public, partly due to their comparatively high salaries and lifestyles, which are far adrift from the 35% of the population which lives on less than $0.50 a day.
Country directors for prominent international aid agencies typically receive a $250,000 annual package, which includes a spacious villa in the capital's upmarket "NGO-ville" area, a four-wheel-drive vehicle - usually emblazoned with the logo of their donor agency or charity - and fees paid for the capital's better international schools.
The aid watchdog Action Aid estimated in 2005 that the 700 or so international consultants working for NGOs in the country earned more than Cambodia's 160,000 civil servants put together. "In 1993, yes, 99% of foreign consultants were justified; now, 5% are justifiable. The others are embedding and enabling the mentality of dependency," Center of Social Development director Theary Seng said in June.
Arne Sahlen, a founding member of the Cambodia Support Group, a 25-year-old volunteer organization, echoes Hun Sen's comments that fundraising has overtaken the focus on the actual progress of several NGO projects. According to Sahlen, "vast" resources are being swallowed up on pursuing donors that could be invested on direct project needs. "The need to please donors has warped the focus to not necessarily what is best for the project but what may look best on an application," said Sahlen.
Others contend that several NGOs are actually impeding the development of a self-sustaining private sector, mainly through the alleged abuse of their not-for-profit status to pursue business opportunities. That status helps them avoid taxes and other unofficial costs that private businesses pay, giving non-profit an unfair competitive advantage in the market, they say.
Cambodians now understand the word NGO, especially in the local context, to be a for-profit enterprise, said Sophal Ear, the author of The Political Economy of Cambodia, Aid and Governance. "It's all a business and this is just another way to avoid taxes," he said. "When not covered by donors, capital costs for NGOs have largely been privatized, through an extensive network of 'donations' to the ruling party by Oknhas [politically connected tycoons] politicians, and civil servants."
Discretionary powers
The NGO law, known formally as the Law on Organizations, was first written over a decade ago and aims to address such complaints. It would require NGOs to submit for government approval documents detailing their structure, goals, funding resources, properties and even logos. It also entails fines and imprisonment for any NGO which fails to submit annual reports to the Ministry of Economy and Finance.
Many fear the discretionary powers the law will give the government in monitoring and sanctioning NGOs - rather than vice versa. Hun Sen no doubt had his one good eye on the anticipated bounty of future oil and gas revenues when calling for the controversial law's revival. Chevron, the US energy giant, discovered oil off Cambodia southwestern coast in 2005 and analysts have predicted the find could generate anywhere between $200 million and $2 billion in annual revenues for the government when full-scale production begins in 2010.
The government is still awaiting a key assessment from Chevron of the supposed find, and both sides have more recently played down expectations. Nonetheless, NGOS are already warning of a possible "resource curse" similar to places like Nigeria, where corrupt governments pilfered and wasted earnings derived from energy exports.
"NGOs are trying to tell us how to use the oil money, but this is of no interest to us. What is important is how to make our resources profitable," Hun Sen said in a recent radio broadcast speech.
Despite his criticisms, there are reasons for concern. A new NGO coalition has begun work to oversee the transparency of the management of future oil funds. Led by the NGO Forum, it has given little information on its structure, but has said it plans to ensure the potential financial benefits from the windfall are managed in a socially responsible manner, and that benefits filter down to the impoverished grassroots.
The World Bank, which also aims to monitor the government's oil revenue management, noted in May that international aid is often poorly managed in key sectors, with the problem of "fragmented" assistance especially acute in health and education.
In the health sector, 22 donors are currently working with over 100 NGOs to deliver $110 million in Official Development Assistance (ODA) per year through 109 projects - yet use of the national system remains at just between 13% to 18%, said the bank. The vast majority of rural Cambodians are forced to use an expensive yet rudimentary private healthcare system which is more reminiscent of poorer African than neighboring Asian nations.
The education system is also beset by severe underfunding, with thousands of graduates churned out from poorly regulated "international" universities with degrees that often leave them ill-prepared to enter the job market. Until now, the only paying option for many graduates was to work in donor agencies and international NGOs. But if Chinese and South Korean private investment flows hold up and the country's hoped-for energy bonanza is realized, that may all soon change if Hun Sen has his NGO-curbing way.
Craig Guthrie is a former reporter for the Mekong Times newspaper in Phnom Penh. He has covered Cambodian affairs since 2004.
24 comments:
I think it is a very good opportunity for reducing NGOs in Cambodia and letting people and government to deal with each other. The destiny depends on Khmer people. If they think they love the life they are having it now, then let be their choice.
It is a waste of money to fun any NGOs in Cambodia. Let the struggle for democracy be born from Khmer people.
Khmer Republican
Soon Cambodia will be like Iraq of Hussein.
Anti-corruption and good governance is the real issue that Hun Xen avoided.
Some Khmers especially the group of Kol Pheng-Pok Than republican tennacles made a bundle from NGO's.
Hun Xen edging his revenge toward elimination a third eye watching his Kleptocratic family.
9:49 The majority of Khmer people have less access to the modern world and accept to live with the things they are having now. Therefore it is a pity for those who wish to advance their society/country to be like the developed country but these educated people only accounted for a small amount 30% of population.So what should these people do? Only conditional sentences are for them. If I were..., I would.. Any comments?
A Khmer youth, live & educated locally.
the last election clearly proves that Cambodian people are happy having an arrogant, cocky, and evil-minded Hun Sen as their beloved ruler. Just let them enjoy it. Some folks might think, living under the oppression, our people had no choice but to vote for the CPP; that's not true!
Ah Sen is more busy with the NGOs then boosting the economy, tackling the poverty issue, corruption etc.
Ah Sen I don't think you ever won any election, but you should focus on the real issue of the country not on NGOs.
Maybe it's too much for third grade school boy.
To My Republican Friend (9:49 PM),
Your assumed generalization about NGOs suggests that you may not be fully aware of what NGOs have been doing to assist Cambodia in a wide variety of areas.
I'm doubtful of your knowledge of and unerstanding of NGOs, their roles, missions and work in helping the less privileged, the less advantaged, and the poor in country like Cambodia, who usually get exploited by those with more power and closer connection with high-ranking gov't officials who care not much about the interest of the country, but more about their own party and pockets.
At least NGOs have been helping people at the grassroots levels where gov't has always been too slow, too little, or too late in providing what is needed for the less fortunate people who most of the time get left out behind what I see is the development plan.
At least, NGOs fulfill what must be seen as a complementing role alongside the gov't.
At least, NGOs are tasked to ensure a check-and-balance system is in place and functional so as to not let the gov't have too much control of their power.
At least, NGOs work directly with the poor and help educate them about their daily survival and their rights.
At least, NGOs may help people undertsand their duty as a citizen to get involved in building the country.
At least, NGOs may create a grassroots moverment and gather people forces to push for a reform in any bad policy and change for the common good of all.
At least, there're contless other things NGOs can do to help both the gov't and the people. Therefore, their work should be appreciated, although I would think there are some, but not quite many, NGOs that seem not to live up to what they're supposed to do. However, I want to let you know that the Khmer saying, "one dead fish spoils the whole busket of good ones" does not apply here to NGOs.
Overall, I support NGOs and wish for them to exist and continue their important job of assisting Cambodia and her poor people.
Khmer Student Educated in Cambodia and USA
Without the NGOs the poor and orphans will be completely obliterated by the Hun Sen regime.
Well' Just another new strategies that Ah Youn have instructed their puppets to cut the live line of our poor Khmer families. Remembers, Ah Youn always want to eliminate our population so they can send their to live on our land. Unfortunately, there always a small handful of Khmer people are willing to fulfill the dream of their master. I am not surprise.
That's right without the NGOs ah Yuon will act in total impunity.
9:49 pm, you are one of CPP people.
Don’t lesson to this son of the bitch.
Ah Sdach Maha Thmil Hun Sen hates the NGOs because they monitor his and the CPP's corruption. Without the NGOs, Hun Sen is able to go about and orchestrate his human rights abuse, money embezzlement, abuse of the law, etc.
Why do people support Hun Sen and the CPP? Well, first of all they feel intimidated. Second, they feel they will gain much more financially. Third, they are bandwagon political followers. Fourth, to gain certain privileges both legally and illegally in certain ventures. Fifth, it's the combination of all of the above.
Today Prime Minister Hun Sen called the END of NGO
era in Cambodia. The congress voted 95 to 28. Reason, because "The NGOs always insult the government and may be funded to political groups whom arise or set-up an internal affair to revolt against the government".
From Leaking source PP
If this law passed, Cambodia will become Burma II. With the money from oil.
Ah Hun is just ah yuon puppet, all this is from his master ah Dung (aka La Merde).
Peoples who blame NGOs are brainless or
maybe they did not well inform.
For examples, in rural development, streets
and little roads are fund by the donor countries.
Beside the provincial's roads are build the governement. So what the government do?
They loan money from China, and else.
So cambodians should repay sooner or later the debts,
for the construction of provincial's road.
The problem with rural roads and others things.
CPP use it as if it's were their monies.
In fact, rural developments are build
by the monies of the donors (NGOs).
A lots of corruption in that area...
CPP members steal a lots of monies.
Lu Lay Sreng knew it. And He can't do
nothing...
These informations are coming from some members of parliament of Funcinpec...
Khmer Canadian
Lu Lay Sreng and Chhim Seak Leng were minister in charged the rural developments and were stealing and cheating million of dollars and several Kilo meters of lands from the rural people.
These informations are coming from some members of parliament of Funcipec, SRP and CPP...
Khmer living in land
"Cambodians now understand the word NGO, especially in the local context, to be a for-profit enterprise, said Sophal Ear, the author of The Political Economy of Cambodia, Aid and Governance. "It's all a business and this is just another way to avoid taxes," he said."
=Well! The good come with the bad! So what if some prominent NGO director receive $250,000 a year including a nice spacious villa and a four-wheel-drive vehicle and the fact is the NGOs can afford it and beside it not even Cambodian money and Cambodian government has no right tell the NGOs what to do! It is the Cambodian government that allowed all these NGOs to come to Cambodia in the first place and why now start complaining? The fact is donor countries gave money through NGOs because they want to create job their citizen too!
==================================
"Since then myriad NGOs have come to Cambodia to work on everything from demining to microfinance, orphanages to agri-business, and public health issues to snaring globe-trotting pedophiles."
= How about look at the big picture and what have the so called NGOs had done Cambodian society? I believe NGOs had done much for Cambodian society as a whole! At the same time, I don't want to see Cambodia as a beggar country depend on handout from other countries because no Cambodian people want to born to this world as a beggar!
I remembered Cambodia used to be a peaceful, prosperous, and neutral country and overnight Cambodia plunged into the war and 30 years later make Cambodia as a beggar country of the world! It is such a pity to see Cambodia like this!
shut a fuck up some people in this forum.If you know more than them why you stay home? Or you just know how to blam and you don't know how to do so shut fuck up let they do it ok.
7:02 AM, you should shut up urself. Your mouth is so disgusting. Let they do it!! Let they exploit Khmer blood or just let they live the way they had did it for a past decade like you.
So, what should you do if they rip your house and take away your right? And you're just a farmer with a little knowledge? Or you just sit and do (shut the fuck up).
Or just sit and insult s.o who trying to help.
I felt soory for the parent who gave birth such a child like you!!!!
I felt so bad to hear such an educated person like you, sitting and wathching their own nation went down.
From: A Educated young farmer
I DON'T KNWO WHAT NGOs AH KWACK HUN SEN REFERRING TO, BUT THE NGOs I KNOW IS 501(3)(C)) PER IRS code in America. I am the founder of the non-profit charitable organization -- raising funds, collecting funds from donors/trustees/and use the money to drill water well in order for the impoverish Khmers to have access to clean water where all these Hun Sen's clan enjoy the access to potable clean water.
What is the wrong with giving a hand to help the needy? Why enacting laws to prohibiting us (NGOs) not-for-profit organization like WHF.
IF WE (KHMERS) DON'T DESERVED TO PRACTICE OUR RIGHTS AS HUMAN BEING, AT LEAST GIVE A RIGHT TO RECEIVE CLEAN WATER FOR BETTER LIVLIHOOD.
WHF, Founder
Centralisation of power and prolonged holding of office are not good for the rights and freedoms of the Cambodian people. A remark made by US Special Envoy Prof. Yash Ghai in a press conference in Phnom Penh in March 2006 and another one by Greek pholosoper Aristotle more than 2000years ago could well turn out to be true.
Yash Ghai said : “Everything depends on an individual and this is not really a precondition under which human rights can flourish.”
The Greek philosopher said in his book Politics, that ”it is long possession of office which leads to the rise of tyrannies in oligarchies and democracies. Those who make a bid for tyranny, in both types of constitutions, are either the most powerful people (….), or else the holders of the main offices who have held them for a long period.”
LAO Mong Hay, Hong Kong
The laws with NGOs are not clear when it comes to local NGO's. Actually everyone knows that they have to pay corruption money to the ministry of interior if they want to register their local NGO. Our organization cost 400 USD to the Ministry of Interior although we had to wait 2 months. Only 10 percent of this money went to the ministry. The rest of the money was pocketed. I know I saw it and many of us saw it. There was no till they just put the money in their own personal wallets. So Hun Sen can say what he likes, if we look down in the ranks the people at the Ministry of Interior don't care. They will keep making money out of the system they created themselves. Hun Sen actually needs the NGO community because this is how Cambodia was developed on the back of NGO's. He doesn't need them anymore because now he is using his political influence to do business with Youn, Korean, Chinese and other money hungry business. They will be the ones financiing his rule.!
Briggin gap between the people and gorvernment is NGO's duties. Withouth NGO, Cambodia will be in the hand of brutal gorvernment. Hun Sen see so much the intervention from NGO in Cambodia that instigate his dogmatic ruling power. That is why he calls to end the NGO. On the other hand, NGO may not contribute wealth to Hun Sen government but it provide trends of country development.
NGO supporter
I'm an NGO worker in Cambodia and I have to say it's a dilemma. The existence of NGOs in Cambodia is very important because it's the NGOs who takes care of the areas that the govt neglects and prods the govt to improve in areas that need improving.
But on the other hand, I do think to an extent it's because of the NGOs existence that the govt is neglecting the welfare of the people. The departure of NGOs in Cambodia may actually not be a bad thing because it forces the govt to start being responsible for the people and more importantly for the people to start forcing the govt to improve. There will come a time when Cambodians have to start being responsible for the affairs in their country. Closing an eye to the problems of the country won't make them go away. It's time Cambodians stand up for what is theirs..not just for themselves but also for their future generations.
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