Advocacy in Cambodia: Increasing Democratic ... - Pact Cambodia

were considering withdrawing
from the election process, and
the need to identify pressures
that determine the long-term
dedication of members in a
coalition. (See page 67.)
Increasing Democratic Space
Women’s Movement
The women’s movement in
Cambodia spans a decade and a
wide range of important issues.
The movement was constrained
by previous policies that valued
women primarily for the
support they could provide to
their husbands, outdated laws,
and conventional norms
regarding the role of women.
In order to demonstrate
that Cambodian women are in
need of greater protection under
the law, it was necessary for
NGOs to conduct a series of
studies that would dispel any
doubts regarding the severity of
the domestic violence problem.
Despite proof derived from the
studies, initial efforts to pass
domestic violence legislation
failed when the draft was at the Council of
Ministers due to a lack of sufficient awareness
raising and lobbying at the national level. Current
efforts to pass legislation have used much more
elaborate strategies, including national
workshops, television spots, and the telling of
personal stories. The domestic violence law is
expected to pass in 2002.
In other areas, grassroots organizing is being
conducted to inform commercial sex workers in
the Phnom Penh area of their rights and to prevent
their illegal detention. The women involved have
become empowered through solidarity built
around the issue and have organized marches on
the Ministry of Women’s Affairs and City Hall.
Their aim is to obtain legalization of the profession
or at least the right to operate self-managed
businesses free of extortion.
At the regional level, the Cambodian
Confederation of Women’s Organization has
successfully lobbied to have a special session on
trafficking at the next general assembly of the
ASEAN Confederation of Women’s Organizations.
The session will initiate a regional campaign to
fight the trafficking of women and children and
demonstrates Cambodia’s ability to influence
regional agendas regarding women’s issues. (See
page 74.)
PADV and the Ministry of Women’s and Veterans Affairs collaborated
to organize Women’s Day 2002. Participants marched from the
Cambodiana Hotel to Wat Phnom.
Urban Poor
The main strategy of development
organizations working with the urban poor has
been to organize communities and empower them
to negotiate slum improvement projects with local
authorities. Since urban poor communities
throughout Southeast Asia usually live in
unhealthy environments on land that floods
regularly, is illegally occupied, or is slated for
development, another objective has been to
negotiate planned evictions with the Municipality.
Urban NGOs have assisted communities
threatened with eviction by helping them reach
group consensus on their relocation and
compensation needs, and to select potential
relocation sites to propose to the Municipality. A
number of these individual efforts have met
success, although the Urban Resource Center
database indicates that, on average, squatters only
remain 1.5 years outside the city before they
return.
Relations between urban poor groups and the
Municipality improved during the mid- to late-
1990s, but appear to have deteriorated since then.
The problematic relationship came to light in the
wake of the Tonle Bassac fires of 2001 in which
20,000 people lost their homes. A few days after
the first fire, the Municipality declared that
emergency supplies could only be distributed at
14