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

Case Studies
child
rights
During the Khmer Rouge regime, the rights
of children were greatly abused in Cambodia.
Children were sent into forced labor and many of
them died. It was only in 1989 that the UN
Convention on the Rights of Children was enacted.
Child Rights became an issue in Cambodia when
the government signed the UN Convention in
1992. NGOs and other stakeholders began
learning about Child Rights when the UN started
raising awareness about the issue. The rubric of
Child’s Rights covers a number of problems,
including sexual prostitution (which can be
voluntary), sexual trafficking (in which children
are bought and sold against their will), and labor
trafficking.
NGO Committee on the Rights of the
Child
The NGO Committee on the Rights of the
Child (NGOCRC) was formed in 1994.
Spearheaded by Save the Children/Norway, the
committee spun off and moved into its own offices
in 1995. Whereas the network originally had nine
members, today membership stands at 33. The
NGOCRC, which currently has four staff and a
five-member Executive Committee, has as its main
purpose the promotion, advocacy, and monitoring
of Cambodia’s implementation of the UN
Convention on the Rights of the Children. In 2001,
the network produced its first four-year plan.
NGOCRC is currently experiencing a problem of
institutionalizing however, as it is trying to register
with the Ministry of Interior (MOI) where the
Ministry does not have a registration process for
a network. Instead, the MOI is requesting changes
to the structure of the organization.
NGOCRC helped start a child rights network
in Battambang and plans to establish networks in
other provinces as well in order to collect more
information for reports and planning. This
expansion is proving difficult however, as not all
provinces have NGOs working on children’s issues.
This absence of children’s rights-focused NGOs
indicates a major challenge that children’s rights
advocates face: the child rights issue does not
currently represent a priority for many people in
Cambodia, including local authorities.
UN Convention on the Rights of
Children
Cambodia signed the UN Convention in
1992. As with all UN treaties, the Convention
requires that five years after signing, signatories
must demonstrate what progress has been made.
The Royal Government’s report was completed at
the end of 1999 and a NGO parallel report was
submitted to the UN in 2000. The NGO report
took one year to prepare and the effort is notable
because network members were Cambodians who
did not benefit from expatriate consultant services
in the preparation of the report. According to the
NGO report, the government report mainly
referred to achievements - such as legislation to
protect against the trafficking of children - and
downplayed the real situation of children in
Cambodia.
In 2001, four NGO representatives were
invited to travel to Geneva to make a presentation
to the UN and respond to questions regarding the
government’s report. When UN recommendations
were made public a month later, the network was
pleased to see that nearly all of its
recommendations had been incorporated. For
example, in the parallel report NGOs
recommended that the chair of the Cambodian
National Committee for Children (CNCC, an interministerial
committee formed in 1997 comprised
of members from 14 or 15 ministries) provide
strong leadership and be committed to the cause
of protecting children. Partly as a result of this
recommendation, UN recommendations to the
Royal Government focused on the need to improve
the functioning of the CNCC. The NGO report also
recommended that the CNCC be independent to
avoid being co-opted by other government
agencies, and that the government take action on
legislation to fight child trafficking and
prostitution and provide children with access to
education and health.
Upon their return to Cambodia, the NGOCRC
organized a workshop to inform their members
of what had occurred in Geneva and invited
government representatives to speak. Soon after,
the CNCC organized a workshop attended by
various provincial governors and asked NGO
representatives who had traveled to Geneva to
present their findings. At that time the NGOs
lobbied the government to incorporate the UN’s
recommendations into their action plans.
In 1999, 5,000 children from 16 provinces
participated in a Global Children’s march from the
Olympic Stadium to the Independence
Monument, where the Prime Minister awaited
them. Since then, the Prime Minister has provided
financial support to the Children’s Committee, an
association of 50 children under the age of 18 who
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