A brief portrait of Cambodia

The Kingdom of Cambodia (or Kampuchea as it is known in Khmer) is located in South-East Asia, and is bordered by the Gulf of Thailand in the south, Vietnam in the east, Laos in the north and Thailand in north and west. The Royal Government of Cambodia (RGC), as it is officially named, is a parliamentary democracy and a constitutional monarchy with King Norodom Sihanouk as the head of state. The official language of the country is Khmer, and its capital city is Phnom Penh.

Cambodia is reknown for its turbulent recent history as well as for its ancient past and the Angkor Empire (9^th – 15^th Century) which was, to quote Acharya (2000, 19) “one of the largest, most prosperous and sophisticated kingdoms in the history of Southeast Asia”. The period that followed is not particularly well known, but as Ayres (2000) points out, already before the fall of Phnom Penh and the insurgency of the Khmer Rouge, Cambodia was a fragile state.

Cambodia was a French colonial protectorate from 1863 to 1954, after a period of rule under Prince Norodom Sihanouk followed, until 1970 when Lon Nol instigated a coup and established the Khmer Republic, as it was known. (Ayres 2000, Owen 2005.) Any analysis of Cambodia’s government or development aid of any kind cannot withhold from mentioning the Khmer Rouge regime, which it still an active part of political memory, in part due to the ongoing ECC tribunal.

The Khmer Rouge period is still sited in most development plans in Cambodia. The genocidal regime of the Khmer Rouge, the Angkar period as it was known (17.4.1975 – 7.1.1979), is sited as having depleted the country’s human resources and its infrastructure. As Ayres (ibid.) writes of this period, “Traditional patterns of social relations were broken down, the nation’s market-based economy was ruthlessly dismantled, while state-sanctioned violence and terror reached heights inconceivable in previous times” (95). The educated high fractions of society were, to large extent, annihilated by the Khmer Rouge, and public institutions such as schools and hospitals, were, in effect, non-existent. In terms of government, the following statement of one of the participants in 60

Clayton’s study, captures some of the urgency of the situation in 1979: “When we came back to Phnom Penh in 1979, it was as if we had to wait for someone to come and help us govern the country because, at that time, we had no intellectuals. They had all been killed by Pol Pot” (2000, 96.)

A period of Vietnamese control followed, which was largely condemned by the international community still in the middle of the Cold War, but by many Cambodians, the fact that it was a socialist state offering assistance was unimportant: “At that time, we were as if submerged under water. Someone came to us and held out a stick for us. We did not think at that time about who was holding the stick. We only knew that we needed to grasp that stick or we would die.” (Clayton 2000, 97.) Whilst some of the participants in Clayton’s study subscribed to the view that Vietnamese, and Soviet support reflected a commitment to “solidarity” and “humanism”, others came to view the ongoing presence of the Vietnamese as an invasion of national autonomy, as a calculated exercise aimed towards expanding the socialist ideology at the expense of national independence, disagreeing on the continuing occupation of Cambodia, and with its political and economic goals that resulted in an economic relationship with Vietnam that was described by many of Clayton’s respondents as resulting in the economic exploitation of the country. (Ibid., 95 – 166.) Alliance with the socialist regime was, as reflected by some of Clayton’s respondents, appropriated by some (now) high ranking government officials as a means to gain personal advantage (2000, 101 - 102). However, the humanitarian aid provided by the Vietnamese, whilst connected to an ideological objective, the expansion of the communist regime, was significant. Up to as many as 400,000 foreign (mostly Vietnamese, but also from other Soviet-aligned countries) have been estimated as having worked in Cambodia during this period, in government, educational and other public institutions (ibid., 96 – 110).

In 1989 Vietnam withdrew from Cambodia as a result of both “pressure from the West and of diminishing support from the Soviet Union” (Clayton 2000, 148; see also Owen et al. 2005). A period of rapid and unprecedented change followed, with a focus on quantity, on reforming public institutions and instigating a market economy, as reflected by an economic growth rate of 11.2% as of 2005, for example (MOP/RGC 1997, 2004; UNDP & MoP 2007).

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Today, Cambodia has a young, primarily rural population, with only about 19.5 % of the population living in urban areas. As estimated by the 2008 General Population Census of Cambodia (NIS 2008), the population of Cambodia is about 13,388,910 up from 12,824,000 in the 2004 Inter-censal Population Survey (NIS 2004). Of these, about 6.5 million are males and 6.9 million are females, and over half the population is under 20 years of age. The annual growth rate of the population, one of the highest in Southeast Asia, has been about 1.54% over the last decade. Growth in urban areas is stronger than in rural areas (at 2.55% as compared to 1.30%). The highest population growth rates in general have been measured in the more remote provinces of the country, however, in Pailin (11.24%) and Oddar Meanchey (8.62%) to the Northeast, and most of this growth is accounted for by rural growth. (UNDP & MoP 2007; NIS 2004b; 2004c; 2008.)

Figure 2: Map of Cambodia Encarta (2008)

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Overall levels of education are low in Cambodia, and consistent disparities exist between boys and girls, urban and rural children, and ethnic majority and - minority children. The estimated figure of Orphans and Vulnerable Children (OVC) is about 580,000 in Cambodia¹⁶. About 14% of children (0-14years of age) are orphaned or have a chronically ill parent, and about a fourth of these children never attend school. Adult literacy among women is low at about 65%, and of women aged 25-44 the illiteracy rate is high at 40% (compared to 22% for men). (UNDP & MoP 2007; UNESCO 2007.)

Administratively, Cambodia is divided into 24 provinces, which are divided into a further 1,615 communes and 13,406 villages. Cambodia has undergone administrative and governance reform since 2001, when a process of decentralization was initiated in the country, increasing the decision-making power of commune (Sangkat) councils. Subnational agents, including provincial and municipal government, which play an important part in the delivery of national priority services, have received considerably less attention. (UNDP & MoP 2007.) The ruling party, the Cambodian People’s Party, is headed by the Prime Minister, Hun Sen, who ascended to power, in part, through a coup in 1997 (Ayres 2000).