UPI (United Press International, Asia, Hong Kong)
By Lao Mong Hay
Column: Rule by Fear
Published: December 04, 2008
Hong Kong, China — The Cambodian government in September 2006 announced that it was going to create a National Human Rights Commission for the promotion and protection of human rights. Making the announcement at a conference, Prime Minister Hun Sen had said that the new body would be based on the Paris Principles governing the status and functioning of such national institutions, and that it would be independent and have adequate powers of investigation and resources to effectively perform its duties.
That announcement was enthusiastically welcomed and Cambodia was declared the fifth country in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations to establish such a body after Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand. Both the government and civil society representatives participating in that conference fixed a timeframe for enacting a law in the first half of 2009.
Encouraged by the announcement and the agreed timeframe, the Cambodian Working Group for an ASEAN Human Rights Mechanism, which had cosponsored that conference with the government, set out to draft a law for the purpose. A year later, this group came up with a draft and, at the beginning of 2008, submitted it together with the opinions of experts to its government interlocutor, the Cambodian Human Rights Committee.
It took almost a year for this committee to react to the working group’s submission with a decision to cosponsor another conference on the establishment of the new human rights body to be held this month.
However, it is very doubtful whether the government will keep its promise to enact this law in 2009 as agreed in 2006. After its reelection in July, it singled out only three laws to enact as a matter of priority: the penal code, the anti-corruption law and a law on nongovernmental organizations. To date, drafts of these three laws have not been submitted to Parliament and it is likely to take quite some time before they can be adopted.
It is also very doubtful whether this new human rights body will be established in conformity with the Paris Principles, and whether it will have the independence, adequate powers of investigation and resources for performing its duties. These are key issue that will make the body effective in the promotion and protection of human rights.
The prevailing political culture is suspicious of the independence of individuals and legal entities vis-à-vis the government. The ruling elite simply want them under their control. Independent individuals or groupings active in public affairs are invariably branded as “opposition” and are treated as such.
Over the years the government has branded human rights critics, including the U.N. human rights special envoy, as “opposition” and called them names. The courts of laws, whose independence is guaranteed by the Constitution and the king with the assistance of a supreme judicial body, the Supreme Council of the Magistracy, are effectively placed under political control.
In theory, the new body may be given adequate powers to investigate cases. However, in practice it may not be able to exercise them, especially when it has to investigate cases involving the rich and powerful. So far, the police and the courts have not investigated many such cases, which has now created a culture of impunity in Cambodia.
It would be too high a hope to expect the new body to be allocated adequate resources from the national budget to effectively perform its duties. It is likely to suffer the same fate as the courts of law, which have so far received just a fraction of what they need. In this regard, the new body would have to rely on direct funding, which it should be allowed to receive from other sources such as foreign donors.
The new human rights body will largely depend on the courts of law, especially in cases of criminal violations of human rights. When these courts are dysfunctional due to lack of independence, adequate powers and resources, one cannot expect the new body to perform any better.
However, the Cambodian government should be given the benefit of the doubt regarding the establishment of the new human rights body, and the new body should be treated likewise when performing its duties – whenever it sees the light of day.
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(Lao Mong Hay is a senior researcher at the Asian Human Rights Commission in Hong Kong. He was previously director of the Khmer Institute of Democracy in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, and a visiting professor at the University of Toronto in 2003. In 1997, he received an award from Human Rights Watch and the Nansen Medal in 2000 from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.)
By Lao Mong Hay
Column: Rule by Fear
Published: December 04, 2008
Hong Kong, China — The Cambodian government in September 2006 announced that it was going to create a National Human Rights Commission for the promotion and protection of human rights. Making the announcement at a conference, Prime Minister Hun Sen had said that the new body would be based on the Paris Principles governing the status and functioning of such national institutions, and that it would be independent and have adequate powers of investigation and resources to effectively perform its duties.
That announcement was enthusiastically welcomed and Cambodia was declared the fifth country in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations to establish such a body after Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand. Both the government and civil society representatives participating in that conference fixed a timeframe for enacting a law in the first half of 2009.
Encouraged by the announcement and the agreed timeframe, the Cambodian Working Group for an ASEAN Human Rights Mechanism, which had cosponsored that conference with the government, set out to draft a law for the purpose. A year later, this group came up with a draft and, at the beginning of 2008, submitted it together with the opinions of experts to its government interlocutor, the Cambodian Human Rights Committee.
It took almost a year for this committee to react to the working group’s submission with a decision to cosponsor another conference on the establishment of the new human rights body to be held this month.
However, it is very doubtful whether the government will keep its promise to enact this law in 2009 as agreed in 2006. After its reelection in July, it singled out only three laws to enact as a matter of priority: the penal code, the anti-corruption law and a law on nongovernmental organizations. To date, drafts of these three laws have not been submitted to Parliament and it is likely to take quite some time before they can be adopted.
It is also very doubtful whether this new human rights body will be established in conformity with the Paris Principles, and whether it will have the independence, adequate powers of investigation and resources for performing its duties. These are key issue that will make the body effective in the promotion and protection of human rights.
The prevailing political culture is suspicious of the independence of individuals and legal entities vis-à-vis the government. The ruling elite simply want them under their control. Independent individuals or groupings active in public affairs are invariably branded as “opposition” and are treated as such.
Over the years the government has branded human rights critics, including the U.N. human rights special envoy, as “opposition” and called them names. The courts of laws, whose independence is guaranteed by the Constitution and the king with the assistance of a supreme judicial body, the Supreme Council of the Magistracy, are effectively placed under political control.
In theory, the new body may be given adequate powers to investigate cases. However, in practice it may not be able to exercise them, especially when it has to investigate cases involving the rich and powerful. So far, the police and the courts have not investigated many such cases, which has now created a culture of impunity in Cambodia.
It would be too high a hope to expect the new body to be allocated adequate resources from the national budget to effectively perform its duties. It is likely to suffer the same fate as the courts of law, which have so far received just a fraction of what they need. In this regard, the new body would have to rely on direct funding, which it should be allowed to receive from other sources such as foreign donors.
The new human rights body will largely depend on the courts of law, especially in cases of criminal violations of human rights. When these courts are dysfunctional due to lack of independence, adequate powers and resources, one cannot expect the new body to perform any better.
However, the Cambodian government should be given the benefit of the doubt regarding the establishment of the new human rights body, and the new body should be treated likewise when performing its duties – whenever it sees the light of day.
--
(Lao Mong Hay is a senior researcher at the Asian Human Rights Commission in Hong Kong. He was previously director of the Khmer Institute of Democracy in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, and a visiting professor at the University of Toronto in 2003. In 1997, he received an award from Human Rights Watch and the Nansen Medal in 2000 from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.)
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