FOREIGN POLICAIDY
 
 I'm writing this listening to a speech by Gareth Evans "Preventing and Resolving Deadly Conflict". Gareth Evans came to my attention when I was reading Cambodia After the Khmer Rouge: Inside the Politics of Nation building by Evan Gottesman. This is a worthwhile book for understanding the multidetermined nature of the conflicts in Khmer modern history. The book, and a pooh-poohed NGOcumentary The Trap of Saving Cambodia made me take seriously something I'd never thought much about before, foreign policy. It was going to happen some time or another doing development work in a place like The Kingdom of Wonder(ing). The bit that stuck out for me in The Trap was the point that the major western donors in Cambodia all denounce Hun Sen's dictatorship, whilst simultaneously pouring $2b of aid into the place annually. The first thing I read from Evans was a transcript of his speech Cambodia Past and Present. He relates a valiant effort to resolve the conflict in Cambodia. I am in no position to criticise the outcome of the intervention he spearheaded (never having read a word of foreign policy theory or conducted any more rigorous research in the field than this placement). I can, however, offer the observation that there is as much of a focus on the benefit to foreign nations as the Khmer people of resolving the conflict. I am doubtful of this dual focus, although I understand that if there was to be little benefit to other countries perhaps nothing would ever have been done. 

A few quotes from Evans' speech.

1.
 
"I don't think I have ever been more moved than when I saw those first satellite pictures of men, women and children lined up at the polling stations in their scores of thousands , knowing the risk of bomb attack, but thrilled at the prospect of peace at last, and the chance to have some say at last in how they lived their lives. "

2.
 
"There were also, as I have just said, serious weaknesses in the actual implementation of what was in many ways the most innovative single element of the Paris Plan, i.e. the civil administration function.'It is also clear, in retrospect, that the Paris Agreements should have included specific measures for building a functioning criminal justice system as part of the transitional period and post-conflict peace-building exercise, as the rule of law, and institutions needed to support it, had clearly broken down in Cambodia. If a peacekeeping force is given a mandate to guard against human rights violations, but there is no functioning system to bring violators to justice - even those who violate others' right to life - then not only is the UN force's mandate to that extent unachievable, but its whole operation is likely to have diminished credibility, both locally and internationally."

3.
  
"Despite all the setbacks and deficiencies, the UN-supervised settlement did achieve its principal aims. It succeeded in removing the Cambodian conflict as a source of regional tension; it enabled Vietnam to enter into much more productive relations regionally and internationally; external patrons, not least China with the Khmer Rouge, withdrew material support for the various political groupings, sucking away the oxygen that had sustained civil war for so long; the more than 365, 000 displaced Cambodians from the Thai border were successfully repatriated; the path was cleared for Cambodia to assume its rightful place in the community of nations; and reconstruction could at last begin."
 
Let's start with quote 1. Hear hear! Quote 2 comments on the legal system. It is still broken. Yes, the operation's credibility was diminished because of the poor legal system. Why? The UN force was backed by foreign powers. Absent that force, or backing, Khmers have their legal system. Since it is broken (laws are routinely ignored by the elite, or the elite tell judges what sentences to give), the transformation of Khmer society by the UN, in the form of an 'election', was fleeting. To entrust the enforcement, respect - even, of the election outcome to the legal system here meant that UNTAC did not facilitate an election. An election is not the mere process of political campaigns and a vote, it is as much the formation of a government in accordance with the choice of the people expressed in the vote. That did not happen. A laughable arrangement occurred where there were two prime ministers, with Hun Sen eventually ousting the other and so finally carrying on as though the UNTAC election never happened - given that he lost the vote. 

 Again, an election is not a vote, a mere vote being what UNTAC created. An election is the installment of a government based on a vote. Why does this matter so much? Let's go on to quote 3. Note that the first principle aim he lists is the benefit not to Khmers but to the region. The second last benefit he lists is finally about Khmers, and here he describes a benefit to very few of them (a very traumatised few, certainly). The final benefit contains the word reconstruction. 

What I am concerned about overall here is that there is no direct mention of the mind rending horrors that most Khmers had experienced during the genocide. There is no discussion of the high prevalence (5 times the rate of the US even 30+ years after the event in a recent study) of post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Midst all the statements of grand, broad reaching positive impact in a geopolitical sense, nothing equally impressive is said about a widespread reduction in the Khmer population of, for example, the frequency of re-experiencing trauma via flashbacks and nightmares. Even 3+ decades after the genocide, 11+% of the adult, supposedly healthy population were identified as potentially having PTSD in a national survey. The study is worth quoting:

"...the 1-month (ie, current) prevalence of probable PTSD in noninstitutionalized adults older than 18 years in Cambodia was 11.2% (95% CI, 8.6%-13.9%). Although substantially lower than the prevalence of PTSD reported in a Cambodian refugee community in the United States, this figure is still almost 5 times higher than the 1-month prevalence of PTSD of 2.3% in the United States, estimated from the National Comorbidity Survey."

Note the final remark. Gareth Evans was talking about the early 1990s. The prevalence of this disorder (discussion if its validity in Cambodia is discussed in the next episode) was likely higher then. It does occur to me that a speech by a foreign policy expert isn't the place to go looking for attendance to domestic mental health issues of another country. This raises an important point. Foreign policy can only go so far, or not very far at all depending on how one looks at it, when it comes to affairs not directly affecting the source of the policy. If actions of the Khmer government lead to a 5x higher prevalence of PTSD amongst Australians than in the US, one would hope our foreign policy would form part of the remedy. 

I mentioned that the third quote from Evans' speech contained the word reconstruction. Not mental reconstruction but restoration of things like bridges. Another quote, this time from Cambodia's Troubled Path to Recovery, a Parliament of Australia research paper by Dr Frost:

"Australian aid in 1995 continued at the planned level of around $A23 million and Cambodia also benefited from other AusAID regional programs to a value of an additional $A5 million. Australian assistance to infrastructure has included the Australian Bridges Project which has been replacing more than 16 damaged bridges on Routes 1 and 5 , while providing institutional development for the Ministry of Public Works and Transport. A Program Planning Mission in August 1995 investigated several areas of possible assistance to urban infrastructure including water supply and electricity. In the agriculture sector early aid concentrated on placement of advisers in the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Fisheries and support for the Australian Catholic Relief Agricultural Extension Project. In October 1995, a larger bilateral project, the Cambodia-Australia Agricultural Extension Project, began and aims to build on the ACR project to establish an effective and responsive national extension service. Australia has also been assisting the Cambodia-Australia International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) Project since 1987 and a review in early 1995 recommended that the project continue for a further five year period. Assistance to health has included placement of a Mother and Child Health policy adviser in the Ministry of Health and a Provincial Health Adviser in Kompong Cham province, and support for a number of Australian NGO projects including HIV/AIDS awareness, basic hospital infrastructure and biomedical equipment maintenance. A further major five year health project on health education and primary health care for Kompong Cham Province was being developed during 1995."

I should also note that the most high profile current AusAID reconstruction project is the railway linking the capital to Sihanoukville Port and also to Thailand, a project causing more trauma for locals displaced due rehabilitation of the tracks they live on or next to. It was nice to read that there is health focused aid. The lack of an explicit statement, however, about mental health funding is concerning given the obvious, widespread mental illness due to the genocide and that there are less than 40 psychiatrists in the country (personal communication, Dr Sonis, 14/7/12). 

What to do about all this? My suspicion is not to do more foreign aiding and policying. In the introductory paragraph to this post, Gareth Evans is cited as a leading light of that field. So if he and AusAID can be considered as displaying best practice foreign policy and aid, we need to look elsewhere for solutions. I am keen to again point out my inexperience in all of this. I have no foreign policy background, nor have I any academic exposure to development studies. My doubtless simplistic grasp of these matters shows up two other ways to address the mental health impact amongst Khmers of the genocide, ensuing civil war, occupation by Vietnam and current dictatorship. The first is for the Khmer government to step in, the second is for non government organisations (NGOs) to do something, with a capacity building approach/view to doing themselves out of a job. Obviously, both are inside Cambodia, in daily contact with the society of Cambodia and life of Khmers. In the video mentioned at the outset of this epic, Evans even highlighted the importance to the success of the International Crisis Group of having people on the ground reporting on local conditions. What can a NGO do?

WORK
 
Finally I am going to start writing about my work. As discussed in the introduction to this blog, I am volunteering for Sahmakum Teang Tnaut (STT). This is a non-profit Cambodian NGO registered with the Ministry of Interior. It works with and for marginalised urban communities in Phnom Penh and Kampot affected by land tenure insecurity, evictions and/or poor access to basic infrastructure needs. Through working directly with communities and groups willing to organise and help themselves, STT supports improvements to physical surroundings and community infrastructure, and empowers communities by helping build stakeholder confidence in voicing concerns about housing issues. Furthermore, STT conducts ongoing research and documentation of urban trends and cycles in Cambodia. 

Ok, this is sounding promising in terms of attending to the lives of Khmers. Whilst it is not about mental health, a major focus of my placement currently is the creation of a database of all the demographic data that STT has collected in the past few years at urban poor communities of Phnom Penh. This represents a significant effort to understand the lived experience of being Khmer in Cambodia at the moment. Another example is STT's second most recent report, Losing the Plot, which provides transcripts of statements from six women affected by displacement from the railway project. 

So what has been the progress on the database? I mentioned in Episode 13 that I had yet to get this underway. Well, now we are I'd say about halfway through. We are now into week 7 of a 12 week Gantt Chart to develop the database. Everyday I am working with multiple staff members across all three teams to get the job done. We have set up all of the tables and completed about 70% of bulk import data entry. We have also made most data entry forms and will be doing our first data entry training tomorrow so that an advocacy team member can start manually filling up his tables of community monitoring reports and audiovisual material. I also mentioned in the episode that we wanted to connect the database to a map. We have now done this, and begun to make an ArcReader file so that people without GIS skills can still browse a map containing data from the database. This is a huge advancement for STT and will make their work of highlighting the facts of everyday life for urban poor Khmers easier. 

I am also creating a standard operating procedure for the database and another one for the server. We are at the point now with the server where my main counterpart, head of the research team, is now making a AllData.mxd map himself, using layers from the spatial warehouse that I started in the server. He is adding more data to that spatial warehouse and then putting commonly used reference layers in the AllData map. Then whenever STT GIS staff want to make a new map, they just open up a template, drag in required layers from AllData.mxd, including database layers if needed. This is a very efficient way to make a map and much easier than the previous set up before I came. It was very heartening to see my counterpart taking the initiative to make this map and continue the work I started of maintaining the spatial warehouse. 

I also perform work for an organisation called UrbanVoiceCambodia.net. This is a webmap which crowdsources reports about development issues in Phnom Penh. This has also seen huge advancements recently, for example it is now available entirely in Khmer. I have not been involved in the coding for this although it was my principle recommendation for the site when I became involved with the organisation. I think now it has a chance of becoming well loved amongst Khmers because it is in their language. They can also submit reports in Khmer, for example here is a recent flood report.

I will be finishing in one month. This means my activity is biased toward making sure staff have the skills for me to handover operation of the database and server. I think we can make it, if we all work hard. Sometimes I have my doubts, to be honest, although STT is applying for another volunteer to start in January 2013 and I will be available for tech support in the interim. I hope, at least, that I can do a better job than Dave.

Over and out.