Case Study on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights

ESCRAS Economic,Socialand Cultural Right Asia Workshop for NOVIB Partners

Kathmandu26-28 September 1999

1-Cambodia is an agrarian society where 80% of the population live and work in rural areas. 43% of the peasants live in poverty, with little access to affordable credit, reliable health care or secure irrigation system.

Padek's work is dedicated to empowering these disadvantaged people to improve the quality of their lives through an integrated community development approach. The mission statement stipulates that Padek encourage the formation of appropriate people's organisations and support people to:

a-Access and manage necessary resources to meet basic needs in a sustainable way,

b-Sustain local initiatives

c-Network with government, NGOs and other people to promote sustainable development,

d-Promote gender equity,

e-Capacity building of community members and social justice.

For Padek, integrated community development is a mean to foster community spirit and use that spirit for the formation of people's organisations, to achieve social structural changes for poverty alleviation, i.e. to use the people's organisations to reduce the power of the structural causes of poverty

2-To achieve that, we facilitate to bring people to work together and put in place three categories of development actors: (1) People Organisations, (2) the Co-ordinators and (3) the Experts.

People Organisations: they are animators, motivators and managers of their own development. They are the people organisations that ensure on the one hand people emancipation to voice out their concerns on their own development and recognise their potential and opportunities. On the other hand these actors will encourage the co-ordinators to maintain the right direction and make the right development choices on behalf of the community they represent

Given the socio-economic context in Cambodia, people organisations are formed base on the concept of community mobilisation and credit. We use credit as an instrument to mobilise people together. It is very important to choose the right kind of credit system – a system that act as a binding force between people. Padek has identified the self-help groups as a model that help to foster group spirit. Padek has observed that other credit system while serving economic benefits, frequently fail to foster community spirit.Unlike other credit system, the self-help groups serve as means to enhance personal and social development and not only economic development.

The Co-ordinators: they are those who are democratically elected to co-ordinate development works. These are institutions, known as the Village Development Committees (VDCs), that ensure that the community needs are identified adequately, that integrated development plans emerge from a process of involvement and participation of all stakeholders and therefore ensure that resources are distributed equitably. They are bodies that are charged with mobilising all available experiences, expertise and material resources and put to right use according to the needs of community

As a group they are responsible in co-ordinating various sectors (education, health, agriculture, women's affairs, credit, infrastructure, etc.) of development. All of them are charged with integrated village level planning. By virtue, they need to know and understand the root causes of poverty of their fellow villagers, and therefore, can prioritise their needs correctly and articulate them to themselves and to outsiders convincingly to attract resources, whether it is for clean water or for hydroculture.

The Experts: they are people who provide expertise to community members and acknowledged by its members for their special skills. They are individuals or institutions that live and work in the community and can provide some necessary development expertise. They are people who have been nominated by the community to receive the training because of their inherited social concern and their readiness to help others.

It is Padek's role to identify necessary skills to enhance community's economic activities. In some cases, Padek facilitates to nurture local skills, in other cases; it is necessary to inject new skills. In all cases, Padek's role is to strengthen the capacity of the group technically. However, not less important is to strengthen the community spirit of groups to ensure cohesion as they go about providing services to members of the community.

These groups include, but not limited to, fish extensionists, sustainable agricultural extensionists, health co-ordinators, literacy teachers, etc. They are people who can be called upon to train or provide services to other villagers on sustainable agriculture, nutrition, and sanitation or to mobilise children for vaccinations.

It is Padek's challenge to build and strengthen the capacity of these actors and establish, nourish and develop the necessary interlinkages between them and the outside world. It is important that the three development actors work well together by demonstrating high degree of transparency and accountability. Their unity is necessary as it ensures that their voice is heard and their demand eventually met. In the process of building their community, the three development actors are responsible to one another.

3-The three development actors are incorporate to the traditional progressive structure. Together they form an uniting force to weaken the power of the structural causes of poverty or the oppressive structure. In other words, the three development actors work to widen the social safety net in a way that give people more hope and more purposeful as their unity enable them to mobilise resources from inside and outside to develop their community.With integrated community development approach, Padek's work – through these actors -- has enhanced economic, social and cultural rights of the community in a sense that it has open up other venues for the people to solve their livelihood problems and retain their dignity.

4-In Padek, development intervention that contributes significantly to ESCR is the self-help group. It is a saving and credits system involving small groups of between 15 and 25 people who meet regularly twice per month to save together and take turns to borrow. The self-help groups have provided not only economic benefits to members but have encouraged mutual assistance and community cooperation

The frequent and regular meetings that the SHGs require are practical vehicles for people to get to know each other, to share each other's problems and aspirations and to formulate a common vision as to how they would like their community to develop and look like in the future. It provides a forum of hope while they plan their lives together.

The fact that members have to turn up to frequent and regular meeting deters members from doing things that are unacceptable by the group, whether it is drinking or domestic violence. The meetings, therefore, act as moral keepers that enhance personal development.

The SHG meetings also help to foster the various concepts and values of democracy, accountability, transparency, solidarity, social justice and, not less important, self-confidence, within the community. They are, in many ways, tools for achieving those values – known as social capital for community. After so many years of social turmoil, people's creative thoughts, spirit of hope and solidarity needed to be reinforced – and the SHGs through on-going informal meetings, form one of the most effective vehicles to inspire and activate such spirit. The meeting also provide opportunities for group to think collectively. For them to learn to think in term of the bigger and longer-term picture and recognise what is for the common good for their society. Careful facilitation could lead members to become concerned citizens with group philosophy and advocate for various social issues whether it is education for girls or environment or health care or hydroculture

Padek has also observed that women participation is higher in the SHGs than other form of credits. In these small homogeneous groups, women can practice voicing their opinions, putting forward initiatives, learning the discipline of the group and functioning as fully active participants of the community as all members take turns to become office bearers of the group. As the group progresses and as they are increasingly exposed to problem solving situations, they learn the process of analysing problems and become more confident in facing daily challenges. For women, the SHGs are small enough fora for them to gain experience in expressing themselves publicly and little by little build up confidence for larger fora. In this sense, the SHGs, not only respond to gender practical needs, but also to gender strategic needs as they contribute to changing the position of women in society and changing the social relationship between men and women. The SHGs, in many ways, are playgrounds to prepare women for larger organisations such as the coordinators, VDCs or CDCs (commune development committees).

Independence from the co-ordinators, the VDC, the SHGs determine their own destiny and give members that rights which are usually obscure or taken away in large organisation and give Padek the opportunity to work directly with members. The SHGs not only economic empower group members, but also enhance their decision-making capacity and sense of responsibility. These results from the fact that Padek provides groups with working capitals for which they have a group responsibility in terms of pay back, as well as decision on destination of the working capital. In that sense they, as members of the SHGs are owners of all the decisions. In other words: personal and social development is added to economic development, as group members become more and more mature.

Empowerment at group level is only a start in establishing a natural countervailing power for the development co-ordinator, such as the VDC. SHGs can be associated at village level. Group leaders will form an association of SHGs at village level to keep a critical eye on the performances of the VDCs. As the leadership of the group rotates (preferably per year) also is the representation at village level will rotate and thus contribute to empowerment of all members and not just one. Elitism will be more difficult.

The challenge of developing the SHGs is no less than democratisation of the development process in which people take precedence over economic and technological objectives. To this end, Padek is committed. It is Padek’s conviction that this experience answers a plea, from person with responsibilities for, and an interest in, furthering development, for concrete guidance on how to move in the promotion of people’s participation.

For these reasons, we have now introduced the self-help group practice to all project areas and ceased to operate other form of credit system altogether.

5-As market oriented tendency penetrates the community; it is important that we introduce ways and means to slow down the rise of individualism. In a rural setting, which are usually isolated, social cohesiveness and solidarity can help solve many problems. This will enable development actors such as Padek to phase out knowing that there is a system in place where people help each other, rid of selfishness and have the knowledge to amass and access resources for the community. As Padek talks about organisation building, it is the social capital that is more likely to ensure future sustainability of village development.

In introducing new structure, Padek needs to pay careful attention to the existing structure. It is extremely important that we understand how the existing social structure works before any intervention should take place. As much as possible, Padek works with the existing social structure, local initiatives, progressive culture and tradition. Tradition in Cambodia is embedded amongst others in its religion, its dances, music and sculptural arts as well as the knowledge of utilising nature's resources of water, fertile grounds, woods and stones.

Boua Chanthou,

Padek,