Civil Society Development

Padek's Intervention at a Workshop on a Decade of Civil Society Development,organised by Pact, July 26-27, 2001

Traditionally, Cambodians come together to solve certain problems or to fulfill certain needs of their community. Occasionally, the act of coming together manifested in a form of committee or association. It could be an adhoc association or an adhoc committee for temporary tasks such as for the construction of an additional classroom for the community, or for the construction of a village road, or for taking turns in harvesting or for organising a boat to compete in a race in Phnom Penh. Theses groups of people come together to discuss their common problem, to manage their project, to divide work among themselves, to provide small donation, to provide labour, to bargain in the process of completing their project. Sometimes, they come together to discuss ways to advocate for certain issue in order to seek support from the authorities in order to solve certain problem. All these happen rather informally, led by a trusted person or a patron within the community. The work is done usually with very little financial transaction.

Those groups of people that are committed to cooperate with each other to solve certain problems, can be called civil society organisation in its informal mode. They are informal units in a sense that they don't possess any written, well define rules or regulations or statutes. They are, in many ways, in a form of verbal agreement between groups of people. These groups of people disperse when the work is done, i.e. the school is built, the road is constructed, the harvest is in or when the boat racing season is over. When another set of problem or need crop up, another group of people who are related to that problem or that need, or effect by it, will come together anew. A committee is formed, a discussion and work takes place to solve the problem and answer the need. And they disperse.

The word non-governmental organisation or civil society organisation is new in Cambodian context. It was in the early 1990's that the word NGO came into being as a Cambodian entity. Until now, Cambodians in the NGO community are not quite agree on the definition of the word civil society. Perhaps it is not surprising that Cambodians are wrestling with this concept given the fact that this new concept is nearly totally contradictory to the type of civil organisation that has traditionally taken place in Cambodia as I discussed earlier.

In general, we can say that the concept of NGO or civil society organisationis a foreign or imported concept – a concept that is unfamiliar or unknown to Cambodians. This new/imported entity called NGO or civil society organisation requires that you have a clear written vision, mission and goal. It must be expressed in a formal written statute, which discusses rules and behaviour of membership. This entity is formed for long term work, and usually to fulfill multi-tasks. A written administrative and financial management system is in place to ensure democratic leadership and transparent management. This requires that the entity has a governing board, a director and a team of like-minded workers. Most of all it is an entity which is very much depending on cash and requires a lot of financial transactions.

It is obvious that this new entity with the prescribed structure is very different from what Cambodians are use to. It is not surprising, therefore, that for the last decade there have been so many NGOs formed and disappeared, some after a period of malfunction. This is because of the pressure of the required structure that discussed above. The comings and goings of these NGOs produces a destabilising effect on Cambodia social and administrative structure in a country, which is poor and with limited human resources.

Donors, such as Pact or OXFAM and others, who financially support the formation and disappearance of these NGOs, also habour their own philosophy and their own ways of achieving certain agenda – some are suitable others are not so suitable for Cambodian cultural and social context, not to mention that donors' philosophy and ways of doing things sometimes differ from one another. This also represents a destabilising effect. There is no room for me to discuss this matter now, but I would like to pose several questions concerning ways to overcome the above constrains i.e. the move from the informal mode of civil society organisation to a more formal mode.

Many donors, most of them from the north – developed countries, whether they are Pact or Asia Foundation or World Bank or International Monetary Fund tend to assume that when they bring in a new structure or system such as NGO, civil society, democratically elected parliament, judicial system, fiscal system, the new structure or system will work without concurrent change of social fabric. This is not always the case. A structure is not a sure thing for bringing a desirable change. Like any technology, it requires time for the fabric of society to adjust and serious preparation to make it works. How and what to do to make it works? Or should we try at all to make it work the way donors want it to be? The same questions can be asked to the government because it also receives foreign money.

No need for me to tell this audiences that money is frequently a dangerous thing. There is no shortage of examples that money from different donors of different philosophy or motive has been instrument that divide the government, divide civil society and fracture national spirit. It is very important that both civil society and government need to be very creative to pick and choose the right activities recommended by donors to address two urgent issues that plague Cambodian society right at this moment. They are poverty and mistrust – mistrust within the government horizontally and vertically, mistrust between the people and the government, mistrust between government and civil society organisations and mistrust within civil society organisations.

Poverty:

It is very important that we are nurturing and strengthening civil society to meet the need of the Cambodian people. The most important need for the Cambodian people is to have civil society that can protect the benefit of common people and to act as a tool to contribute to poverty alleviation. At this stage of Cambodia development, the role of civil society, first and foremost, is to enlarge and strengthen the social safety net, to advocate for a sustainable pattern of development model that is, step by step, in search for social justice.

In doing so, it is important that Cambodian social structure and social dynamic be understood clearly by all concern. Traditionally, in Cambodian context, pagodas, kinship, patron client relationship form part of the social structure that acts as social safety net. However, in recent years, as market economic system becomes more entrench and the force of individualism set in, all these structure are not working effectively in preventing a number of people from descending into destitution.

In strengthening civil society, we must keep in mind that it is a process of skillfully modifying the social structure in a way that it can be served to strengthen and enlarge the social safety net. We should put our effort in civil society that form part of the social structure that can reduce the power of other social structure that perpetuates poverty

Mistrust:

Three decades of war and conflicts have eroded the trust within the national community. This is because the traditional conferring of ideas has ceased as people turn to weapons to get their ideas across or adopted. That trust needs to be brought back urgently. This can be done through increase communication and dialogue between the government and the people, between government departments, between donors and government and civil society organisations.

It is, therefore, very important for NGOs or civil society organisations to remember that every development intervention of your organisation must contribute to promoting dialogue and building trust between all development actors – the people, the government and donors. It is the trust between the government and the people, however, that is most important. The donors can leave Cambodia any time, but, like fish and water, the government and the people cannot do without one another as we search for a pattern of development that is sustainable and equitable.

It has been suggested that Cambodia's ineffective way of solving the poverty problem so far (the poor getting poorer, the rich getting richer, the rural areas are not getting better, urban slum is getting larger,…) is because of the lack of trust and the lack of consultation and dialogue between all stakeholders (the government, the people and the donors) to identify the real root causes of poverty and strategies to get out of that poverty.

In conclusion, NGO or civil society can do two things to address the two issues of poverty and mistrust that I raised:

1.Empowering the people so that they can speak for themselves, i.e. to build their capacity to enable them to carry out the dialogue with the government and donors by themselves, or

2.Acting as intermediary, i.e. bringing people's concerns and interests to the attention of the government and donors at local, national and international arena.

Another thing that NGOs or civil society must remember is to be creative in adopting donor philosophy or recommendation. Understanding Cambodian social structure and social relations will enable NGOs to translate or modify those recommendations into something that serves the interest of common people and reduce the power of social structure that is the cause of poverty. This is also applicable to the government when implementing structural adjustment programme or reforms recommended by the donors. It has been observed that section of the government as well as NGOs assume that growth ultimately leads to poverty alleviation. In fact there have been many examples from many countries which show that growth take place and at the same time the number of people living in poverty increase. For growth to effectively reduce poverty, the poor must be part of that growth. At time like this government needs to be very creative to be able to pick and choose the right components of the structural adjustment programme or reforms recommended by donors, i.e. to choose the ones that promote a distribution of benefits from growth in favour of the poor and reject the ones that are benefitting only the rich. NGOs and civil society organisations can and should actively contribute to this process to ensure that a fair and just distribution of wealth takes place.

I am incline to say that the formal mode of civil society organisations is a more effective mode in achieving the two tasks mentioned earlier and in addressing the two issues of poverty and mistrust. However, while it is important to have a long term advocacy strategy, the informal mode of civil society organisations is not something to be ignored totally and in fact all development workers must study them carefully right from the beginning of their intervention.

How well and to what extend NGOs and civil society organisations have performed the two tasks in the last decade is another important subject that needs to be studied thoroughly.

Ms.Boua Chanthou,

Padek Director,

Phnom Penh, 26 July 2001