Category: Impact Stories

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Women investigators address court officials, explaining the difficulties with GBV prosecutions.

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MoJ Deputy Director of Research and Training, Sothea Nheom, demonstrates the new Trafficking Database.

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Nationwide working sessions featured intensive dialogue on the causes of low clearance rate of GBV prosecutions.

In Cambodia, the criminal justice system faces two significant barriers when addressing gender-based violence (GBV) cases. First, many cases either go unreported, or never make it past the police investigation to the court. Second, those prosecutions which do commence have a very poor clearance rate.  In 2010, the percentage of GBV prosecutions that led to a final verdict was just 16%, whereas the clearance rate for all other criminal cases in Cambodia averages more than 80%. This second problem of prosecutions dropping away is injurious to society in a number of ways:  not only does it rob the courageous survivor (most of whom are minor girls) from receiving justice, it also reinforces a belief in Cambodian communities that the rule of law does not protect them.

EMWI’s USAID-funded Cambodia Program on Rights and Justice II (PRAJ II), has been assisting the monitoring of GBV prosecutions in Cambodia since 2009.  A case tracking database developed with the Ministry of Justice (MoJ), and used to train the courts and legal aid groups, has been instrumental in this process. In February 2011, PRAJ and the MoJ discovered the abysmal 2010 clearance rate in these prosecutions — which number several hundred a year — and immediately worked with their partners at GIZ in the Ministry of Women’s Affairs (MoWA) to design a yearlong evidence-based training program to improve the success of the prosecutions. The very next month the nationwide program was launched, and by September 2011 over 500 justice sector officials and legal aid lawyers, from every province, had participated.

These intensive regional workshops set out to diagnose the causes of the attrition, and to design solutions. Last month, PRAJ and the MoJ returned to the database and confirmed that the clearance rate had doubled to 32%. While the rate of successful prosecutions remains poor, hundreds of Cambodian women and girls — and thousands of their family members and neighbors — are now receiving greater care, improved due process, and final justice as a direct result of these programs. This is a good start to correcting a systemic access to justice issue.

PRAJ understands that the 2011 success must be repeated to begin to bring the GBV clearance rates and convictions up to par with other criminal cases. To that end, this year PRAJ — again with its partners from GIZ — will expand on the national training series to engage civil society organizations that provide support to rape and domestic violence victims in the provinces, improving the critical referral systems to hospitals and to MoWA investigators. Reviewing the case data from 2011 to examine procedural bottlenecks, the joint program will also offer more advanced sessions based on the assessment that accompanied the 2011 trainings. These sessions will focus in more detail on key evidentiary matters facing the male magistrates and female MoWA investigators alike: instruction on the elements required to prove GBV crimes under the new Penal Code, pertinent due process matters under the new Penal Procedure Code, and issues such as medical forensics, working with post-traumatic stress disorder, and how to conduct gender-sensitive witness interviews.

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Cambodian Eng Vannak codes as Mozilla representative speaks with localization team.

To protect a free and open web, citizens need to understand their gateways to the Internet. If web browsers don’t operate in local languages, then a web user’s relationship with the Internet is troubled at best, and the social commitment necessary to protect a free and open web is weak. With a local language in place, users feel ownership of their Internet – and want to protect it.

Knowing this need to deliver an official Khmer web browser to Cambodia’s rapidly growing web citizenry, EWMI, Mozilla, and the Khmer localization team in Phnom Penh joined together to reenergize – and complete – the stalled localization effort of the Firefox web browser. As of January 2012, a localization process several years in the making was finally accomplished: the most popular web browser in Cambodia was officially transformed into Khmer Firefox.

The Mozilla Corporation, and the Foundation that guides it, support the makers and doers of Internet freedom through the hands-on, transparent, and participatory principles of Open Source software. This philosophy is appreciated by many young Internet users, such as the youth of Cambodia who choose the Firefox browser over the alternatives by a ratio of more than 3 to 1. John O’Duinn, the director of release engineering at Mozilla – and responsible for shepherding the 93 languages of Firefox’s 450 million users worldwide – explains the approach simply: “We just want people talking and sharing on a free and open web.”

Internet use is exploding in Cambodia, with the number of Facebook users last year reaching more than a quarter million – a two thousand percent increase from the year before. This dramatic growth, however, is taking place in an environment increasingly hostile to Internet freedom, with a recent crackdown on free expression followed by a pending new Cyber Crimes Law. With an awareness that localization builds advocates of a free and open web, in September 2011 EWMI and Mozilla co-hosted Open Cambodia: an event that brought the human rights elements of civil society in contact with the coders and developers of the private sector, sparking dialogue and tool-building among these one hundred web leaders to strengthen the constituency of Internet freedom. Drawing on the knowledge and enthusiasm of Mozilla, and the training expertise of the Technology and Social Change Group at the University of Washington in Seattle, Open Cambodia successfully bridged the private sector and civil society, and re-ignited the development of Khmer Firefox.

Four months later, in January 2012, Mozilla’s John O’Duinn returned to Cambodia for the first time in six years, and hosted a final localization design session at the EWMI offices in Phnom Penh. Building on the momentum of Open Cambodia, O’Duinn worked with the localization team led by Eng Vannak to understand the process and prepare the final few hundred strings of code. By the end of January, a six year journey was complete: Khmer Firefox was officially submitted to Mozilla to become the 94th language, joining half a billion other local users worldwide.

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Law students attended client counseling skills workshops prior to competition (2009).

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Winners of the Winners of the 2010 competition at a ceremony with the US Ambassador and President of Cambodia’s Bar Association.

When the East-West Management Institute’s USAID-Funded Cambodia Program on Rights and Justice II (PRAJ II) began its legal education programs in Cambodia six years ago, no law schools had any form of moot court or practical lawyering exercises. This year, when PRAJ 2 launched its fifth annual Client Counseling Competition, the number of law schools participating in these new legal skills programs had risen from zero to nine. Over the course of the six years, thousands of law students have participated in the PRAJ Mock Trial and Client Counseling Competitions.

The greatest testament to the program’s success is the level of programming that partner institutions have initiated, using their own resources, around these competitions. While the PRAJ-organized Client Counseling Competition this year consisted of sixteen preliminary and final rounds, the number of lead-up sessions wholly organized by the law schools themselves dwarfed that number. Steve Austermiller, who directs the PRAJ Legal Education division, recalled: “there were over a hundred qualifying rounds and practice sessions at the law schools this year before the actual competition even started.” Austermiller, whose programs have trained more than three thousand Cambodian law students and magistrates since 2007, pointed out other signs of sustainability: the rise in participating schools, the hosting of the competitions at the law schools, funding coming from the Cambodian government, and the active involvement of local Khmer lawyers as coaches.

One driver of the schools’ preparation for the competitions is the success the Cambodian teams have had in the international rounds. Three years in a row the Cambodian national team has made it to the semifinals at the English-language world championships, at times advancing further than the United States and the U.K. Back home, the impact of the first semifinal appearance reached all the way to center of government. Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen “was invited to the opening of our school’s new building,” remembered 2009 National Champion Kanika Tan, “and in his speech he said that we were the pride of the country.”

Competition graduates carry their new skills back into the Cambodian legal profession, and to other public and private sector positions, to reshape the way law is practiced and understood in the country. Last year’s National Champion Vo Vannarith, for example, now works at the Ministry of Environment, while his partner that year, Saing Darareaksmey, has entered the business community working at a Cambodian investment firm.

PRAJ’s other annual law student competition, a Mock Trial tournament, has also generated substantial initiatives — and investment — by Cambodian law schools. Seeking to enhance their students’ relevant skill sets several law schools have established not only internal mock trial competitions, but have added trial advocacy courses to their official curriculum. Because one of the schools modernizing its program in this manner is the Royal University of Law and Economics, which offers the benchmark law program in Cambodia, the gradual adoption of these initiatives by other faculties is inevitable.

Developed with the support of EWMI, as well as the American Bar Association, these competition-based legal education programs are part of an array of trainings aimed at introducing the next generation of lawyers to key principles of justice: analytical thinking, legal research, procedural fairness, free legal aid for the poor, and bench and bar ethics. In addition to the successful competitions, these programs have included magistrate training at the Royal Academy of Judicial Professions, several courses taught at the law schools, law student clinics which offer hands-on skills to aspiring lawyers, and the introduction of Cambodia’s first academic law journal.

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Following intensive collaboration between the Ministry of Justice and the EWMI’s USAID-funded Cambodia Program on Rights and Justice II (PRAJ II) to support the investigation in a child trafficking case, an Australian national was convicted in Siem Reap in July and sentenced to eight years in prison for a sexual assault against a four-year-old Cambodian girl. The case was brought to light by PRAJ colleagues from the International Justice Mission (IJM), who contacted PRAJ about the flight risk of a man accused in a child trafficking case in Siem Reap Province. The accused had been arrested in connection with the solicitation and sexual assault of two sisters, ages four and eight, and had been released on his own recognizance pending the decision of the court’s investigating judge. IJM representatives had noticed familiar signs indicating an imminent flight risk — including meetings between the accused and immigration authorities — and approached PRAJ for assistance in learning the status of the prosecution, and to help in communicating with the counter-trafficking offices at the MoJ. 

Using the MoJ Trafficking Database, PRAJ was able to identify the relevant Siem Reap court officials from the prosecution and investigating judge divisions, and was able to reach key MoJ officials to look into the case. Exercising care to uphold the rights of the accused and of the victims in the case, PRAJ worked with IJM to obtain the investigation documents and trace the status of the case file as it worked its way from the prosecutor’s office, to the court president, and finally for referral to the investigating judge. This intensive research and communication took place during a Cambodian holiday season and across two provinces, demonstrating the dedication of PRAJ’s partners at the MoJ in ensuring effective prosecutions of trafficking cases.

Following the court’s analysis of the investigation records, the accused was placed in pre-trial detention, avoiding his flight risk and allowing the victims to prepare for their testimony without intimidation. Based on the courageous testimony of the four-year-old victim and other corroborating evidence, the accused was convicted, sentenced to eight years in prison, and required to pay a significant sum in restitution to the victim’s family. IJM hailed the work of PRAJ during the process as being essential to the successful outcome, stating in one correspondence: “Without [PRAJ involvement] the man probably would have fled the country. I wanted to thank you all. Please forward this to Andy [Boname] and Neil [Weinstein], too. Because of your efforts other eight and four year olds are safer!”

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As a result of EWMI and MoJ trainings, in 2010 we had 21 of 22 courts reporting to the database — an amazing success!

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MoJ Deputy Director of Research and Training, Sothea Nheom, demonstrates the new Trafficking Database.

In June 2010, the U.S. State Department recognized substantial progress in counter-trafficking in persons by the Royal Government of Cambodia, lifting the RGC from the Tier Two Watch List and citing the improved conviction data as a significant factor. Substantial EWMI activities in 2009 and 2010 were directed at this outcome — improved conviction data — and were undertaken in collaboration with the Ministry of Justice (MoJ), USAID, and the U.S. Embassy. These collaborative activities included: the creation of the MoJ Trafficking Database, hosting of the leading magistrates and clerks at a MoJ National Conference on Trafficking Data Collection, conducting a dozen field visits to courts nationwide to assist with data analysis, and regular (near daily) communication with the U.S. Embassy during the final weeks leading up to the TIP Report submission to document and deliberate over each conviction in close detail. All of these activities, in an intensive and complex six-month partnership, resulted in a marked increase in the quality and quantity of trafficking prosecution data and assisted in the final report to the State Department.

These data collection efforts would be useless if not for other justice sector improvements in policing and prosecution, but the data question itself was also a stumbling block in previous Cambodia TIP Reports. The 2008 Report cited data collection problems as a serious hindrance to counter-trafficking efforts: “Due to resource constraints, the government has not provided reliable statistics on prosecution.” Earlier, the 2007 Report echoed the same concerns: “It is possible that some of these statistics overlap as there is no consolidated data collection in Cambodia.” This year, however, there was no mention of prosecution data collection concerns, eliminating one of the perennial worries about RGC counter-trafficking efforts.

The new MoJ Trafficking-in-Persons Database was completed and fully operational in March of 2010. EWMI worked closely with the Ministry of Justice to develop the database, which tracks the case information of all prosecutions and convictions reported to the MoJ under the new Law on Suppression of Human Trafficking and Sexual Exploitation, and allows MoJ officials to search the status of cases through a variety of topics, including: province, case number, date, and statute article.