For API, inclusion is essential, especially when it comes to the issue of participation in local decision-making processes. The main goal of this project was therefore to amplify the voices of marginalized people, and in particular of persons with disabilities (PWDs), by providing them with both the opportunity to make themselves heard, and enhancing their access to more equitable, quality public services. The target district was Tramkak in the Takeo Province, and the funding, around USD 350,000, was provided by the Dutch Foreign Ministry’s Voice grant, managed by Oxfam in Cambodia. Our partner in this initiative was Epic Arts, Phnom Penh Center for Independent Living, Associations of Old Age People, Musician Association of People with Disabilities. You can read more about this flagship project here. You can also watch our project videos, dive into the materials we produced for our National Conference on Social Accountability at the beginning of 2020, or learn more about inclusion in I-SAF by watching our training series dedicated to this topic.
Women, men, and children with various disabilities and from different age groups were firstly identified through snowball surveys in the 7 target communes. The 185 people with disabilities identified participated in empowering workshops and citizen with disabilities scorecard meetings.
Thirteen (13) PWDs (46% women) were recruited as Community Accountability Facilitators (CAFs).
After attending meetings and workshops and receiving information on their rights, the citizens with disabilities had the chance to voice their concerns particularly regarding the quality of health services in their communes. Some PWDs became confident to raise the issues and become representatives of their groups in the meetings.
The PWDs were satisfied with the scorecard mechanism and their facilitators developed creative and accessible ways to be able to raise and score the criteria.
Service providers equipped and supported disability equipment, wheelchairs, ramps in public institutions, education materials and scholarships for disabled children. PWDS received trainings courses on animal husbandry techniques and were supplied with quality medicines. The Health Centers’ staff were increased in numbers and started providing better services to all citizens and to PWDs in particular.
13 Joint Accountability Action Plans committees JAAP-Cs were successfully formed in the target 13 communes.
Around 50% of the issues raised by PWDs in the Joint Accountability Action Plans (JAAPs) were resolved by local authorities and service providers and integrated into the Commune Investment Plans.
Commune Committees for Women and Children (CCWC) monthly meetings were regularly organized and opened to PWDs, who raised requests to render services more accessible to them.
Two videos were produced by the Project and broadcast through social media (YouTube, Facebook) and API’s website, and reached thousands of people living in Takeo Province and Phnom Penh.
Uncle Chhen’s Struggle with Poverty
Being a rice farmer in the commune of Tram Kak is not exactly an easy job to begin with, but working without a leg while also raising two children with almost no money requires a strength of character that is simply uncommon for most humans.
Mr. Chhen Din and his wife in their village of Ang Roneap, in the commune of Tram Kak.
Not far from the market in Tram Kak, along some narrow paths meandering between rice fields and palm trees, lives Mr. Chhen Din, a man quite fit for his age, whose facial traits tell a story of toughening up hardship. The 47-year-old farmer was born in the village of Ang Roneap, where he has been living ever since, growing rice and farming chickens on his family plot of less than one hectare. This is barely enough for Mr. Din’s and his wife’s own consumption, and there is definitely nothing left to sell out. Their two daughters, who are 18 and 20, moved to Sihanoukville to work and manage to send home only a few dollars a month.
In the early 1990s, young Chhen Din made it until secondary school, yet in the seventh form, he was recruited by some army commander and sent off to the Thai border to fight the Khmer Rouge, who in those days were still waging a guerrilla war out of the jungle. One day in 1995, a mine planted by the enemy proved to be fatal to the inexperienced soldier, who lost a leg. Back in his native village, Mr. Din had to get used to a new life – in peace, but with very limited resources. When his wife was pregnant, they had a really hard time, as they recall, mainly because none of them was able to run the usual errands needed for surviving in a rural area.
Later, when his daughters reached school age and he tried to request a stipend for them, local authorities told him there were no available resources for this. So, Mr. Din could not count on any public support for financing his children’s education, although, in a different context, as a person with disabilities and very modest resources, he would have been entitled to some form of social help towards this goal. “We did our best, and, unlike us, our daughters managed to graduate high school. But, unfortunately, we were not able to help them go to a university.”
Poverty and limited mobility are Mr. Din’s biggest problems until today. Every farming season, the couple needs to spend 200,000 riel (about 50 US dollars) on hiring people to plough their rice field, and at least 100,000 more for having their crops harvested. Getting something from a more distant shop or from a bigger market is also a challenge, since navigating on the dirt roads leading to Ang Roneap can be tricky when it rains too much. “We usually ask the shop owners to bring the products to our house, and most of the times they help us with this,” Mr. Din says. “This makes it incredibly difficult for us, because we depend on other people all the time. If I didn’t have this disability, I would be able to find some work, like everyone else, on a construction site or as a motorbike driver, let’s say. This is what makes me really upset.”
About five years ago, when he had to request some family documents at the district hall of Tram Kak, Mr. Din reports that he was asked for 50,000 riels without much explanation. “It used to be like this, you give them a bit of money and they do it for you.” Yet, since then, things have slowly started to change. When he is not feeling well, Mr. Din usually goes to the health centre in his commune of Tram Kak, where there is a ramp for persons with mobility impairments. “It’s quite narrow, though, you know. If I were on a wheelchair, I would definitely not be able to reach the entrance,” the man explains. “The ramp at the commune office is wider, but very steep”. The services have recently improved, however, in both places, according to Mr. Din. “They are paying more attention to people with disabilities, they have become much friendlier and they also encourage us to come and get free health check-ups.”
This is, at least in part, the result of the project called “Voices and Actions of Persons with Disabilities”, implemented by API in the district of Tram Kak, in partnership with Epic Arts and the Voice grant facility. The main goal of this initiative is to enhance the social accountability of local authorities and public service providers in their relation to citizens belonging to this vulnerable group. At some of the meetings he has been attending in this framework at the district hall, Mr. Din has learnt that, nowadays, children of persons with disabilities and also children with low income family backgrounds are getting free stationary items and even extra classes, if needed, in order to make sure they have a real chance to learn something. “I wish this came a bit earlier,” he says. “Back when my daughters were in school, they did not have access to this kind of support and we had to struggle a lot to buy them all the books and all the other things that they needed.”
Still, there are, of course, a lot of challenges left. The locally available medical equipment remains quite limited, so, whenever an X-ray is needed, the man has to go to a private clinic to have this examination done. “It was the same when I had to get rid of my kidney stones, they couldn’t really do it here, so I went to Ang Ta Saom and the private doctors there gave me some pills for that.” On the other hand, at the same meetings the local councillors invite him to, Mr. Din says that, together with other residents with disabilities, he gets a chance to express his opinions and suggest improvements on issues such as the accessibility of public institutions, water supplies or animal husbandry. “This is a very good idea,” he says. “They are inviting four or five people from each commune. But the topics of discussion should not be so limited, because there are many other things which have to get better here in our village.”
“Also, sometimes there are just too many people attending these meetings,” Mr. Din continues, “and not everyone can really get a chance to speak. And it’s not always easy to understand what the representatives of the NGOs are saying, because they often use complicated words without explaining what they mean.” Indeed, while it is undoubtedly a positive development that citizens with disabilities are now taking part more often in public decision making processes, both within the framework of this particular project, and, more generally, against the background of the social accountability reform agenda known under the name of I-SAF, more work seems to be needed both with regard to the form and to the actual content of this exercise in local democracy. As far as the content is concerned, for instance, it is clear that the issues of mobility (and, therefore, infrastructure), as well as social protection are at the top of the agenda both for Mr. Din and for other residents of Tram Kak, on account of their vast consequences on the social and economic life of citizens.
Concerning the form, although it is obviously essential for the representatives of local authorities and public service providers to meet citizens with disabilities in order to get acquainted with their real needs, it is hard to believe that this can have meaningful results if the format chosen is that of official plenary meetings attended by many participants summoned there by the officials themselves, who at the same time set the agenda, preside over the sessions and moderate the discussions. As Mr. Din delicately suggests, this kind of event will end up boring the audience, who, at the end of the day, will not have the impression that someone is actually interested in what their real concerns are. Much rather, citizens with disabilities should be encouraged to meet in small groups first, on a regular basis, and gradually articulate an agenda to be later presented to the officials, in open meetings where the latter simply listen and answer questions, as opposed to choosing the participants or presiding.
