This Project, funded through a USD 624,902.00 grant by the US Department of State through East West Managment Institute (EWMI), and Australian Aid through Tetra Tech, focused on increasing the availability of public information amongst indigenous communities, especially indigenous women and advocating for the Right to Information Law for all. Recent studies showed that, in Cambodia, women from vulnerable groups often do not have the necessary means to exercise and defend their rights in case of disputes, or even in everyday life situations. Limited access to education but also limited access to public information made it possible for influential private entities to take advantage of indigenous women groups, not always protected and treated as equals while State officials do not always treat them as equals other Cambodian citizens. Collective property rights and land concessions are undoubtedly one of the main issues here, yet the underlying problem is more general. Therefore, together with our partners from the East-West Management Institute (EWMI), we focused on building capacity in these communities, by offering tailor-made training courses covering topics such as grassroots advocacy, requesting information from public authorities or budget control skills. At the same time, we worked on a dedicated online learning platform, as well as on two tracking tools meant to help indigenous women to monitor the legal compliance of land concessions and the public spending by district administrations. The project was implemented in three provinces (Kratie, Kampong Thom, Pursat) and national level. You can read our annual project report here and watch our documentary video series by clicking on this link.
Objective 1: Vulnerable Cambodians obtain and use information necessary for their full participation in the Cambodian Society.
Throughout the project cycle, Advocacy and Policy Institute (API) collaborated with the East West Management Institute (EWMI) and indigenous-led group to conduct an in-depth participatory assessment of the needs of indigenous women in the target areas and involved 90 indigenous women leaders from 33 Community Based Organizations (CBOs).
During the Project, nine sets of trainings were conducted on four main topics: access to information (A2I draft law), budget literacy, grassroot advocacy, and advocacy on draft Access to Information Law.
Thirty-three advocacy plans (one per CBO) were developed to lobby for beneficiaries’ priorities such as land disputes among community members and local powerful people; deforestation and loss of wild animals, illegal fishing in the conservation lake, and sediment increasing due to dams. The communities advocated also for changes in officials’ attitude, considered unprofessional when providing public services, a call for conservation and reparation of Ancient temples and bridges, relevant for the indigenous people culture’s; domestic violence; lack of wells and clean water, lack of water supplies; cultivation techniques and marketplace for agriculture product, lack of toilets and dirty environment on the streets due to improper dumping of garbage, lack of kindergarten school building and teachers, and people with disabilities’ lack of professional skills and capital for startup businesses.
The 90 participants (indigenous women leaders) successfully installed in their handphones applications like Telegram and Signal, to receive and disseminate information among members of their communities. A large majority of the Indigenous women posted articles (595) on social media about on their issues, concerns and advocacy activities in their communities such as participation in Commune and District council meetings, community patrolling, COVID-19 vaccination campaigns, meetings with API project teams and their participation in other NGOs’ activities on health education, environmental protection, sanitation, community challenges, IP cultural and traditions and gender equality trainings.
Objective 2: Raise awareness about the importance of an effective legal framework that provides access to information for Cambodians.
The Project organized and hosted several meetings at provincial and national levels between local authorities’ representatives and ministries’ representatives and members of parliaments and development partners (over 200), CSO and private and academy leaders (over 100), and indigenous women (over 200) to deliver information and create opportunities for dialogue about the importance, also a local level, of the new draft law on Access to Information (A2I).
Thanks to Project funds, API was able to steadily support the work of the Access to Information Working Group (A2IWG), the CSOs’ permanent forum based in Phnom Penh in charge of the Civil Society’s monitoring of the process of drafting and parliamentary approval of the draft law on Access to Information. The A2IWG met monthly and held several advocacy meetings with relevant authorities aimed to push for a quicker process.
On this key issue, API, EWMI and the A2IWG organized every year a national workshop/forum with hundreds of participants, where representatives of the Government, the Media and the Civil Society exchanged updates on the state of the draft of the A2I Law.
