1^st August 2011

The Guardian reports that Britain’s reputation abroad is at risk of being damaged by the extremely lucrative so-called ‘gap-year’ industry, raising fears of a perception that the West is engaged in a new form of colonialism.

The gap-year industry is a $US10 billion business for Western companies, costing volunteers between $US2,500 – $US7,500 for a mere two-month experience.

The warning comes from a leading British think-tank, Demos. Author of the report, Jonathan Birdwell, said there was even evidence that an ill thought-out gap year could be bad for local communities and Britain’s relations with other countries.

“There is a risk of such programmes perpetuating negative stereotypes of western ‘colonialism’ and ‘charity’: a new way for the west to assert its power,” he said, adding that “projects that do not appear to have benefits or make a difference for communities abroad leave volunteers unmotivated and disillusioned”.

One respondent is quoted as saying: “I felt that the local community could have done the work we were doing; there were lots of unemployed people there. I’d have preferred to work with local unemployed and helped them in some way to benefit their community.”

However, one in five people who took a gap year said they believed their presence in the place they visited made no positive difference to the lives of those around them. Moreover, nine out of 10 young people surveyed by YouGov for Demos said they had improved their self-confidence, self-reliance and sense of motivation following a stint of volunteering in a developing country.

Young people planning a gap year should focus on what they can offer their hosts in order to discourage the view that volunteering is merely a new way of exercising power, the Demos report says. Those who carefully select the projects in which they take part are likely to make the most of their time, while doing the most to dispel the belief that their trips are merely self-interested.

The report says there should be pre-departure training to ensure that young people are able to offer relevant skills. It says placements which are short are just as likely to have positive outcomes in personal development and civic participation as long-term ones. Young people who live with a host family are also more likely to report positive outcomes in “skills, identity and values”.

The study comes in the wake of the British government’s launch of the International Citizen Service which, in the words of PM David Cameron, is designed to “give thousands of our young people, those who couldn’t otherwise afford it, the chance to see the world and serve others”. The pilot of the scheme will involve 1,080 young people visiting 27 different countries.

The scheme is means tested, giving those who come from families with a joint income of less than £25,000 ($US41,000) the chance of a gap year for free. The report found that 64% of 3,000 parents surveyed want their children to take part in the ICS scheme. However, Demos’s research indicated that there were key factors which make a gap year successful and the report recommends the ICS should incorporate them. There should be post-placement support, which allows the young person to continue the work they started abroad once back home, it claims.

The report found that the typical UK overseas volunteer tended to be young, affluent, white and female, although those with few qualifications and those from low-income backgrounds reported the most positive experiences.

Birdwell said he hoped the ICS would grow to help around 3,000 young people a year and that these would be the least well-off in society. He said: “The new International Citizen Service is an exciting opportunity for young British people to experience the world and gain invaluable experience and skills while helping to contribute to the UK’s international development goals.

“However, the ICS is competing with an already crowded gap-year market. In order to be successful, it must ensure that activities benefit communities abroad and it must target recruitment to young people who couldn’t afford commercial gap year programmes.”

On Monday 1st August,  EZECOM, a leading Cambodian ISP, launches an international toll-free service, the first of its kind in the country. EZECOM ITFS offers local companies an easy and cost effective way to access international clients, allowing them to set up a local presence on a global scale, as well as support international customers and employees without the added expense of setting up local offices outside the country.

Once a company signs up for ITFS, they will be assigned a local prefix forwarding the call to any chosen number at no cost for their clients.

EZECOM’s experience as the largest provider of voice over Internet Protocol (VOIP) services in Cambodia, along with that of our International partners, means it is ideally placed to be at the forefront in the introduction of this technology to the Kingdom. EZECOM’s extensive fibre optic backbone combined with it being the the sole Cambodian member of the Asia American Gateway (AAG) submarine cable network consortium connecting SE Asia to the US, along with other major fibre networks, means that it is in the best position to deliver the highest quality service at the best possible price.

With Cambodian companies increasing their global presence, EZECOM ITFS offers companies an ideal way to enter and gain trust in new markets by giving small businesses a very large presence and large businesses a more personalised customer service – making it ideal for the growing business community in Cambodia – perfect for businesses and other organisations that prize global reach as an essential strategic step.

EZECOM offers customers competitive usage rates on a per country basis. Please go to www.ezecom.com.kh or call 023 888 181 for more information. Khmer, English, Chinese and Thai speaking staff are available to take your call.

31^st July 2001

The Thai News Agency (TNA) reports that Cambodia has withdrawn some 2,500 troops from the Thai border in a move designed to ease tension between the two neighbouring countries.

However, the Cambodian government said that its troops still remain inside the Preah Vihear Temple exclusion zone mandated by the International Court of Justice.

On the 22^nd July, the Cambodian PM, Hun Sen, announced a compromise proposal whereby both sides would simultaneously withdraw their troops under the supervision of independent ASEAN monitors.

However, the withdrawal of Cambodian troops is the first significant move since the court ruling, with the Thais no doubt waiting on the installation of their new government, which is expected to be more conciliatory than its predecessor.

Meanwhile, the Strategypage, a comprehensive summary of military news and affairs, reports on Cambodia’s efforts to upgrade its military following the recent clashes with Thailand, with the Cambodian Army on a recruiting drive to find 3,000 new recruits to replace several thousand older soldiers who were recently retired.

It notes that, like many poor nations, Cambodia has long emphasised keeping the 124,000 military personnel engaged in activities that are not necessarily related to their primary function. In other words, it has long been a job-creation mechanism in a country with high levels of youth unemployment.

However, the limitations of this strategy apparently became evident once the dispute along the border turned violent. What shocked Cambodian commanders and political leaders, Strategypage claims, was how unprepared their army was for even a minor conflict.

This has now led to a revitalisation plan for the army. Cambodia has been helped by China. which recently donated 50,000 field uniforms (including hats and boots). Last year, China donated 257 military trucks, and also supplied weapons.

However, the infantry weapons tend to be older models. China is introducing a new and improved model of their QBZ-95 assault rifle (also called the Type 95) that it has been issuing to its troops for over a decade now. That means China has plenty of surplus Type 81 (improved AK-47) rifles (which the QBZ-95 replaced) to either put into storage, or distribute to allies. Cambodia has bought some Type 95s for elite units but the rest have the second-hand Type 81.

In the last few years, Cambodia doubled its annual military budget to $500 million but Thailand spends more than six times that, and has done so for decades. Thailand has 300,000 troops, Cambodia only 124,000.

One of the saddest results of the conflict has been the fact that Cambodia, significantly poorer than Thailand, has been forced to divert precious resources to its military in the face of a much better equipped adversary. The unintended consequence is that the Cambodian military, always an important player in the country’s political sphere, is now even stronger.

30^th July 2011

Confidential cables recently leaked by Wikileaks reveal the detailed diplomatic manoeuvring by the international community, especially the US, the UK, France, Japan and Australia, over the Khmer Rouge Tribunal (KRT).

The details were buried in one of 777 US diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks two weeks ago in a rare large dump of every cable from an American embassy.

One chestnut, according to the cables, is that in 2009, Australia, apparently concerned about mission creep, cost and by a desire to let the Cambodian people own the process, risked a breach of international unity when it sided with the Cambodian government against the UN on anti-corruption mechanisms for the KRT following a scandal there over kickbacks.

Another cable quotes (at the time) Aussie ambassador Margaret Adamson saying “sources at the court told [Adamson] the Pre-Trial Chamber had reached a decision on UN co-prosecutor Robert Petit’s appeal to indict up to six additional suspects in a Case 3 at the KRT.

As we know, this case is now unlikely to see the light of day.

The cables also demonstrate the difficulties the Cambodian opposition has playing to different audiences in and outside the country, with the Cambodian expat community living in Australia having a much more aggressive agenda than those involved on the ground within Cambodia. One opposition MP told the US ambassador he would get more support locally by being a “lesser opposition voice in parliament” but more support from richer expats in Australia and elsewhere “by positioning himself as a strident voice” against the government.

In 2007, media freedom was so apparently so “fragile”, the cables show, that opposition candidates “had to buy airtime on the state-owned television network with Australian funding”.

The cables also offer some rather unflattering profiles of a number of local business luminaries, one of which could be an embarrassment to the ANZ bank.

Kevin Rudd’s Asia Pacific Community (APC) proposal – yet another talking shop – also appears to have received little interest here, with the FM Hor Namhong expressing “frustration” in a private meeting with the Americans in 2010 “that initiatives such as APC result in duplication of existing frameworks such as that of APEC, ARF, EAS, and ASEAN”, which echoed similar sentiments expressed by the PM in January that “indicated the timing of the APC is not right nor is its role in the region clear”.

Otherwise, however, Australia, which counts Cambodia as number seven on the list of aid recipients, appears to be seen in a reasonably positive light by the Cambodian people.

So much so that rich Cambodian parents are secretly sending their drug-addled children for detox in Australia (as well as China) to avoid the social stigma of drug use here as well as the poor quality of rehabilitation centres.

At the time, the country was apparently struggling to deal with an explosion in drug use caused by Cambodia’s porous borders, indigenous drug industry, rapidly expanding young urban population and “ruthless gangster” business elite.

Under the tabloid-style heading “Burgeoning Youth Population increasingly Seduced by the ‘Perfect High‘”, US ambassador Carol Rodley details stories of “drug parties”, violence, rape and “spoiled children” who spend as much as $1000 of their “parent’s money in one month on drugs, a huge sum in a country where the average family lives on less than a dollar a day”.

With the use of ice, the “party drug of choice”, spreading from gangs into the mainstream community (the UN estimates “as many as half a million” drug users in the country), the medical need for treatment and rehabilitation has collided with cultural taboos over drug use.

To most Cambodians, “drug use is unmentionable … and certainly does not happen among ‘good families’.”

This has resulted in rich families trying “to hide their children’s drug use by secretly sending them to rehabilitation centres, often abroad … the majority send their children to private clinics in China or Australia” with the “readily accepted story that their child has gone abroad to visit family or study”.

Crikey.

27 July 2011

A feasibility study on the construction of a 257-km railway linking Cambodia and Vietnam costing at least US$686 million will be part of an intra-Asian railway that runs from Singapore to China via Malaysia, Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam.

The 275-km railway will start in Kampong Speu Province’s Oudong District, pass by Kratie Province’s Snuol District and end at Vietnam’s Loc Ninh District in the southern border province of Binh Phuoc.

Under a scheme announced in 2008 to develop an intra-Asian railway, China has offered to contribute $500 million to build the Cambodia-Vietnam stretch of the railway. The overall cost estimate was announced on Wednesday by the Chinese Railway Ministry’s Third Railway Survey and Design Institute which began the study in July, 2009.

The $686 million cost does not include the fraught issue of compensation for residents who have to leave their homes to make way for the line.

The completion of the railway should bring huge economic benefits to Cambodia, especially to agriculture and mining by allowing a more economic system of transportation of bulk commodities.

At present, Cambodia is revamping the country’s existing rail links, including the 254-km southern line from the capital to Sihanoukville, and the north line 388 from Phnom Penh to the border with Thailand thanks to an Asian Development Bank loan worth $73 million.