Happy Heaarts Fund

Case Study: Cambodia
Among countries in the Third World, Cambodia is one of the most impoverished, ranking 129th out of 177th countries in the United Nations Human Development Report; this compares to rankings of 74th for Thailand, 109th for Vietnam, 130th for Myanmar, and 133rd for Laos. Due to the lack of both international and domestic social and economic relief programs, a large part of the Cambodian population face grave hardships and unfortunately suffer due to circumstances over which they have little to no control.

In order to gain a clear perspective and strengthen comprehension for why and how Cambodia received its ranking as one of the poorest nations on the globe, it is important to understand issues, facts and occurrences which have transpired placing the country in its current state of affairs. Cambodia’s recent history has been particularly difficult. During the genocidal Khmer Rouge regime from 1975 to 1979, all educated people, including teachers, were successfully targeted for extermination on a mass scale. After 1979, political instability and violence persisted off and on into the late 1990’s. A largely ineffective and wasteful United Nations mission known as the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC) brought UN troops into the country from 1991-1993, in an attempt to create conditions for transition to peaceful civilian government. The most lasting legacy of this UN mission was the introduction of HIV/AIDS into Cambodia.

Since 1998, Cambodia has experienced relative political stability under the leadership of Prime Minister Hun Sen, the head of the Cambodian People’s Party. However, Cambodia scores poorly on international measures of political freedoms and government corruption. “Government corruption” can be defined as the practice of those in power manipulating the “system” (or lack thereof) to enrich their own lives, with very little thought of the good of the society. Cambodia takes in more revenue from foreign charity donors than it does from internal taxation. Incidentally, most schools have been built by foreign governments and NGOs.
Direct foreign investment in Cambodia has been low compared with Thailand or Vietnam. Schooling in Cambodia does not prepare young people especially well for skills needed in the global marketplace. Many people work in garment factories, but these jobs are now in jeopardy due to expiring trade agreements between Cambodia and the US.

Such instability, violence, genocide, corruption has not only cost those who sadly were forced to endure these events and circumstances first hand, but has had extreme negative repercussions for the future generations. Many of the children (between the ages of 3 and 18) living in Cambodia do not attend school and are forced to work as “slaves” to their adult counterparts and in many cases even for their own parents. They labor in dangerous conditions where heavy equipment, a lack of sanitation, and heavy air pollution place them at risk for serious injury and even death on a daily basis. Their nutritional needs are often left un-met; they have little or no health care, and endure both first and second hand domestic and sexual abuse.

In addition, a large portion of Cambodian children are subject to child trafficking and the sex trade ring, become drug addicted (many times due to the lack of food so amphetamines substitutes like sniffing glue and smoking a substance comparable to crack cocaine can divert hunger pains), are coerced into drug gangs, practice unprotected sex, and as a result perpetuate the cycle of poverty of the most abject of kinds. More than half of the children living in Cambodia under the age of 3 are in fact orphaned, largely due to violence and HIV/AIDS having hit the country by storm in 1993.
To add, there exists what is known as “orphan tourism,” where managers of the orphanage teach kids to perform traditional Cambodian dance for tourists, but do not enroll kids in school, overwork them and underfeed them, then pitch tourists to help the orphanage, and pocket the money. Worse, there are people who run orphanages that are physically or sexually abusive. Also, there are quite a few “Fagan” type adults who send kids out to sell various items to tourists, and or steal from them. Many children (orphans and parented alike work in one of the many landfills and or trash dumps dispersed around the nation’s larger cities of Phnom Penh and Bangkok).

Hopelessness, desperation, lack of education and welfare, and unavoidable ignorance to any other alternative ways of life create a vapid and austere way of viewing the importance of their own lives and those of others. It is critical for individuals on the macro and micro level, an international and domestic scale, and the internal and external realm to address the severity of the disregard for human life that so despondently plagues the country.

http://hdr.undp.org/hdr2006/statistics/countries/country_fact_sheets/cty_fs_KHM.html
United Nations Human Development Report Country Rankings

http://hdr.undp.org/hdr2006/statistics/
United Nations Human Development Report Country Rankings

http://www.asiademocracy.org/content_view.php?section_id=11&content_id=586
Measure of Political Freedom

http://www.transparency.org/policy_research/surveys_indices/cpi/2006
Measure of Perception of Government Corruption

Ibid, Measures of Perception of Government Corruption, Measures of Political Freedom

Ibid, 3, 4, 5

“Fagan” here is a reference to the Charles Dicken’s work, Oliver Twist, written in the 18th Century and is about orphans in England who are forced to work on the streets for an evil, selfish man named “Fagan.”