Monday, I spent a relaxing day in the province touring the Takeo community development projects with the visiting MCC Resource Generation group. Strolling in the woods, we saw the hard and beautiful work of reforestation alongside the scars of war and the craters from B-52 bombs. We saw rehabilitated canals alleviating hunger - canals originally built on the backs of the victims of the Khmer Rouge regime. We heard the success stories of setting up a Rice Bank, where people could borrow rice in the hungry, dry times and pay it back during the harvests. We learned about the community credit union, which kept the villagers money in the community and protected them from paying (and defaulting) on high interest loans. I couldn't help but be joyful at seeing and hearing all these stories, at seeing and hearing men and women who had lived through years of uncertainty and tragedy, now standing as witnesses to change, happily showing us their gardens. I bought some eggplant - the good fruit of a land that was devastated just a few decades ago.

Cambodia is a land of tough history and tough realities, so experiencing things like this is extremely important to creating awareness and hope for others who are not on the good side of things yet. Here, 4.6 million people live on less than a dollar a day. Up to now, 50 cents was considered enough to get the basics of food and water - but that is changing as, in recent years, the food crisis has been accentuated by inflation.

Over the past year inflation has spiked at 10.8 percent, compared with 2.8 percent at the end of 2006, driving up the cost of food and other staple goods and pushing the most vulnerable deeper into poverty.

"About 8.5 percentage points of December's inflation rate of 10.8 percent was accounted for by food price inflation," said the International Monetary Fund's Cambodia representative John Nelms.

For as many as 2.6 million people living in extreme poverty, the situation has been worsening over the last several years, which have been marked by poor harvests brought on by natural disasters such as flood or drought.

This inflation has, in some ways, been the price the poor have had to pay for the great success of the rich. Tourism, the garment industry, and a real estate boom have injected a lot of cash into Cambodia, created some very wealthy Cambodians - and a setup a vulnerable economy. The result, in the words of one of Cambodia's poor, is "This year I'm not at all hopeful...."

READ THE ARTICLE HERE.

Meanwhile, threats to the most important natural resource, water, continue. Cambodia has made great strides in water management, but it shares water with neighboring Asian countries, and nothing is simple. Thailand has considered diverting water from the Mekong, and Cambodia remains vulnerable to water shortages across the region.

Despite the challenges, my trip to Takeo gives me hope that solutions exist. The only question is whether we will seek those solutions out before the suffering of Cambodia is increased even more....

"None of these people want to live 20km outside the city. Their livelihoods are here," explained Pred. "The government is systematically removing the poor from Phnom Penh. But the poor are so important to this city’s economy. The government doesn’t realize that." ---- David Pred, Country Director for Bridges Across Borders, an NGO that provides legal assistance to victims of land disputes and forced evictions in Cambodia

I have been meaning to mention Dey Krahorm for sometime, but never seem to find the right time to give to it. That time never seems to present itself, though, so I am just going to highlight a few things and refer you to the summary report by LICADHO.

I began with the quote from David Pred because I think it reveals one of the basic ways in which the privileged/powerful/rich are often unaware of the crucial role the poor play in the world. Because they are often invisible to us, we can take them for granted. But just a quick tour of your closet (where were your clothes made?), your house (where did you buy your furniture?), your daily routines (how many people are you dependent on to make traffic work, to buy gasoline, to fix your car, etc.?) - all of this, if done mindfully, would reveal to us a vast web of unknown connections. If the poor disappeared, the rich would have nothing.

The Dey Krahorm community is a tragic story of forgetfulness. 7NG, a large contractor in Cambodia, is basically trying to take land from a poor community to develop it for the rich (or at least not as poor) without paying adequate compensation. Some members MCC here have been active in being a silent witness to this tragedy, providing awareness/education for other expats, and supporting groups working on the legal end of things. Over time, the community has consistently employed nonviolent resistance to the land-grabbing, even while the government has failed to help them, the community numbers have dwindled, and workers with 7NG have used violence against them.

It is sad to see the exploited pressed even harder, but heartening to see them refuse to be robbed of their dignity.

For a summary of their story, with some photos, CLICK HERE.

And don't forget to spend some time at LICADHO, a great human rights group working in Cambodia.

And, most importantly, try to spend some time seeing how we are all connected, rich and poor, and how we need each other, and how we can grow in mutual respect and compassion.

Lots in the news here lately regarding human rights and trauma recovery. You can read up, for instance, about the Cambodian government's argument over the UN Envoy's report about land grabbing issues here.

Meanwhile, I was struck by the work of Chanthol Oung, who is working on behalf of women in Cambodia and teaching abroad this year -

Having witnessed violence for her entire childhood, Oung refuses to accept a violent world for her children. "I hope that my daughters would live in a peaceful society without harm, without any violence, and they could go to higher education," she said. But given the trauma Cambodians have encountered in the last three decades—and how devalued women have been in their society—she recognizes the challenges.

Read her story here.

For a critical summary of human rights issues in and a good brief on Cambodian history/politics, read "Cambodia has peace, but no freedom."

For a photographer's experience working with some church groups at the Phnom Penh dump, read on -

How in the year 2007 could any human being have to live like this? And not only one human being; the entire dump was covered with people of all ages, picking through the most unimaginable slime to find anything of the slightest value.

I put the camera back up to my eyes, shielded once again from the reality of children as young as 5 picking through maggots and fresh loads of garbage dropped by huge trucks.

This garbage is their home. Roughly 2,000 people, about 600 of whom are children, live and work at the 100-acre landfill. The shelters where they live are made from any scrap material they can bind together for cover: old burlap bags, torn then sewn together to make a wall, and tin siding held together by twine.

Read the rest here.

This testimony fits well with UN Envoy Ghai's advice, during a special human rights walk -

"The ultimate custodians of human rights and social justice must be the people themselves, just as they must be the custodians of political and economic sovereignty," he added.

Good words for all of us, no matter where we are.

A common sight here in Cambodia is people sitting along the roadside in small stalls stocked with liter bottles (usually old soda bottles) full of black market gasoline, carried over the border from Vietnam. But that sight might soon be a rarity.

There is a report out that oil exploration will likely take place around the Tonle Sap Basin:

http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5iDWu8uQKvc0wgWBIsT-TEHo4vwMQ

Despite guarantees that the exploration won't bring pollution and that it will aid in eliminating poverty, I am concerned. In this nation where infrastructure is still being rebuilt, I don't trust a guarantee that pollution won't occur during exploration - let alone if drilling and pumping of oil would begin in earnest.

Of course, the plea of poverty eradication is definitely one that makes it unpopular to oppose. Whether or not, however, that plea is well meant is the more important question. Take one example of many: in Angola, oil development has not been efficient in ending poverty, although it has engorged a few select sectors with wealth. (See http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/4861108.stm ) The Niger Delta has been one of the worst places where oil development has destroyed so much:

"Regional experts point to the oil boom itself as a cause of much of the violence and instability in the region. Rather than stimulating economic and social growth in the Niger Delta, the massive revenue generated by oil extraction has acted as a magnet for corruption." (http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/africa/july-dec07/delta_0727.html )

Oil development is never a simple process, as the phrase "resource curse" used among development specialists goes to show. Even where corruption is not a problem, this doesn't mean revenues go to truly sustainable development processes in a nation. Even the IMF has commented on how practices (like fuel subsidies) can complicate the issues (see http://www.imf.org/external/np/speeches/2006/101706.htm )

Combine this with the historic injustices that have accompanied oil companies (read up, for example, on the Niger Delta, as in this article: http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2006/10/13/crude_poverty.php ), and the prospects for Cambodia being helped by oil development do not seem very likely.

Especially ominous is the fact that this exploration will go on around the Tonle Sap basin. The freshwater fishing there has supported the local economy, along with rice farming, for generations. I hardly think that the farmers and fishermen who will be squeezed out of the Basin will be the ones who benefit from oil development.

But then again, eradicating poverty is a nice slogan for any benefactor. If eradicating poverty were seriously a goal in Cambodia, I doubt that oil exploration would be the first idea on the table.

As Emira Woods put it,

"The next time you pull up to the pump, stop a moment and remember that the thick black crude is extracted from the earth's crust at great social, political and environmental cost. Then do whatever is in your power to demand dignity and proper compensation for those whose land or sea may be cursed with the blessing of this natural resource."

I read THIS ARTICLE today with an important correction about the prevalence of AIDS in Cambodia.

The correct stats are much lower (though still significant):

In Cambodia, 65,000 people living with HIV-AIDS and 6,000 AIDS orphans are under the age of 15.

According to the National AIDS Authority (NAA), the HIV-AIDS prevalence rate in Cambodia, which has been on a steady decline since 1998, is the lowest yet at 0.9 percent.

There are an estimated 67,200 people over the age of 15 living with HIV-AIDS in Cambodia and no one knows quite how many children have been orphaned as a result of the disease, NAA Secretary General Teng Kunthy said.