Cambodia’s upswing in education spending to 2018

My friend Savong loves teaching. Here he is in full flight. His school, like those of other NGOs has helped pick up the slack created by government under-spending.

Investing enough in Cambodia’s future? I don’t think so. Until recently Cambodia’s state investment in education has languished. As a percentage of government expenditure, Cambodia spent until recently less than 12% of their total budget. This was ranked 140th in the world – but even then, the figure disguised the fact that the government income and expenditure in Cambodia was not all that high in any case. Education was getting a small slice of a small pie. Since early in the new millennium the numbers have improved slowly.

• 2010   13.1%
• 2007   12.4%
• 2004   10.1%*
  

  *  Figures from World Data Atlas

Raw percentages are a blunt measure of course. In Singapore the percentage is around 20%, while in Japan, with its relatively ageing population and its excellent existing education infrastructure, the percentage is close to 10%.  Neither nation faces the steep challenges as faced by Cambodia in the past decade, however Cambodia, for a few years, has spent more on its military than it has on schools and teachers.

But that is changing. The education strategic plan, or ESP ratified in 2014 by the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport (MoEYS) set out an aggressive boost in education spending, taking the figure north of 20% this year, up to 23.1% in 2017 and towards 26% in 2018.

Government plans and budgets are notoriously subject to changes and reality checks. The world economy is flat-lining in 2016, yet the MoEYS strategic development plan has inserted an optimistic growth in GDP of 7.4% for this year, and on this basis projected to increase spending from half a billion US dollars this year – 2016 – to three-quarters of a billion in 2018.

These figures need scrutinising. Where will the dollars go?  Do they keep pace with numbers of enrolments and the laudable plans to introduce upgraded science labs and computer labs – or boosts to teacher training?

Yet the intentions are great, and certainly have flagged the nation’s recognition that it has a burgeoning young population who need investing in.

For more education facts and figures – click here.

 

 

 

 

 

The Rabbit and the Earthquake. A Cambodian folk tale.

While many Cambodian folk tales feature Judge Rabbit as the smart wise-guy, other tales portray the rabbit as a nervous, less intelligent animal. In this story, rabbit’s nervousness leads to mass hysteria and an encounter with a creature I never expected in Cambodian folklore: the lordly Lion.  I don’t know how this creature from Africa ever popped up in Cambodian folklore, but I guess these tales travelled at some stage along the silk road a thousand years ago.

The other thing that fascinates me about this story is the reference to an earthquake. There have not been many earthquakes in Cambodia, yet everyone knows they can be frightening.

This is my retelling of the story.

THE NERVOUS RABBIT AND THE PALM FRUIT

A nervous rabbit lived under a palm tree near a forest. Like most rabbits he was always listening out for danger.

On this hot afternoon he was sound asleep, when a ripe palm fruit fell down on the ground nearby. The crackling sound as the palm fruit fell on the dried palm leaves woke the rabbit with a start!

Alarmed, the nervous rabbit jumped up: “It’s an earthquake!” Without looking behind he began running. There was no time for a backward glance, he had to escape the danger!

The herd of oxen saw him running past at high speed and, chewing on grass, one of them called out: “Rabbit! Why are you running so fast? What’s the matter?” Even the oxen were feeling jumpy now, after all, the rabbit looked totally frightened.

The Rabbit shouted in haste “Brother Oxen! It’s an earthquake! There’s no time to chew! Run for your lives!”

The Oxen began to run too. An earthquake? This could be dangerous!

The oxen and the rabbit soon met the Pigs and Deer. Startled, they too began running, joining the Oxen and the Rabbit. The Pigs heaved themselves forward and put on a burst of speed. No earthquake was going to catch these fat pigs!

When the Elephants saw them running, they too, asked “Why are you running? What is the matter?”

The Oxen told them “Haven’t you heard? The earthquake is coming!” Hearing this story, the Elephants joined them. When they all reached the Lion’s den, the clever Lion, seeing all the panic-stricken animals, stretched his paws and casually asked the Elephants, “What’s up? Why are you running?”

The Elephants were out of breath. “We don’t exactly know for sure. We saw the Oxen running. We heard something about an earthquake.”

So the Lion, lazily shook his mane and asked the Oxen, “Did you guys actually feel the earthquake?”

The Oxen confessed, “Well not directly, no.  We saw the Rabbit running, so we ran after him. He looked very frightened.”

The Lion asked the Deer and the Pigs, and they answered likewise.

“Hmmmn,” said the Lion. And he turned to face the Rabbit. “This earthquake.  Just how serious was it?” All the animals looked at the rabbit. They waited for his reply.

“I’m not too sure, myself. While I was sound asleep under a palm tree, I heard the sound of the earth breaking up.  It was a sharp crackling sound. I was afraid and began to run.”

“So you heard something but didn’t actually feel anything?” asked the Lion. “You didn’t feel the ground move beneath you?”

“No,” admitted the rabbit. “But the sound I heard; it was pretty terrifying.”

Arching his back and standing up, the Lion spoke: “All of you, come with me.” And slowly, swinging his tail, he led all the panicky animals to Rabbit’s palm tree. He showed them the cracked palm fruit lying on the ground. “There’s your earthquake,” said the Lion.

The embarrassed animals gave the Rabbit a sound rebuke and slowly went back to their own places.

• I have retold this tale and my source material is the Blog: Khmeridentification
• For more about Earthquakes in Cambodia
• For another Cambodian Folk Tale – You Can’t Please Everyone

Poverty porn. It’s not okay.

Big applause to Audrey Wilson of the Phnom Penh Post for her article this last week on ‘poverty porn.’ and the murky ethics of poverty fundraising.  She wrote when Weh Yeoh, the director of OIC Cambodia, tweeted the images from an Australian fundraising ad that portrayed young children, Cambodian, as trafficked and homeless. The photos positively rubbed the readers’ noses in the children’s shame.“I’m pretty sure this breaches all kinds of standards around positive portrayal of children,” he wrote. It turned out the children in the adverts were child models, dirtied up and paid to look like victims – and the fundraising agency said the imagery had kickstarted a very successful fundraising campaign. They were angry to be called out by the media, and went on to attack critic via twitter, arguing that donors don’t respond to images of happy, employed children.

On that front I disagree, and I base my opinion on market research I’ve expressly carried out for the charitable sector which tested various children-need-your-help scenarios – without pictures.

But that’s hardly the issue. The main focus of the criticism was about ‘poverty porn’ and the portrayal of disadvantaged children for gain – whether charitable or otherwise.

“The ’80s are calling – they want their pics of fly-covered starving African children back,” wrote Celia Boyd of Phnom Penh’s SHE Investments, on Twitter, in response to the recent advertising.  “Just because it raises money, it doesn’t make it right,” said fellow Australian Leigh Mathews, of Re/Think Orphanage.  (I’m citing the PPP piece here.)

The ethics of how we use images of poverty is a blurry topic. Last week I taught a local high-school class in New Zealand and we discussed just this issue, and Exhibit A were a stack of slides I’d taken – photos of poor people in Cambodia.  Creepy or okay? I asked.

The students were really clear. If I knew the person being photographed, and if I asked for permission – then it was okay. “You have to be respectful.” one student told me.

What about if it was a poor person whom I saw on the street, or near a temple where I was taking photographs?  “Then don’t zoom in on them,” was the answer.

The core principle is respect, privacy and dignity.  I don’t buy that the portrayal of victims, whether actual or made-up, is the right way to go.

Anyone have any thoughts on the issue?

• For more: The Ugly tourists and the Prostitute
• Or read: Culture and the way NGOs are run
• About the author – Duncan Stuart

 

 

Teen sex in Cambodia – a challenge to local standards

Nightclub – Phnom Penh.

Cambodia is a very conservative nation when it comes to teen-sex; and that is quite amazing when you consider the sheer youth of the nation. In the West a series of sexual revolutions took place when the post-war generation hit their teenage years around a time we conveniently refer to as Woodstock. Teen-sex, or extra-marital sex became normalised, and one usually explains that in terms of demographics, the boom in numbers of teenagers, the media and increasing media freedom – as well as a drift away from formal religion. Economic and transport freedom – teenage ownership of cars – further loosened the strict standards that may have been laid down by a previous generation.

In Cambodia the underlying recipe is the same, but on steroids. An exploding population of teenagers, a conspicuous rise in transport freedom and nightclub venues aimed at young singles, the rise of western-styled media – all must be straining the Buddhist standards that remained intact despite the experiment conducted by Pol Pot to shut down the influence of family and of religion.

I first considered this dynamic when I visited, strangely enough, a crematorium in Bakong, back in 2007.  The pillars of the main structure were painted by monks who had depicted in their mural the cycle of life: on one pillar, infancy. On the next, childhood and the school years. And so on, until the last pillar which depicted old age. It was a piquant elegy about life and death, as poetic as any scripture.

But what caught my eye was a piece of graffiti, written in English on the pillar depicting a young man and woman in love. “I miss you,” it said. “I miss you so much.”

Who had written this? Surely this was the message from a young person: who else would write in English, a private language in the traditional Bakong village neighbourhood? A boyfriend, perhaps, had died. Or a girlfriend. The ache of that graffiti message was palpable. A last farewell at a crematorium. A plea through the gates to eternity.

Is teenage love common I wondered.  Are there millions of Romeo & Juliet stories being played out in towns and villages throughout Cambodia?  Does society frown on teenage love?

Recently I saw some figures from the official, Government sanctioned Demographic & Health Survey which is an amazingly comprehensive public health document. In it are the figures for median age for first intercourse – for females and for males.

The median is the age by which 50% have had sex, and for women age 25-29 their median age of first intercourse was 21.4 years. It is almost 21 in the rural areas, and closer to 24 in the big cities.

This age is more or less steady compared to the median age reported by women 30-34 (20.9)  or 35-39 (20.3) or 40-44 (19.9) or 45-49 (20.6 years.)  It varies slightly with regard to educational attainment or wealth level.  Those with a low education for example, report having has first sex around 2.6 years earlier.

For men the figues are more or less the same though generally 6 months later than females. Age 22 is the median age for first sex.

Another measure: at age 19, some 83% of females have never had intercourse and at that age 93% of males have not had sex.

In the USA, by contrast; and here I lift directly from Wikipedia:

According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), in the year 2007, 35% of US high school students were currently sexually active and 47.8% of US high school students reported having had sexual intercourse. This percentage has decreased slightly since 1991.

My country, New Zealand has an unenviable record for teen pregnancy which is regularly cited has the highest incidence in the world. The NZ online Encyclopaedia Te Ara reports figures from 2001 and seems quite pleased that ‘less than 20% of 13-year-olds’ have had sex.  That’s a figure that would make Cambodians shake their heads in dismay.

Since the late 1960s most New Zealanders have had their first sexual experience during their teens and outside marriage.

Perceptions that teenagers are having sex earlier and earlier, and that more of them are doing so, are unfounded. In 2001 less than 20% of 13-year-olds reported that they had had sex. The likelihood of sex rose with age, and about 50% of those aged 17 and over reported having sex.

Compared to Western figures, young Cambodians are relatively chaste. However there is concern that this picture is volatile, and with more blatant sexualised media, and more teen freedom (money and motorbikes) not to mention the changing social architecture thanks to mobile phones and social media: these are the seeds of a big change ahead.

These issues are of concern to directors of NGOs that educate and care for students. My friend Savong has recently published an updated ‘rules of behaviour’ for students under the care of his organization. Savong makes it quite clear that students need to refrain from forming girlfriend/boyfriend relationships that derail the students’ progress through to higher education.

If you find my articles interesting, please feel welcome to Follow this blog by pressing the blue button up near the top left.

For an article on child labour in Cambodia, click here

 

 

 

 

 

 

280 Jailed Kids – Cambodia

The story about my visit to a friend in prison hit a nerve I think, because several people told me their stories of Cambodians who have ended up in prison, serving long sentences either for minor offenses (like my friend) or for totally trumped-up charges.

One organisation that works in this arena is LICADHO – the Cambodian League for the Promotion and Defense of Human Rights. They have their work cut out for them. They monitor 18 prisons and their reports show that, inside prison walls, life is dominated by corruption.

As they say: “There is a price tag attached to every amenity imaginable, from sleeping space to recreation time. Those who can’t afford to pay are forced to endure the most squalid conditions.”

For the past 20 years, on International Human Rights Day, LICADHO has provided small packages of extra food to the prison population and entertainment such as games, traditional dancing and shows performed by the prisoners themselves as well as speeches on the importance and universality of fundamental human rights.

What we do

LICADHO believes that regular visits by prison researchers deter abuses in prison and make it easier for LICADHO to intervene when they do occur. LICADHO’s prison activities include:

• Interview incoming pretrial detainees to ensure that they have legal representation and can communicate with their families
• Check for violations of pretrial detainees’ rights, such as illegal arrests and excessive pretrial detention/li>
• Monitor the actions of court and prison officials to ensure that the legal process is conducted properly/li>
• Assist families in visiting their relatives in prison and provide assistance in avoiding corruption/li>
• Provide legal assistance, advice and support to prisoners who have suffered human rights abuses in prison or in police custody/li>
• Work with prison and court authorities to ensure the timely release of convicted prisoners who complete their sentences/li>
• Distribute food and materials to prisoners/li>
• Provide medical treatment for prisoners and prison staff (provided by LICADHO’s Medical Office)/li>

LICADHO’s prison researchers also monitor living conditions in the prisons, looking at issues such as the quality of food, water, sanitation, the size and cleanliness of living areas, and exercise for prisoners outside of their cells. Information about prison conditions and any violations of prisoners’ rights are compiled for LICADHO reports and used for other advocacy purposes.

LICADHO is currently the only NGO in Cambodia with access to prisons that regularly shares its findings with the public.

They have a particular focus on basic human rights, (food, education, health,) as well as a determination to improve the lot of children who are either in prison on charges (sometimes streets are ‘swept’ of beggars) or are children of adults who have been incarcerated.

At the end of April 2014 there were a total of 280 juvenile prisoners incarcerated in the 18 prisons monitored by LICADHO, a more than 50 percent drop in the juvenile prison population since 2011. In addition there were 13 pregnant women and 40 children living with their incarcerated mothers.

Their research into prisons does not make easy reading when you know somebody who is stuck inside a Cambodian jail.  One guy who contacted me talked about a conversation he’d had with a prison guard who admitted, more or less, to beating-up prisoners. His rationale: “we want prison life to be less attractive than life in poverty outside of prison.”

For more on LICADHO’s Prison Project read PRISON PROJECT.

Also Caritas Cambodia and education-based NGO This Life Cambodia run positive programs assisting prisoners and their families. These are well worth checking out and supporting.

If you find my blogs at all interesting please feel welcome to press the FOLLOW button at the top left. I write as a supporter of Savong’s School in Bakong, but my topics of interest spread right out to education in general as well as to the arts and life in Cambodia in general. I try to write well-researched pieces and provide links where I can.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cambodia’s balancing act on bicycles

New bicycle!

Bicycles are the most common form of transport in Cambodia and yet there aren’t enough of them. When the photo above was taken, in late 2005, the boy had been the victim of a cycle theft; a first at Savong’s School. The thief had waited until class was in, and then helped himself to one of the many parked bicycles. The victim was distraught and it was not a good event for the brand new school’s reputation. We made good by promptly replacing the boy’s bicycle with a new one – and we placed the students’ bicycles under guard from then on. None have gone missing since.

But bicycle thefts are common in Cambodia, a signifier of the poverty that still plagues the country, as well as the thirst, especially, for new generation mountain bikes with their virtually puncture-proof tyres and sophisticated Shimano gears. One Facebook friend of mine lost his within 60 seconds after stopping at a roadside stall. He turned around and his Giant bicycle was gone.

As anyone who has ridden one knows, bicycles represent freedom. You can sail a bicycle further than you can comfortably walk, and it is the provision of bicycles that makes the difference for children in poor, remote areas between attending  school and missing out school completely.

Not surprisingly then, a large number of charitable organisations are dedicated to providing bicycles for disadvantaged Cambodian children.These include:

• Bikes 4 Life – Cambodian Children’s Fund
• Bicycles for Cambodian Kids (Korean initiative.)
• Bikes for Cambodia – South East Asian Prayer Center

Readers are invited to add others – there are many such initiatives.

The irony is, while we collectively buy new bikes, or gather and recondition used bikes from the west, and send these by container to Cambodia, the Kingdom is probably flooding your market and mine with bicycles made, actually, in Cambodia.

Cambodia is one of the five biggest bicycle exporters

These Cambodian made bicycles are selling fast in Europe where sales have climbed from 200,000 units per annum to more than 600,000 units (estimated) in just three short years. Cambodia is now the second biggest exporter of cycles into Europe now, behind only Taiwan.

Today, several Taiwanese-owned bicycle manufacturers are operating in Cambodia. They include Atlantic Cycle and its subsidiary A&J, who have operated in Cambodia since 2006, as well as relative newcomers Smart Tech (Cambodia) and Worldtec Cycles (Cambodia). The manufacturers are located in Svay Rieng province, near the Vietnamese border enabling components to be imported from Vietnam, and finished product ready for export across the border.

More recently the well regarded manufacturer of Specialized bicycles has also begun assembly in Cambodia.

To put things into perspective, here is the league table of global bicycle exports, as tracked by Daniel Workman, the founder of World’s Top Exports (WTEx) website: a great analysis of world trade patterns. Below are the 15 countries that exported the highest dollar value worth of bicycles during 2013:

1. China: $3,189,787,000 (34.1% of total bicycle exports)
2. Taiwan: $1,749,182,000 (18.7%)
3. Netherlands: $669,720,000 (7.2%)
4. Germany: $560,742,000 (6.0%)
5. Cambodia: $437,076,000 (4.7%)
6. Belgium: $275,488,000 (2.9%)
7. Italy: $254,054,000 (2.7%)
8. Spain: $185,760,000 (2.0%)
9. Portugal: $173,618,000 (1.9%)
10. Indonesia: $140,457,000 (1.5%)
11. France: $139,044,000 (1.5%)
12. Hungary: $137,902,000 (1.5%)
13. United States: $125,300,000 (1.3%)
14. Czech Republic: $118,654,000 (1.3%)
15. Bulgaria: $115,392,000 (1.2%)

That was 2013, and exports have jumped since then.

Three reasons why Cambodia is the hot nation for bicycles

Why all this action? The answer is based on three things: cheap labour, anti-dumping moves against Chinese and Vietnamese manufacturers, and zero-tariffs for Cambodian sourced bikes into EU.

It is most probably the anti-dumping sentiment in Europe that kick started the growth of Cambodian cycle manufacturing. In Europe there was a concerted response to Chinese and Vietnamese made bikes that were flooding the market and threatening to damage, if not destroy the local bicycle manufacturing industry. Some manufacturers got round this by simply moving. their assembly factories from Vietnam to Cambodia

Besides labour costs in Cambodia are significantly lower than in neighbouring Vietnam and Thailand, which has also seen an out-migration of cycle manufacturing. With factory workers earning little more than $US65.00 for a 6 day week of full-time work, and the promise of fast-track approval by Government to remove any business red-tape, Cambodia has become attractive as an assembly point for bicycle manufacturers.

But here’s the clincher. Where bicycles from China or Taiwan or Thailand attract a 14% tariff in the lucrative EU market, Cambodian bicycles attract zero tariff.

The zero tariff goes back to an UNCTAD (United Nations Conference for Trade And Development) initiative, adopted by the EU, to encourage economic development amongst the world’s poorest nations (the so-called GSP List) by cutting tariffs.

According to the website of UNCTAD the scheme helps foster growth and job creation in developing countries. But according to the UNCTAD website the brakes may be coming on. Europe is likely to apply “cumulation” criteria to all bicycle imports. Put simply, if the parts are made in wealthier countries, and all Cambodia does is assemble these into bicycles, then the free tariff ride may be over.

Will the local cycle industry be big enough and resilient enough if this happens? And will the factory workers – whose conditions have been overshadowed by the garment workers case – get more than a living wage?

And does it make any sense to export bikes to a country that accounts for 5% of global cycle exports?

The answers, as usual in this complicated country, are not simple. The outcomes seldom fair.