Exploring the link between mine action and transitional justice in Cambodia

ABSTRACT

This paper examines mine action in Cambodia and its implications for common conceptions of civil society and transitional justice. The complexities of past Cambodian conflicts and the strained state-civil society relationship at present have led to a complicated legacy of landmines. The collective harm Cambodian people have experienced also blurs the line between victimhood and perpetration of crime, further complicating transitional justice in the Cambodian context. Exploring the link between mine action and transitional justice in Cambodia reveals that civil society organisations involved in mine action are not separate from the state contrary to the common conceptualisation of civil society as autonomous. It also demonstrates that mine action is responding to more complex elements of Cambodian conflicts than the retributive model of transitional justice. The participatory approaches to mine action highlight local agency and active involvement, which are crucial in creating a civil society that encourages an empowered citizenry.

KEYWORDS:

• Cambodia
• mine action
• demining
• transitional justice
• civil society

Acknowledgments

The authors wish to acknowledge the assistance of Sam Oum of the CMAA, Edwin Faigmaine, UNDP-Cambodia Chief Technical Advisor/Mine Action Specialist, Fabio Oliva, UN Peace and Development Adviser in Cambodia, and William Morse of CSHD during the fieldwork in Cambodia.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Dahlia Simangan is an Assistant Professor at Hiroshima University's Graduate School for International Development and Cooperation (IDEC) and Network for Education and Research on Peace and Sustainability (NERPS). She is a former Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the United Nations University in Tokyo.

Rebecca Gidley teaches at the College of Asia and the Pacific at the Australian National University. She completed her PhD in 2017 with a thesis titled Illiberal Transitional Justice: The Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia.

Notes

1 ECCC, ‘Demographic Expert Report: Khmer Rouge Victims in Cambodia, April 1975-January 1979, A Critical Assessment of Major Estimates’, D140/1/1, September 30, 2009.

2 ERW consist of unexploded ordnance (UXO) and abandoned explosive ordnance (AXO). Landmines are not within the legal definition of ERW. UN, ‘Protocol V of the 1980 UN Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons’, Article 2.

3 UN Mine Action Service, ‘Cambodia: 2018 Summary Graphs’, Portfolio of Mine Action Projects, https://www.mineaction.org/en/portfolio-of-mine-action-projects (accessed March 2018).

4 Ibid.

5 Royal Government of Cambodia (RGC), ‘Request for an Extension of the Deadline for Completing the Destruction of Anti-personnel Mines in Mined Areas in Accordance with Article 5’, April 30, 2009, apminebanconvention.org/fileadmin/APMBC/clearing-mined-areas/art5_extensions/countries/Cambodia-ExtRequest-Received-11May2009.pdf.

6 RGC, National Mine Action Strategy (NMAS) 2018–2025 (Phnom Penh: CMAA, 2017), 1.

7 CMAA, ‘Cambodia Mine/ERW Victim Information System: Monthly Report for December 2017’, cmaa.gov.kh/en/report/cmvis-report-december-2017 (accessed July 2018).

8 RGC, NMAS, 1.

9 Sihanouk founded FUNCINPEC, the French acronym for the National United Front for an Independent, Neutral, Peaceful and Cooperative Cambodia. Despite FUNCINPEC obtaining the greatest number of votes, Sihanouk negotiated the post-election power-sharing arrangement after Hun Sen’s threat to destabilise the country. UNTAC endorsed the arrangement and completed its mission in September 1993.

10 Prior to the establishment of CMAC, the UN Advance Mission in Cambodia (UNAMIC), a precursor of UNTAC, started mine awareness programmes and mine clearance operations. Isolated and unregulated demining efforts started as early as 1979 along the Cambodian-Vietnamese border. RGC, ‘Request for an Extension’.

11 Land contamination was first estimated at 4544 square kilometres in 2002. The Cambodian government reported in May 2018 that 1691 square kilometres of land have been cleared since 1992. The section entitled ‘Clearing a Deadly Legacy’ provides more details.

12 GICHD, Linking Mine Action and Development: States Affected by Mines/ERW (Geneva: GICHD, November 2009); Ian Bannon, ‘Landmine Contamination: A Development Imperative’, World Bank: Social Development Notes 20 (October 2004).

13 GICHD, ‘Introduction to Mine Action’, gichd.org/what-is-mine-action/introduction-to-mine-action/#.WyB7ujMzbMI (accessed August 2018).

14 UN, ‘Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-personnel Mines and on their Destruction’, September 18, 1997.

15 Kristian Berg Harpviken, Ananda S. Millard, Kjell Erling Kjellman, and Bernt A. Skåra, ‘Measures for Mines: Approaches to Impact Assessment in Humanitarian Mine Action’, Third World Quarterly 24, no. 5 (2003): 889–908.

16 UN, ‘Convention on the Prohibition’, Article 6.3.

17 Kristian Berg Harpviken and Bernt A. Skåra, ‘Humanitarian Mine Action and Peace Building: Exploring the Relationship’, Third World Quarterly 24, no. 5 (2003): 809–22.

18 We were not granted interviews by the HALO Trust and MAG Cambodia despite several attempts in May 2018.

19 We were not able to join a CMAC demining unit due to interrupted communication amidst then upcoming July 2018 elections.

20 Charles Taylor, ‘Modes of Civil Society’, Public Culture 3, no. 1 (1990): 95–118.

21 Ibid., 117.

22 Ibid.

23 For the different conceptions of state-civil society relations, see Simone Chambers and Jeffrey Kopstein, ‘Civil Society and the State’, in The Oxford Handbook of Political Theory, eds. John S. Dryzek, Bonnie Honig, and Anne Phillips (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 363–81.

24 Neil Kritz, ed., Transitional Justice: How Emerging Democracies Reckon with Former Regimes, 3 vols. (Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace Press, 1995).

25 Ruti G. Teitel, ‘Transitional Justice Genealogy’, Harvard Human Rights Journal 16 (2003): 69; International Center for Transitional Justice, ‘What is Transitional Justice?’, ictj.org/about/transitional-justice (accessed November 2018).

26 See, for example, Meenakshi Gunguly, ‘Transitional Justice Efforts in Sri Lanka Fall Short’, Human Rights Watch, September 20, 2018, hrw.org/news/2018/09/20/transitional-justice-efforts-sri-lanka-fall-short.

27 Judith N. Shklar, Legalism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1964); Gary Jonathan Bass, Stay the Hand of Vengeance: The Politics of War Crimes Tribunals (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000).

28 David Backer, ‘Civil Society and Transitional Justice: Possibilities, Patterns and Prospects’, Journal of Human Rights 2, no. 3 (2003): 301.

29 The Timor-Leste Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation (CAVR), Chega! The Final Report of the Timor-Leste Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation (CAVR) (Jakarta: KPG in cooperation with STP-CAVR, 2013).

30 Olivera Simić and Zala Volčič, eds., Transitional Justice and Civil Society in the Balkans (New York: Springer, 2013).

31 See also, Teitel, ‘Transitional Justice Genealogy’, 69–94; Marlies Glasius, ed., The International Criminal Court: A Global Civil Society Achievement (London: Routledge, 2005); Paul Gready and Simon Robins, ‘Rethinking Civil Society and Transitional Justice: Lessons from Social Movement and “New” Civil Society’, The International Journal of Human Rights 21, no. 7 (2017): 956–75.

32 Eric Brahm, ‘Transitional Justice, Civil Society, and the Development of the Rule of Law in Post-conflict Societies’, International Journal of Not-for-Profit Law 9, no. 4 (2007): 62–3.

33 Backer, ‘Civil Society’, 301.

34 Martina Fischer, ‘Civil Society in Conflict Transformation: Strengths and Limitations’, in Advancing Conflict Transformation, eds. Beatrix Austin, Martina Fischer, and Hans J. Giessman (Opladen/Framington Hills: Barbara Budrich Publishers, 2011), 294; Brahm, ‘Transitional Justice’, 65.

35 Fischer, ‘Civil Society’, 305.

36 Naomi Roht-Arriaza, ‘Civil Society in Processes of Accountability’, in Post-Conflict Justice, ed. M. Cherif Bassiouni (New York: Transnational Publishers, 2002), 98.

37 Ibid.

38 Renée Jeffery, Lia Kent, and Joanne Wallis, ‘Reconceiving the Roles of Religious Civil Society Organizations in Transitional Justice: Evidence from the Solomon Islands, Timor-Leste and Bougainville’, International Journal of Transitional Justice 11, no. 3 (2017): 380, 384.

39 Zinaida Miller, ‘Effects of Invisibility: In Search of the “Economic” in Transitional Justice’, International Journal of Transitional Justice 2, no. 3 (2008): 266.

40 Jeffrey, Kent, and Wallis, ‘Reconceiving the Roles’, 389, 392.

41 Backer, ‘Civil Society’, 304.

42 Simone Chambers and Jeffrey Kopstein, ‘Civil Society and the State’, in The Oxford Handbook of Political Theory, eds. John S. Dryzek, Bonnie Honig, and Anne Phillips (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 366.

43 Ibid., 374.

44 Geoff Wood, ‘States without Citizens: The Problem of the Franchise State’, in NGOs, States, and Donors: Too Close for Comfort? eds. David Hulme and Michael Edwards (London: Macmillan Press, 1997), 79–83.

45 Sabeel Rahman, ‘Development, Democracy and the NGO Sector: Theory and Evidence from Bangladesh’, Journal of Developing Societies 22, no. 4 (2006): 451.

46 Melissa Curley, ‘Governing Civil Society in Cambodia: Implications of the NGO Law for the “Rule of Law”’, Asian Studies Review 42, no. 2 (2018): 262.

47 Jörn Dosch, ‘The Role of Civil Society in Cambodia’s Peace-Building Process’, Asian Survey 52, no. 6 (2012): 1070.

48 Ibid., 1068.

49 Paul Gready, ‘“You’re Either With Us or Against Us”: Civil Society and Policy Making in Post-Genocide Rwanda’, African Affairs 109, no. 437 (2010): 641.

50 Dosch, ‘The Role of Civil Society’, 1072.

51 Tom Fawthrop and Helen Jarvis, Getting Away with Genocide? Elusive Justice and the Khmer Rouge Tribunal (Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 2005).

52 John D. Ciorciari and Anne Heindel, Hybrid Justice: The Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2014).

53 Alexander Hinton, The Justice Façade: Trials of Transition in Cambodia (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018); Alexander Hinton, ‘Uncle San, Aunty Yan, and Outreach at the Khmer Rouge Tribunal’, in Genocide and Mass Atrocities in Asia: Legacies and Prevention, eds. Annie Pohlman and Deborah Mayersen (New York: Routledge, 2013), 86–98.

54 Kirsten Ainley, ‘Transitional Justice in Cambodia: The Coincidence of Power and Principle’, in Transitional Justice in the Asia-Pacific, eds. Renée Jeffery and Hun Joon Kim (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 125–56.

55 Rachel Killean, Victims, Atrocity and International Criminal Justice: Lessons from Cambodia (London: Routledge, 2018); Maria Elander, Figuring Victims in International Criminal Justice: The Case of the Khmer Rouge Tribunal (New York: Routledge, 2018).

56 Phuong Pham et al., So We Will Never Forget: A Population-based Survey on Attitudes About Social Reconstruction and the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (Human Rights Center, University of California, Berkeley, 2009), 34.

57 Ibid., 35.

58 Phuong Pham et al., After the First Trial: A Population-based Survey on Knowledge and Perception of Justice and the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (Human Rights Center: University of California Berkeley, 2011), 19.

59 Ibid.

60 Lucius Garvin, ‘Retributive and Distributive Justice’, The Journal of Philosophy 42, no. 10 (1945): 270–7.

61 Christoph Sperfeldt, ‘From the Margins of Internationalized Criminal Justice: Lessons Learned at the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia’, Journal of International Criminal Justice 11, no. 5 (2013): 1120.

62 Christoph Sperfeldt, ‘Cambodian Civil Society and the Khmer Rouge Tribunal’, International Journal of Transitional Justice 6, no. 1 (2012): 153, 154.

63 Emily Wight, ‘Gender-based Violence: Khmer Rouge Survivors Given a Platform’, Phnom Penh Post, January 24, 2014; George Wright and Sek Odom, ‘Study Details KR Abuse of Transgender People’, Cambodia Daily, March 3, 2015; Kasumi Nakagawa, Gender-based Violence Against Sexual Minorities During the Khmer Rouge Regime (Cambodian Defenders Project, 2015).

64 Mom Kunthear and Cassandra Yeap, ‘Words Help KR Survivors Heal’, Phnom Penh Post, May 4, 2012; Prak Thida and Tharum Bun, ‘Bright Idea: Peace Theatre’, Phnom Penh Post, May 19, 2010.

65 Dy Khamboly, A History of Democratic Kampuchea (1975–1979) (Phnom Penh: Documentation Center of Cambodia, 2007).

66 Dy Khamboly, personal interview, 25 February 2014, Phnom Penh.

67 Previous attempts to include Cambodia’s modern history had stumbled over how to represent the post-Khmer Rouge period. Pin Sisovann and Matt Reed, ‘Textbook Delay Reflects Sensitivity of Cambodia’s Recent History’, Cambodia Daily, March 23, 2002; Pin Sisovann, ‘Prime Minister Orders Recall of Textbooks’, Cambodia Daily, April 29, 2002.

68 Trial Chamber, ECCC, ‘Case 002/01 Judgement’, August 7, 2014, 597–622.

69 It is important to note at this point the Cambodian government’s tendency to sign international agreements without clear plans for implementing them. On countries with weak domestic institutions signing international agreements see, Oona Hathaway, ‘Why Do Countries Commit to Human Rights Treaties?’ The Journal of Conflict Resolution 51, no. 4 (2007): 588–621.

70 As of 2018 Cambodia retains 1429 anti-personnel mines for research development and training purposes. UN, ‘Cambodia’, apminebanconvention.org/states-parties-to-the-convention/cambodia/ (accessed August 2018).

71 Landmine and Cluster Munition Monitor, ‘Victim Assistance’, Landmine Monitor 2009, the-monitor.org/en-gb/reports/2009/landmine-monitor-2009/victim-assistance.aspx (accessed August 2018).

72 RGC, NMAS, 6.

73 For details, see aseanmineaction.org/.

74 These statistics were reported at the 2018 National Mine Action Conference.

75 CSHD deminers in Kampong Kdei village located around 60 kilometres south east of Siem Reap, personal interviews, May 2018.

76 As of 2018, 69,125 mine awareness sessions for 5.87 million Cambodians and surveys in 2485 villages with 23,500 persons with disabilities, including 5800 landmine/ERW victims, have been conducted since 1992. These data were presented at the 2018 National Mine Action Conference.

77 RGC, NMAS, 5. Ly Thuch, senior minister and vice-president of CMAA, clarified during the 2018 National Mine Action Conference that a mine-free Cambodia means a Cambodia clear of anti-tank and anti-personnel mines. For the country to be free of all UXOs by 2025, $190 million is needed and deminers have to clear 1000 square kilometres per year. The target aligns with the goal of the Maputo +15 declaration of completing the obligations under the Ottawa Treaty by 2025.

78 CMAA will develop a resource mobilisation strategy to source financial and in-kind support from the national budget, development partners, and philanthropic donations, but pledges from these sources remain unclear as of May 2018. RGC, NMAS, 27.

79 Staff of demining operators, personal interviews, May 2018, Phnom Penh.

80 Zsombor Peter and Aun Pheap, ‘Follow the Money’, Cambodia Daily, June 25, 2016.

81 Niem Chheng and Martin de Bourmont, ‘Less US Funding for UXO Clearing’, Phnom Penh Post, March 17, 2017.

82 The Cambodian government has spent a total of $160 million, and international donors have contributed $473 million to Cambodian mine action since 1992. This amount excludes equipment and vehicles, based on a presentation at the 2018 National Mine Action Conference.

83 Personal interview, 24 May 2018, Phnom Penh.

84 Phelim Kyne, ‘CMAC Scandals Prompt Management Purge’, Phnom Penh Post, August 6, 1999.

85 Michael L. Fleisher, Informal Village Demining in Cambodia: An Operational Study (Handicap International, 2005).

86 Elena Lesley, ‘Village Landmine Hunters Trigger Controversy’, Phnom Penh Post, May 20, 2005.

87 Andrew Nachemson, ‘Official’s Parallels Ignorant: Analysts’, Phnom Penh Post, April 20, 2017.

88 Vannarith Chheang, ‘Peacekeeping Contributor Profile: Cambodia’, Providing for Peacekeeping, last updated January 2014, providingforpeacekeeping.org/2014/04/03/contributor-profile-cambodia/.

89 Personal interview, 24 May 2018, Phnom Penh.

90 Seng Kimseang and Reuters, ‘Former KR Help in Mine Clearing’, Phnom Penh Post, October 20, 1995.

91 Meas Sokchea, ‘United States Donates $1.6 Million to CMAC’, Phnom Penh Post, June 1, 2018.

92 Human Rights Watch, ‘Cambodia: Onslaught on Media, Rights Groups’, August 25, 2017, hrw.org/news/2017/08/25/cambodia-onslaught-media-rights-groups.

93 Working with village deminers might be the start of community participation in Cambodian mine action. Chris Dammers, ‘Participatory Monitoring and Evaluation of Humanitarian Mine Action in Cambodia’, in Participatory Monitoring of Mine Action: Giving Voices to Citizens of Nicaragua, Mozambique and Cambodia, ed. Susan Willett (Geneva: UN Institute for Disarmament Research, 2003), 82.

94 Priority areas are productive land meant for farming and construction sites for education and health centres. Low priority areas are those with smaller residential populations.

95 Mol Roeup Seyha, Deputy Secretary General, CMAA, personal interview, 29 May 2018, Phnom Penh. Land release is the removal of threats from landmines/ERW through appropriate measures, such as technical and non-technical surveys, and clearance activities. GICHD, ‘Land Release’, gichd.org/topics/land-release/#.Wxysj1OFPeQ.

96 Aksel Steen-Nilsen, country director of NPA Cambodia, personal interview, 22 May 2018, Phnom Penh. For details, see npaid.org/Our-Work/Countries-we-work-in/Asia/Cambodia.

97 Ruth Bottomley and Chan Sambath, ‘Community Empowerment and Leadership in Cambodia’, Journal of Conventional Weapons Destructions 14, no. 2 (July 2010): 12.

98 Ibid., 11–16. According to a CMAC official (e-mail communication, July 2018) projects similar to CBMRR are still ongoing but we were not able to receive additional information.

99 Jeremy Webber, ‘Forms of Transitional Justice’, Nomos 51 (2012): 98–128.

100 Jon Elster, Local Justice: How Institutions Allocate Scarce Goods and Necessary Burdens (New York: Russel Sage Foundation, 1992).

101 Actors of distributive justice may act optimally on behalf of disadvantaged groups. Ibid. See also, Jon Elster, ‘The Empirical Study of Justice’, in Pluralism, Justice, and Equality, eds. David Miller and Michael Walzer (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995). Oxford Scholarship Online, 2003.

102 See Morton Deutsch, ‘Equity, Equality, and Need: What Determines Which Value Will Be Used as the Basis of Distributive Justice’, International Journal of Psychology 31, no. 3 (1975): 137–49.

103 RGC, NMAS, 6.

104 The discussion of CMAA’s victim assistance programmes is based on a presentation by Mao Bunnhath, Advisor and Director of Victim Assistance Department of CMAA, personal interview, 25 May 2018, Phnom Penh.

105 CMAC, ‘Achievements of the Program of Integrated Mine Action and Landmine Victim Assistance in the Kingdom of Cambodia, Phase I: January 2010-July 2013’, cmac.gov.kh/userfiles/file/Peace%20Building%20Phase%20I%20Achievement%20Jan%202010-Jul%202013.pdf.

106 Personal interview, 25 May 2018, Phnom Penh.

107 Field observation, 9 May 2018, Kampong Kdei; Cambodia Landmine Museum visit, 11 May 2018, Siem Reap.

108 Nic Dunlop, ‘Meet the 23-Year-Old Woman Clearing Mines from a War She Doesn’t Remember’, The Journal. ie, December 27, 2017, thejournal.ie/mines-cambodia-demining-diana-3735677-Dec2017/.

109 Field observation, 9 May 2018, Kampong Kdei.

110 See also Meghan Wallace, ‘Hero Profile: Aki Ra’, The Journal of ERW and Mine Action 14, no. 3 (2010): 1–3.

111 William Morse was inspired by Aki Ra’s story and permanently moved to Siem Reap from the United States. As the international project manager of CSHD he is the primary donor and responsible for finding new funding sources. Morse nominated Aki Ra for the 2010 CNN Hero.

112 Oum Phumro, deputy director general, CMAC, cited in Japan International Cooperation Agency, ‘JICA, Cambodia Help Demine Colombia’, May 1, 2017, jica.go.jp/english/news/field/2017/170501_01.html.

113 CMAC, ‘Demining and Development’, cmac.gov.kh/en/article/demining-and-development.html (accessed August 2018).

114 Harpviken and Skåra, ‘Humanitarian Mine Action’, 814.

115 Ibid., 817.

116 Miller, ‘Effects of Invisibility’, 285.

117 Michael Humphrey, The Politics of Atrocity and Reconciliation: From Terror to Trauma (New York: Routledge, 2002), 121.

118 Erica Bouris, Complex Political Victims (Bloomfield, CT: Kumarian Press, 2007).

119 Ruth Bottomley, ‘Balancing Risk: Village De-Mining in Cambodia’, Third World Quarterly 24, no. 5 (2003): 824.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) [Project Number: 17F17780].