Preventing future human rights abuses: whose responsibility?
Thun Saray (November 1998)
The 1991 political settlement envisaged a joint effort by Cambodians and the international community to protect human rights following UNTAC’s departure. In practice, however, the Cambodian legal system lacks the capacity or independence to work effectively while the international community lacks an official mandate to take vigorous action where required. Though Article 3 of this agreement commits the international community to help prevent a ‘recurrence of human rights abuses’ in Cambodia, this responsibility is effectively diluted by Article 2, which demands that it ‘refrain from interference in any form ... in the internal affairs of Cambodia’.
Impunity institutionalized
This agreement called for the United Nations to monitor the human rights situation closely in Cambodia as well as to appoint a Special Rapporteur to assist in this task and report back to the Commission and the General Assembly annually. Working hand in hand with local human rights NGOs, the Cambodian office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCHR) and the Special Rapporteur have played a key role in recent years in highlighting persisting human rights abuses, a fact illustrated by government calls on various occasions to have the local UNHCHR office closed down.
Human rights successes during the 1993-97 period were nonetheless mixed and partial, and recent events illustrate that a culture of impunity has again been institutionalized in Cambodia. No action has been taken to punish those guilty of the March 1997 massacre of public demonstrators in front of the National Assembly or the executions of some 40 of Prince Ranariddh’s military advisers following his July overthrow. Despite detailed findings on these and a wide range of other human rights abuses by Thomas Hammarberg, the Special Rapporteur, no effective mechanism exists within the UN to translate them into strong international action.
Limits of external influence
External influence — be it direct political pressure by countries or international public opinion expressed through NGOs such as Amnesty International — will continue to face limits in preventing human rights abuses in Cambodia due to this inability of outsiders to interfere in the country’s internal affairs. One consequence has been recent interest within the international community in trying Khmer Rouge leaders guilty of gross abuses of human rights, outside the country. Without a doubt, such a trial would send a strong message of moral support to the Cambodian people as well as putting current perpetrators of human rights abuses on their guard.
However, the key question is how such a trial would, if conducted overseas, link into the development of a local capacity and will to try past and present war crimes, and effectively deter those in the future. Although there exists a general consensus in Cambodia on the need to try senior Khmer Rouge leaders, their crimes against humanity cannot easily be dissociated from those committed more recently. Moreover, given the extreme volatility of international support for such a trial, it is perhaps the case that more efforts should be made to see justice served in Cambodia, by Cambodians.
The importance of local capacity
Despite their small successes in collaboration with the UNHCHR, Cambodia’s human rights organizations still lack official clout. Their activities are further hampered by a weak and politicised judiciary and inadequate legislation protecting their rights to conduct human rights education and to monitor the current situation. In this context, the establishment of a National Human Rights Commission, with a mandate to investigate human rights abuses and to provide the information needed for the courts to prosecute offenders, has been suggested as a way forward to tackle human rights abuses more effectively.
Making the Commission independent (accountable to the King), strong and impartial would nonetheless be difficult, and would require both a constitutional provision to legitimize its activities and concurrent reform of the judiciary and police. Until these conditions are met, such a commission would be dependent on strong support from the international community. Should the government seek to use the establishment of a National Commission as justification for closing down the UNHCHR office, for example, this would need to be strongly resisted.
Cambodia’s present culture of impunity is the greatest barrier to the consolidation of its peace. Tackling it is a long-term challenge which the international community can do much to support. Without a doubt, however, the most meaningful measure of progress will be the degree to which Cambodian society gains awareness of human rights and its institutions are enabled to exercise effectively a mandate to protect them.