Cambodian Children's Fund -- Images

As a followup to Jacquie's post about the Cambodian Children's Fund, we thought we'd provide a little imagery.

Cambodian Children's Fund

Today we met with the incredible group of people at the Cambodian Children’s Fund (CCF). This organization serves children who are found scavenging in Phnom Penh’s landfills and dumps for their livelihoods. It takes them out of the landfills and offers them medical care, education, vocational training, song and dance classes and most importantly housing at their three CCF facilities throughout the city. The children here range from infants to 18 year of age and arrive having suffered disease, malnutrition, abandonment and a number of other heartbreaking conditions.

CCF’s incredible work is epitomized in the lively persona of their founder- Scott Neeson, who left his career as President of 20th Century Fox and Sony Pictures’ to move to Cambodia and start this organization. Neeson visited Cambodia in 2004 and after seeing the conditions of the city’s landfills and dumpsites; he quit his job, sold off his cars and houses and moved to Cambodia fulltime to start CCF.

The beautiful children we met today greeted us with hugs and songs and spent time engaging us in conversations in order to practice their impressive English skills. We were all really moved by the work being done in Cambodia by people like Neeson and his organization. This beautiful country and its courageous people continue to amaze us at every turn.

Civil Party Challenges

One of the more unique aspects of the ECCC is the Civil Party (CP) process, which offers great opportunity for victim participation but also immense practical and procedural implementation issues for the Court. One of our goals is to determine what are the next steps for the Cambodian American diaspora who applied for CP status. CP applicants are represented by both international and national (Cambodian) counsel in court, and are grouped together based on location or subject matter jurisdiction. One practical challenge we need to handle is how to find the right lawyers, who understand the Cambodian American community and can be responsive to its needs. With over 3,000 potential Civil Parties in Case 2, an essential question we have been asking is how to balance fairness, efficiency, and empowerment of victims within the trial context.

Our meetings really illuminated the specific practical and procedural problems that CP status has created. In the first case, there were four civil party groups represented by eight lawyers total, as well as two prosecutors. Questions of equity, due process and efficiency arose as the defense was at times essentially facing five different “prosecution” teams who could be focusing on different charges and presenting varied arguments. Likewise, each witness could be questioned by each individual team of lawyers. Furthermore, there is the looming potential for conflicts when you have one lawyer representing many (often hundreds) of clients with a myriad of crimes suffered. There are also practical questions of how well versed a CP lawyer can be when dealing with such a larger volume of cases, especially when the lawyers may not be engaged on the ground level full time or have longer than a few hours maximum to spend with each client.

We also have a much better understanding of the future of the civil party process in Case 2. The Court will almost certainly decide to limit civil party representation on a day-to-day basis to two lead civil party counsel. These two lawyers will essentially coordinate and represent all the civil party lawyers on a daily basis. If individual CP attorneys feel that it is imperative for them to be in court a certain day, they can submit a specific request to the court. This proposal will limit the number of attorneys in court, the diverging strategies and arguments presented, and the length of the trial to a much more manageable number. There is still the fundamental question of legal voice and adequacy of collective representation before the court, but what is essential is that we find a way to ensure the Cambodian American communities are being represented and heard within whatever Civil party process the court implements.

Victim's Participation- Next Steps

After our visit today to the ECCC, we left with a new sense of optimism as well as a clearer understanding of the direction we should be taking in order to continue to assist the Cambodian diaspora community in the U.S.

At times, assisting their needs and the responsibility we feel to ensure that their voices are heard has been a very daunting task. However, after meeting today with people from the office of the Defense, the Prosecutors office and the Victim’s Unit, we feel that their stories are in the hands of people that are both capable and motivated to ensure that justice is done.

As representatives of the largest submission of expat Cambodians living outside of Cambodia, we serve as both their liaisons to the ECCC, and as representatives who can interpret the undertaking and decisions of the court itself. Our avenue of communication to the victims is essential. To the courageous Cambodians who submitted their stories to the court in order to participate in this very unique process of international justice, we hope to continue to assist you as we gain a better understanding of the court itself as well as the needs of your community.

We can serve as conduits of information to the Cambodian community in the U.S. and ensure they receive accurate and truthful information regarding their role in the ECCC as well as ensure that they receive civil representation in the court and remain active throughout the process.

On the way back from the ECCC, we stopped briefly at Choeung Ek, the Killing Fields, a series of mass graves in which over 15,000 victims of the Khmer Rouge regime were buried. Interestingly, this is one of the first memorials to the victims of the Khmer Rouge regime that we've seen throughout our visit.