Joint Statement Urging World Bank Action on Cambodian Civil Society Reprisals
We, the undersigned organizations, call upon World Bank President Ajay Banga to
condemn the Cambodian government`s assault on human rights groups, including
reprisals against World Bank project stakeholders.
In recent months, there has been a worrying escalation in the Cambodian government’s
repression of critical voices. This has included attacks on two prominent human rights
groups, Center for Alliance of Labor and Human Rights (CENTRAL) and Equitable
Cambodia. In both cases, the reprisals are linked to the groups’ legitimate human rights
activities and, in particular, to their efforts to ensure human and labor rights protections
in projects supported by the World Bank Group.
We call on World Bank Group leadership to demand that these attacks be stopped and
to use its leverage, consistent with its Position Statement on Retaliation against Civil
Society and Project Stakeholders, to ensure human rights defenders and civil society
organizations in the country can continue their work without facing further reprisals.
Attack on leading labor watchdog
CENTRAL is one of Cambodia’s leading labor rights organizations. On June 28, 2024,
the Ministry of Interior requested that the National Audit Authority of Cambodia (NAA)
conduct an audit of CENTRAL and a “national security” audit was launched on July 15,
2024. The audit request came just weeks after CENTRAL published a report assessing
the effectiveness of Better Factories Cambodia (BFC), a joint program between the
International Labor Organization (ILO) and the International Finance Corporation (IFC)
of the World Bank aimed at improving working conditions in the garment sector by
assessing the compliance of 660 participating factories with international labor
standards. CENTRAL’s report found evidence that BFC was failing to identify freedom
of association violations in participating factories and made several recommendations to
improve BFC’s program, including by making their compliance reports available to
workers and providing a grievance mechanism to allow workers to contest its findings.
The decision to launch a national security audit was preceded by escalating actions by
government-aligned unions, including protests outside CENTRAL’s offices, legal
complaints against CENTRAL’s staff, and petitions to the Cambodian government to
investigate CENTRAL. The audit, which is clearly a response to CENTRAL’s report on
the BFC project, has been roundly condemned by the American Apparel and Footwear
Association and the Fair Labor Association (representing the apparel brands that source
from Cambodia’s factories), United Nations Special Rapporteurs, and national and
international civil society organizations. The ILO and IFC have yet to comment.
Attack on leading development watchdog
Eang Vuthy, Executive Director of the Cambodian land rights NGO Equitable Cambodia
(EC), is facing baseless criminal charges due to his organization’s advocacy on behalf
of communities affected by harmful development projects. At the end of March 2024,
Mr. Eang received a summons informing him that he had been charged with Incitement
to Commit a Felony or Disturb Social Security—punishable by up to two years in
prison—and ordered to appear before an investigating judge at Phnom Penh Capital
Court for questioning on 4 April 2024.
Since 2012, Equitable Cambodia has played a key role in helping communities seek
redress for human rights abuses caused by large-scale development and private
investment projects—including several World Bank-backed projects—through strategic
advocacy and litigation. As a result, the organization and Mr. Eang has faced years-long
attacks and judicial harassment, including a defamation charge against him in August
2016 and a six-month-long suspension of the organization in 2017.
The latest criminal complaint against Mr. Eang, filed by the Ministry of Interior, is the
most serious attack so far. Moreover, the charges concern Equitable Cambodia’s
legitimate activities and day-to-day work supporting communities to file formal
complaints to international accountability mechanisms to seek recourse for harms that
they have suffered. These include a high-profile complaint regarding predatory lending
and human rights violations caused by microfinance institutions backed by the IFC. The
IFC’s Ombudsman was conducting its investigation mission on the case in March-April
2024, when Mr. Eang received his court summons notifying him that he had been
criminally charged. He has strong reason to believe that the charges are a reprisal for
this work.
A trial and conviction of Mr. Eang would set a dangerous precedent and would have
very serious and far-reaching consequences for civil society in Cambodia.
Cambodia’s closing civil society space
These attacks are part of a broader crackdown on civil society that must be stopped
before the last remaining democratic space in the country is closed.
In the years that followed the Paris Peace Agreements in 1991, which ended over two
decades of war and horrific atrocities in Cambodia, a vibrant civil society and free press
took hold and helped to advance a new era of democracy and human rights in the
Southeast Asian nation. This began to change with the adoption of highly restrictive
NGO and telecommunications laws in 2015. This was followed by a string of politically
motivated prosecutions of opposition party leaders and elected officials, trade unionists
and human rights defenders over the past decade, alongside the shutdown of over thirty
independent news organizations. Since Hun Manet became Prime Minister last year,
this crackdown on critical voices has escalated to target Cambodia’s leading
non-partisan human rights organizations.
While the Cambodian government has a history of repressing and jailing members of
the political opposition, the Ministry of Interior’s attempt to criminalize the otherwise
legal day-to-day work of registered human rights NGOs and their leaders represents a
new level of repression, that threatens the existence of all remaining independent NGOs
in Cambodia that provide critical support to the most vulnerable people in the country.
The World Bank Must Speak Out
There are numerous international institutions that provide development assistance to
Cambodia, and which have a responsibility to intervene in defense of Equitable
Cambodia and CENTRAL, but perhaps none more than the World Bank Group. That is
because the recent attacks are believed to be in retaliation for the organizations’ work
addressing World Bank programs.
In 2018, IFC adopted a Position Statement on Retaliation Against Civil Society and
Project Stakeholders, where it states that it does not tolerate any action by a client that
amounts to retaliation – including threats, intimidation, harassment, or violence –
against those who voice their opinion regarding the activities of IFC or its clients. In this
statement, the bank notes that “respect for human rights includes the ability of
stakeholders to engage freely with IFC and its clients.” In 2021 IFC also published a
“Good Practice Note for the Private Sector, Addressing the Risks of Retaliation Against
Project Stakeholders”, which outlines the steps that IFC’s clients should take to screen
for, prevent and address reprisals.
We call upon World Bank President Ajay Banga to make clear to the Cambodian
government that the Bank will enforce its policy of zero tolerance for retaliation. This
means a moratorium on new private sector investments in Cambodia until the legal
harassment of CENTRAL and Equitable Cambodia is stopped and its staff are able to
continue to freely engage in their legitimate human rights activities in support of
project-affected communities and workers.
Signed by:
Photo: Protesters demonstrating against the Cambodian Interior Ministry’s decision to investigate the Center for Alliance of Labor and Human Rights (CENTRAL) for a 4 June report the NGO issued about the Better Factories Cambodia program. Source: Center for Alliance of Labor and Human Rights.
| Themes |
| • ESC rights • International • Low income • National • Project management • Solidarity campaign |
