Human Security For All: A Tribute to Sergio Vieira de Mello

Creating Local-Level Stability and Empowerment in Cambodia

Creating Local-Level Stability and Empowerment in Cambodia Roland Eng INTRODUCTION IT WAS IN a tiny jungle hut in Oddor Meanchey Province, along the ThaiCambodian border, that I first welcomed Sergio Vieira de Mello with a glass of coconut milk. In 1992, the two of us were working there to help repatriate over 300,000 refugees who had been living along the border for over 10 years. Our work was part of one of the largest United Nations missions in history, aimed at bringing democracy to Cambodia after decades of conflict. When I first met Sergio, I wondered whether I was speaking with the right person as he looked more like a movie star with his impeccable hairstyle and perfectly ironed safari suit—than a UN official . As we began exchanging views about the repatriation process in the afternoon heat, I soon discovered that I was working with a most unusual and remarkable man. Sergio held the love and admiration of all those who knew him. Through his dedicated work with local community members and leaders, he helped transform Cambodia from a country devastated by decades of conflict in the 1970s and 1980s, to a nation striving for democratic peace and stability. As the UN reflects on its ever-evolving role in our world and assesses how it can best assist nations that are transitioning toward democracy in a post-conflict, post-cold war, and post-September 11 world, it is important to understand how people such as Sergio Vieira de Mello helped everyday citizens and communities give life, ownership, and direction to these larger historical movements. While elections, democracy, and state sovereignty once symbolized peace and human security in our world, cahill.qxp 10/1/2004 1:36 PM Page 106 we now know that local level stability and empowerment are just as essential to keeping the peace. By examining the work of the UN in Cambodia , and in particular, its work at the local level, we can see how it provides us with a new model of what the quest for human security may mean in our globalized twenty-first century. HISTORICAL BACKGROUND In 1975, close to 2 million people died as a result of direct killings, disease , and starvation under the revolutionary Khmer Rouge regime as it attempted to turn Cambodia into an experimental, egalitarian society. Between 1975 and 1978 the country’s economic, political, and social systems collapsed, and basic services such as healthcare, education, as well as religion were lost. Money was outlawed, the family unit was dissolved, and village governance crumpled. The country fell into ruin. On Christmas day 1978, Vietnamese forces mounted a major offensive on several fronts and ousted the Khmer Rouge from Phnom Penh on 7 January 1979. Yet Radio Phnom-Penh continued to announce important military victories over the Vietnamese right up to 6 January 1979. Considered by China as a provocative action by Hanoi, at dawn on 17 February 1979, some 120,000 well-equipped Chinese troops crossed the border into northern Vietnam and seized control of several towns. These military actions further strengthened the Vietnamese alignment with the Soviet Union. Meanwhile, over 250,000 Cambodians fled into Thailand, hundreds of thousands wandered all over the interior looking for their loved ones, and famine surged throughout 1979 and 1980.While Cambodia began to recover under Vietnamese rule, times were still harsh as civil war continued to rock the land. The country became the territory for a proxy war between China, the USSR, and Vietnam. Cambodia was pitted against the United States and China and closely aligned with Vietnam and the Soviet Union. Vietnam ’s occupation of Cambodia, and later of Laos, represented a direct threat to the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN). Twelve years earlier security concerns and the threat of communism had forced ASEAN’s establishment. ASEAN, comprised of Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore, and the Philippines, began to galvanize support to CREATING LOCAL-LEVEL STABILITY AND EMPOWERMENT IN CAMBODIA 107 cahill.qxp 10/1/2004 1:36 PM Page 107 force Vietnam out of Cambodia in exchange for a comprehensive political settlement. All ASEAN members had to cope with domestic communist insurgencies. As a result of ASEAN’s dynamic lobby, the Cambodian issue was raised at the UN General Assembly. After five years of hardship and terror under Khmer Rouge rule, Cambodia, under Vietnamese occupation , was again treated as a pariah state and remained...