The World Report on Disability
The Cambodian Context
5-6 December 2011, The University of Sydney, Australia
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What is CIDI?
 Cambodia Initiative for Disability
Inclusion
 Funded by AusAID, managed by ARC
 Network of +/- 60 diverse partners
from Govt. NGO, DPO, CRC, self help
groups and federations
 Focus on: education, accessibility,
socio-economic reintegration,
psychological support, rehabilitation,
prevention, women with disability,
capacity development,
mainstreaming
Our journey to Sydney
 Discussions on the WRD on the CIDI e-forum
 CIDI partner meeting to discuss the WRD and what it
means to us in Cambodia
 Application to present to wider audience at Sydney
 Selection of partners from a wide cross section of the
partner network representing Government - MoSVY,
Disability Action Council, Cambodian Red Cross,
Disabled Peoples Organization (CDPO) and NGOs (CT)
Overview of disability context in Cambodia
 Statistics vary considerably
highlighting lack of common
classification
 People who lived through the
Khmer Rouge regime suffer from a
deep trauma.
 Cambodia has developed lots of
legislations, policies, a national
plan of action and other
frameworks for supporting people
with disability, but with limited
implementation
 Prolonged wars - Cambodia has
high rates of landmine and ERW
survivors
Overview of disability context in Cambodia
 Receiving an acid attack is often perceived as their own
fault
 Causes of disability differ over the past decades
 Improving disability movement (changes in
understanding and legal enforcement)
 Normalised presence of disability in villages due to the
war
 Traffic incidents. Rise of cars – but lack of road
awareness means that Cambodia has highest rate of
death and injuries in the region.
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Overview of disability context in Cambodia
 Disability often associated with aging
populations – not so in Cambodia –
young population
 Cambodian belief that disability is a
“Karma” from previous life
 Not allowed to be become monks –
impact on right- based approaches
 Chbab Srey & Chbab Bros –
traditional norms on gender
 ‘Magic child’ and ‘crazy pigs’ – society
attitude to intellectual impairment
Recommendations
 Improved communication and
facilitation skills
 Research and communication
process should be empowering
 Consolidate work on classification
and data on disability
 More research needed on:
 socio-religious and cultural
aspects
 mental health and belief in the
spirit world
 gender and power within the
disability field
 the links between poverty and
disability
Recommendations
 More research and development of
practical tools into the inclusion of
PWDs in emergencies
 Investigation into how to break the
cycle of self stigma and lead to
more independent living and better
quality of life
 More study into innovative small
business development and new
appropriate technologies (e.g for
agricultural production) - we can’t
all raise chickens!
 Evidence base linking economic
empowerment and improvement in
the lives of PWDs – what
approaches are most effective for
our context?
Recommendations
 Improve national organizations
or councils to provide psychosocial support and counseling to
persons with disabilities
especially at rural areas.
 Work need to be done on
 Developing a standard
curriculum for children and
youth with intellectual
impairment
 Standard sign language
(Khmer and American
language)
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I am good at Khmer literature and I
want to be a writer in the future
Thank you !