 We'll go ahead and get started, although we know people are still coming in from a very cold, blustery morning here in Washington. But welcome, everybody. My name is Nancy Lindborg. I'm the president of the U.S. Institute of Peace. And we're delighted to be able to host everybody here for a very important conversation. For those who haven't been to U.S. Institute of Peace before, we were founded in 1984 by Congress as an independent, federally funded institution dedicated to the proposition that peace is possible, that it is very practical, and it is essential for U.S. and international security. And so U.S. Institute of Peace pursues a vision of a world without violent conflict by working with partners around the world, individuals, organizations, governments, on what are the practical approaches, what are the tools, what's the training that you need to manage conflict so it doesn't become violent and to resolve it when it does. And so we're very happy to host today a conversation on a conflict that really galvanized the world at the time, the terrible killing fields in Cambodia, and the peace process that ended that war. What lessons do we learn from that? We're happy to have a distinguished set of panelists. And I know that there are many of you who are gathered here who have a deep association with the peace accords or with Cambodia, and we're especially honored to have with us here Mrs. Tilang Samura, who was joined us here, Mr. Sam Rainsey, and we also have the venerable Yohuot. Thank you all of you for joining and other colleagues who have traveled from Cambodia. And we've left a lot of room in the conversation this morning for people to join in with their thoughts, their questions, their observations. So I hope everyone will do so. It was just over, it was just 25 years ago in October that 19 governments gathered to sign the Paris peace accords, which were a comprehensive political settlement that laid out the process for ending two decades of the very brutal conflict that convulsed Cambodia. And under, we know that during that conflict under the Khmer Rouge, more than 1.7 million people lost their lives due to violence and famine. And it's interesting to look back and reflect on that as we see the terrible conflicts that are consuming the headlines today with similar numbers of and magnitude of suffering and difficulty in terms of resolving the conflicts. The Paris peace accords, and some of you here were involved with that, were the result of extensive negotiations with the world's powers involved, and it paved the way for the UN mission to supervise the ceasefire and launch a process of national reconciliation. So in the quarter decades since PPA, Cambodia has seen relative stability and economic growth. And it has definitely moved out of the poverty and famine that marked the two decades prior to the peace accords, now has one of the fastest growing economies in Asia, and a GDP that's growing more than 7 percent per year. So the conversation today is, is how has that quarter century of peace accord implementation worked? What lessons does it have for other conflicts? What can we learn in terms of the challenge of balancing stability and prosperity with human rights, with democracy, with reconciliation and justice, which are the critical issues when one is moving out of terrible conflict? I'm very happy that we have to moderate the panels today. Derek Mitchell, who knows these issues quite well, he is the former ambassador to Burma where I first met him, where he did an extraordinary job of navigating a quite different but equally complicated transition process. He is a senior advisor to USIP's Burma program, and a really interesting perspective on countries and transition, having spent much of his career in Southeast Asia, including working at NDI and CSIS and serving as a visiting fellow at Peking University School of International Studies. So I look forward to a very rich and informative conversation, and please join me in welcoming Ambassador Mitchell and the panelists. I will stay seated, I think, since I will be moderating. Let me first say thank you to Nancy. I think it's been six months since I've started as senior advisor here, and really the main reason I decided to come was because of Nancy Lindbergh. She does an absolutely outstanding job. She's an amazing leader, and someone who's inspirational. So I want to thank you, Nancy, for what you do for USIP and what you've created here that I've been able to take part in. Let me also acknowledge before we start the person who made this thing really possible, today's event, this morning's event, Laura McGrew. She is an independent peace builder, scholar, and practitioner. She helped plan the event, and will be writing up the conference report on the event, and where is Laura? There she is, way in the back. So thank you very much, Laura, for all your great work in doing this. I am particularly pleased. I look out here, and it's great to see Southeast Asia hands. Good to see Cambodia hands. This is a country, even among Asianists, and I've worked at think tanks and done a lot of Asia worker around town. This is a country that doesn't get enough attention. It doesn't get its due in Washington. It's why doing this here at USIP is so pleasing to me and so refreshing. And yet, in its day 25 years ago, which we were going to take a trip back 25 years, this was really one of the central defining countries of the Cold War, of the ending days of the Cold War. We were just talking earlier that if you went up to the hill 25, 30 years ago, you can get the leading congressman and senators talking about this issue, because all the major powers were involved. It was, unfortunately, sort of emblematic of how small countries were caught up in a tug of war of great power competition and suffered. Cambodia is really emblematic of the kind of tragedy of Cold War in Southeast Asia. Now, the end of the Cold War offered an opportunity for change as the Cold War ended. And that was what we're talking about here, which is a peace process that was 10 years in the making. And that opportunity was seized. It is the only peace accord in which all of the P5 members were invested, were explicitly supportive of. I don't know if we can get that again in today's world. Where all five P5 members can do that. It is unique and is also, I think, a unique responsibility of the great powers to deal with this. But of course, the end of the war was only the beginning of a very difficult peace. And we are going to look at that difficult peace later today. Of course, we have today the same leader that was in power in the 1980s. So you wonder how have things gone since the peace accords. But as we look back, we will take stock of the agreement. We will think about lessons learned, things that we can learn about other peace agreements and what went right, what went wrong, and see what we can do to help with peace accords to come. The one sad part about today, unfortunate part, is that we don't have Richard Solomon here. We want to have Richard Solomon, who is central to all of this. I think all of you will recognize the tremendous contribution that he made to East Asian affairs, as well as this specific issue of the peace accords. But he couldn't make it this morning, but our thoughts are with him, not here. But we do have three amazing individuals who are also involved in this process. First hand, people who are there at the site. And I'll go one by one. I'll just introduce Mark first. Mark Storella, he'll speak, and then I'll introduce Jim, and then on down the line. Mark Storella, he serves now as Deputy Assistant Secretary in the Bureau of Population, Refugees in Migration at the Department of State. He's been doing that just this year, I guess you started doing that. He was appointed DCM, Deputy Chief of Mission in Nampen in 2003, and as political officer in 1991 to 1994, and helped reestablish the U.S. presence in Cambodia after 17 years of absence. He worked in Paris from 1989 to 1991 and was a member of the U.S. delegation to the Paris Conference, and what I understand was at the entire conference. You really witnessed it. I missed the very end. Missed the very end. Missed the science ceremony. But it was right there to see everything as it was happening and as it was negotiated. So he can speak to what he saw in terms of the negotiations and the dynamics. So we'll start with Mark to provide us that perspective. Thank you very much, Mark. OK. Nancy Lindberg. Derek Mitchell. Lok Song. Adam. Lok Chom Thieu. Puma Chitzenut Chiecharan. Chie Ketiu Kapong Kapur. Minokat. Chemue Allok Lok Sarai. Tangai Ni. Samarabh Ka Prachom Ni. Om Pih Prawat Sat. Robah Sarok Kamai. Nung Siti Menuk Nuk Nung Sarok Kamai. Khunyom Sabai Chetna. Minokah Keenya Puma. Daibhan Tosu Samarabh Siti Menuk Nuk Nung Sarok Kamai. Thang Piuman Than Chippiset Thun Sarai. And Brad Adams is here. And Samoritulong, certainly. And Samran Si as well, and many others who are in this room today. So I just want to say it's really an honor to be able to be with people who have been fighting for human rights for a long time. Derek has really set the stage, I think, extremely well, which means I'm going to have to throw away some of this. But let me just say that one of the best books written about Cambodia was written by our friend Elizabeth Becker called When the War Was Over. And when we think about Cambodia and the scene when the Paris Accords were negotiated and signed, part of what was going on was that at the end of the Vietnam War in 1975, for the United States and for a lot of the world, people were tired. And they wanted to think the war was over. But everyone in Cambodia knows the war was not over. In some respects, the very worst was yet to come. The United States, in many respects, withdrew. But we knew what was going on in Cambodia. And it's important to note that George McGovern, senator, a peace dove on the Vietnam War, stood on the U.S. Senate floor back in the 1970s while the Khmer Rouge were committing genocide in Cambodia and said we should intervene here. But there was no support for it. The four factions were locked in war. And Cambodia, in many respects, was really frozen in time. As Derek said, at the end of the Cold War in 1989, there was a sense that things that were impossible before were suddenly possible. And the four factions that were fighting were, in many respects, exhausted. And the people of Cambodia were exhausted. They had suffered for so long. For the great powers, and it's very interesting that Derek mentions the role played by Dick Solomon, he was really at the center of corralling the Perm Five. Each of the Perm Five had an interest in seeing the war end. For the United States, we wanted to get behind supporting the CGDK, which included the Khmer Rouge at the United Nations, in their presence at the United Nations. And we wanted to reintegrate with Southeast Asia where we had strong interests. For the Soviet Union, which was in its last death row, in some respects, they were seeking an opportunity to be relevant and to try to support to the degree they could. I think Vietnam, more than anyone else. China was in a very difficult time then. The reforms under Deng Xiaoping had not fully taken hold yet. They were trying to get the economy to take off just before the opening of the Paris Accords. There had been the events in Tiananmen Square, and China was finding itself isolated and supporting as an ally the much-reviled Khmer Rouge, a very difficult position for China to enter the world in. France dedicated incredible energy and, I would say, tremendous intellect and creativity to supporting the Accords. I think they did it in part because of their long-time connections to the region and I think a hope to a degree that they could reestablish those connections. We all remember George Bush referring to the New World Order. So under the New World, things seemed like they were possible. The negotiations, which I spent two years doing, were amazing in many respects. Many of the people here were there at times. They were held in the Claiborne Center in Paris, a gorgeous palace for conferences that had also hosted the negotiations on Vietnam. And I remember going with someone named, I think his name was Monsieur Le Petit, who was in charge of managing the Claiborne Center. And he brought the American delegation with James Baker into the offices that they were giving us. And he turned to us with a smile and said, these were the offices the United States occupied for the Paris negotiations on Vietnam. So the French had a very strong sense of history. It was also the best catered negotiation in history. French offered lunches every day, which seemed so out of tune with what was going on when we were dealing with a country where many people were starving. But it did make for great conversation. There was incredible leadership, a fellow by the name of Claude Martin, who was the director for Asia in the Cade d'Orsay. He was succeeded by Jean-David Levit, equally genius Roland Dumas, the foreign minister of France, Ali Alitas of Indonesia, which showed that there really was a global approach to this negotiation. And over it all, Prince then Prince Sihanouk playing a role that truly only Prince Sihanouk could play in all of this. I saw many times that in the negotiations, each great power was pulling one of the factions along. We would have negotiations during the day and they would often go into the night. And then late at night, the U.S. delegation would walk out and frequently we would meet with the Republicans, with Sonsan's people. And the French would meet with Fonsan Peck and the Soviets would meet with PRK and the Chinese would go off and meet with the Khmer Rouge. And we each kept pulling towards the middle. To see what kinds of things were possible then, I remember in the opening of the Paris conference back in 1991, it was the first meeting between James Baker and Chinese Foreign Minister Chen Qichen since Chen Anmen. And obviously there was some stiffness in all of this. We hit a snag in the negotiations right away in terms of how the negotiations would be set up. And Dick Solomon went into the office with Jim Baker, explained to him what we were facing. And I saw Jim Baker stand up, walk over to the Chinese offices, put his arm around Chen Qichen's shoulder and walk out with him, offering him some jelly beans. The two of them talked, negotiated, and presented the conference with a solution that permitted us to go forward. As the negotiations went forward, there was always a sense of tragedy hanging over the talks. There was a vigil by venerables, monks, outside the Clay Bear Center that went on for almost two years, chanting and praying for peace. And everyone was aware, I think, that while the goal of the Paris Accords, first and foremost, was to restore peace in the region, that human rights was at the center and the abuse of human rights was at the center of the tragedy of Cambodian history and had to be dealt with. So the Accords contained a number of guarantees on human rights. And if you read them, which I did last night, they somehow seemed somewhat naive now looking at them. The Accords committed the Cambodians themselves to respect human rights. And they committed the international community, I'm gonna read what it said here, to promote and encourage respect for the observance of human rights and fundamental freedoms. But there was no enforcement mechanism. All there was was a connection to the UN Human Rights Commission and an opportunity for a special reporter. Other compromises took place. I think it was very courageous for the Chinese to agree that elections would be the way that this peace would come about, knowing that the Khmer Rouge were gonna do very poorly in those elections. Soviets must have worried about how Hun Sen's regime would do in those elections as well. The UNTAC mandate included, and we'll hear more about this, language on what kind of control UNTAC would have over the civil administration. And the language said direct supervision or control. For two years we debated what the word control meant. Was it control in the French sense of monitoring? Or was it control in the English sense of actually directing? That compromise never permitted UNTAC in a way to do what many of us going in thought that it should do and would do. And I would note that Yasushi Akashi, the special representative of the secretary general, always said, well, we are not an article six of the UN Charter peacekeeping operation. But in fact, the mandate for UNTAC was under article six, which means that the UN did not have the right to use force. He said it was article 6.5. That decision to put the mandate under article six instead of under article seven meant in some ways that UNTAC was very limited in what it could do to compel the parties to go along with the provisions of the peace accords. I don't want to take up too much time here, but I do want to say that there was a debate when the Khmer Rouge refused to go along with many of the provisions related to disarming and cantonment elements, military elements of the Paris Accords. There was a question of whether or not UNTAC would use force, and I think many people in this room knew General Anderson, the Australian general, who led the military component. He advocated for using force on behalf of the United Nations against the Khmer Rouge at that time, but it didn't happen for a variety of reasons, most importantly because of the nature of the mandate, which was a compromise. And one of the results of that was that UNTAC had to rely in many respects on the authorities of the PRK, the Linsen Regime's civil administration and Ministry of Interior and Ministry of Defense to maintain order. That's a difficult position, I think, for any peacekeeping operation to be in. But if you're under Article 6, that's part of what happens. We're going to go on and hear more, but I want to say just a couple of things about the legacy of the Paris Accords. And some of the lessons I see from it. One is we should not underestimate the importance of the Paris Accords and the success of the Paris Accords in ending a war that had caused incredible suffering, devastation, genocide, occupation for 17 years. That's an enormous achievement. And everyone who participated, I think, should feel good about that. As Derek said, Cambodia was reintegrated into the world. And there was an opportunity for openness, not just openness to commerce, although that was important, but openness to information, understanding the rest of the world, not feeling isolated, which I'm sure the Cambodian people felt very deeply and probably very painfully through those difficult years. The economic benefits were important, but I want to say one thing that's often overlooked is that 360,000 Cambodian refugees were repatriated safely from the camps in Thailand back into Cambodia in a process that was run by the most accomplished UN official of the time and maybe of recent times, Sergio Vieira de Mello. When we think about some of the challenges that we're facing right now with huge numbers of refugees in conflict situations, we should be looking to the Paris Accords and seeing what elements there made that return of refugees possible that might be copied. And finally, I would say that something I was deeply involved in myself and in fact my wife was also deeply involved in it was the support for the development of civil society and a press that could advocate on behalf of human rights inside Cambodia. That has been a struggle. You can just ask Tun Sirai about what kind of struggle it has been. He's not the only one, and I know four members of ad hoc are right now in prison, so it's remained a struggle. But I think that the Cambodian people who support human rights really look to the international community and ask, can you support us? What can you do for us under these circumstances? And in that, I'll just end by saying that the Paris Accords had a starting date, a date on which they went into force. There was no ending date. The Paris Accords are still in force, and the commitments of the different parties in those Accords still apply, including for the Cambodians, but also for the international community. So getting back to where Derek started, the United States and the international community should not take their eyes away from Cambodia. We should continue to work on this issue because the job is not done. Thank you. Thank you very much, Mark. That's a great way to frame everything and I think lay the foundation for a really interesting discussion later. Let me turn then to my good friend, James Shear, I worked with when I was at the DOD at the Pentagon in years past. He is now a global fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and a visiting professor at the Peacekeeping and Stability Operations Institute at the U.S. Army War College. As I say, he was Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Partnership Strategy and Stability Operations from 2009 to 2013. And as an advisor at the United Nations from 1989 to 94, he provided analytic support to the leadership of UN missions in Cambodia and former Yugoslavia, as well as assisted senior officials in shaping the implementation of the 1991 Gulf War ceasefire resolutions. He will speak, I think, for about 10 minutes on the, from the UNTAC perspective. You were involved much more in the implementation side, I guess, of things, but you can see how things were done implementation-wise after the accords were reached. So thank you. Thank you so much, Derek. And it is a tremendous pleasure to be here. It's a great honor to be here with esteemed Cambodian colleagues and as well many of you who bring years of experience and expertise into this room and into this discussion. Can I ask quickly how many UNTAC alumni are in the room? Raise your hand, please. All right, good. Excellent. My heartfelt thanks to you for your efforts to work on implementing the accord that Mark has described, how it was developed in tremendous detail. I wish I'd heard that about 20 years ago, actually. And a lot of it rings true in terms of how the great powers were working together occasionally to move this peace process forward, a truly historic moment in early post-Cold War history. So let me address retrospectively some of the challenges UNTAC faced. And I will say up front, I do not bring any deep expertise on Cambodia or Southeast Asia to this discussion. My expertise is more in the functional peacekeeping domain. And I am at the Army War College, so I will start by adding that my views here are purely personal and I hereby absolve any entities of the U.S. government from any association with my half-baked or contentious views. But the peacekeeping world was greatly enthused but greatly challenged by this opportunity to work in the furtherance of a very important agreement. Let me offer two retrospective insights and then very clearly, quickly, eight lessons, very quickly. Two insights. First insight to build on what Mark has already said. The conditions for a peace process at the time, the geopolitical conditions were very auspicious, very favorable. At the national level, there was a stalemated Civil War if Professor Bill Zartman were here. He'd say, yes, this fits into my model of a self-hurting stalemate. There was a lack of an internationally recognized government. Cambodia was largely isolated. I'd also add that the Khmer Rouge were clearly withering on the vine. That is not something that a lot of us who went in from the outside understood initially until we began to engage at local levels. I wonder if there are any members of Columbia's FARC rereading history on this. But their outer core of cadre were defecting. It was clear. They were losing support. The inner core around Pol Pot was still bare and still loyal. At the first meeting, or one of the first meetings of the Supreme National Council, the party head, Tu Sampan, showed up. And quite frankly, some of my colleagues were surprised he wasn't wearing a malice tunic suit. He was wearing a very nice Western suit, probably bought in Bangkok. And we were wondering, this is the ideological synacity of the KR maybe waning in some ways. So there was a loss of support and the whole terrible history that Cambodia suffered through during their rule and so forth was clearly a part of that. So that was the national piece, the regional piece. Yes, there were great powers working. I would also say there was growing interest regionally, given that all the neighboring states and largely the members of ASEAN were signatories to this agreement. And that played an important role. My immediate boss, the special representative Yasushi Akashi, Japanese, was chosen in part because his country, Japan, wanted to play his greater role in the region. I remember his first trip to Washington. He was very pleased that Secretary of State and Secretary James Baker was up on Capitol Hill saying we have to support this UN mission. We have to put our money where our mouth is and do it. And he explained that to then deputy Larry Eagleburger. Eagleburger's response to Mr. Akashi was, ah, sir, how do you translate that into Japanese? And Akashi smiled and said the response, the translation is no taxation without representation. Which fit in terms of security council membership, which Japan was seeking at the time. But it also, I think, bespeaks the growing role of Asian powers in the Southeast Asian region. Indonesia was certainly a player too and the immediate neighbors as well. So that was the regional piece. And as for the global piece, which has already been discussed, Soviet Union was collapsing basically two months after the accord was signed. Their proxies were leaving everywhere. Foreign forces were leaving. Contrast that to today's world where foreign forces are, in many cases, the real core problem. Vietnamese leaving Cambodia, Cubans leaving various parts of Africa, Soviets themselves having pulled out of Afghanistan a bit earlier. So it was, as I have sometimes called it, an era of constructive disengagement. And it opened the door for a generally consensus based security council at the time to work actively on peace and security problems. And in the midst of all that, the four major community factions I see saw the constructive pressures to stay inside the process, to work in an inclusive way rather than to be out in the cold, to be separate. And that's what led to the Paris Accords and all that followed. Insight number two, the implementation process did not live up to the huge expectations. And I would say also it ended up being very elections centric. And some of you who work as professionals in the peace building, peace transition process know the challenges of working with electoral pillars as the dominant ones. The key missions at UNTAC was an organization of 16,000 peacekeepers from over 30 countries and another 7,000 or 8,000 civilians, both police that came in from foreign countries as well as international and local civilian hires. Very large organization, slow to get on the ground, which was a big challenge, with a hugely significant but almost impossible to implement mandate. Verify the ceasefire, monitor the departure and non-return of foreign forces, although most of the Vietnamese forces had already left by then, prepare for and assist the Cambodians in conducting national elections, supervising control, and again that's absolutely right, the word control was nebulous, to ensure a neutral political environment for the elections. And I would say the leadership guidance was it's the neutral political environment that we are aspiring to achieve. All of these tasks and others were very, very challenging. And the process began to unroll, unravel frankly within weeks after the initial start. The KR, Kimi Rouge were the first to bolt, they shifted from a posture of cautious cooperation to passive boycott. We were hearing from their field commanders that they were actually ready to canton and disarm, but at a political level the representatives of the Supreme National Council and elsewhere complained that the Paris Accords were not being properly implemented, that the Vietnamese are still in country. And I think quite frankly looking back it may have been KR disappointment that the departure of Vietnamese and Soviet support did not lead to the state of Cambodia's collapse, to the Hun Sen regime's collapse. Whatever their motivations in the end, the impacts were twofold. First of all disarmament demobilization was essentially off the table. There were over 250, maybe 300,000 Cambodian fighters from the four factions, both the militia as well as government-based, maybe 70,000 as a consequence of voluntary contonement came in, but only several hundred Kimi Rouge fighters at the end of the day. So there was no disarmament, contonement, and reintegration. And as a consequence the state of Cambodia started to press hard back on civil administration oversight. I remember my first day we got access to the Cambodia Ministry of Defense. We walked through. It was vacant. No one was there. They had all been moved out by Hun Sen. They were somewhere else outside of Phnom Penh, not available to us. Thank you very much. Oversight, pressing back on oversight was a huge challenge. In spite of all this, in December of 1992 with untaxed recommendation, the Secretary General's support and Security Council support, the UN decided to press ahead with national elections. It was a very risky strategy. Premised on the calculation that the Kimi Rouge could be fenced in. They did not control a lot of territory. There were some contested territory, but of this 179 or almost 200 districts, only a small number were controlled by the Kimi Rouge. And I would say, and I would give John Sanderson, General Sanderson a great credit for this. He figured out ways to redeploy the UNTAC force away from the DDR centric mission to support for the electoral security of the electoral process. And I think that was a huge step forward. There was also a very popular voter registration program that got ramped up. International sanctions were being applied to make sure there was outside support. I can tell you more about that a little later. But the door to the Kimi Rouge to come back in was left open. It wasn't absolutely shut. And UNTAC worked hard on thwarting voter intimidation. The biggest concern for Cambodian citizens was, will my vote be secret? And UNTAC worked very hard on ensuring that and on communicating that to worse some other consequences. But that was a very important mission. As it turned out, the elections in May of 1993 were conducted. They were technically very sound and widely acclaimed as a very positive step forward. Almost 90% of registered Cambodians went to the polls in early monsoon rains. KR cadre were present in many of these polling sites. And that was a security concern, but they did not interfere. They did not generally create threats. As a result, the royalist Funcin-Peck party won a plurality about 45%. Hun Sen's party drew about 38% and a power sharing deal was reached until it was, of course, upset four years later in 1997 with the coup. Quick lessons very quickly. Number one, transitions. Svarta peace transitions do not end with elections. Focusing on a neutral political environment is necessary, but definitely not a sufficient condition for success. There should have been more investments on peace building and security sector reform. There was something called a mixed military working group, which was operationally effective and coordinating during UNTAC's mission with national forces. But there was no afterwards, and that was a real problem. Lesson two, work very hard with the neighbors and especially external patrons. And here I give SRSG Akashi great credit. One of the biggest moments in the history of the mission was actually when a Chinese engineering unit in Kampong-Tong Province was attacked by KR. Several of the engineers were killed. The next day Akashi was on a flight to Beijing to say, look what your local partner is doing. You really have to rethink and work very hard on constraining your support for that. We also, UNTAC and the strategic investigations area worked hard on a sort of name and shame strategy for illegal timber extraction and illegal mineral extraction from the west, where we had helicopters. This was the pre-drone era, by the way. Helicopters would go in, photos would be taken of license plates of trucks hauling out the timber illegally. There was a ban on that. And Mr. Akashi and others would take that information to neighboring states and say, look, we've got this. You've got to cut this down. So there was absolute, and I would say broadly, constructive pressure on neighbors to get along and work in support of the process. Lesson three, leadership counts, absolutely. I think Akashi's great benefit was he knew Prince Sienok, later King Sienok. He'd worked hard on the Pre-Vahir border issue previously. He knew Cambodia extremely well. Brought some Japanese, positive Japanese background into this. And General Sanderson, very high regard for him, too. Lesson four, managing expectations is extraordinarily hard. UNTAC's proclivity not to use force, despite some of Sanderson's hopes, disappointed some Cambodians. And at the time, there was a view that UNTAC might be seen as a desert storm operation, because desert storm after the invasion of Kuwait had just been conducted earlier. So it would UNTAC really be a Chapter 7 peace enforcement mission. And as was said earlier, the 6.5 posture wasn't quite there. So there was disappointment that the operation was not taking on more effort on that. Lesson five, look for and always build in any peace process inter-communal dependencies. Many of us know the very challenges that citizens of Vietnamese descent in Cambodia have suffered over the years as fishing communities on the Mekong or the Thong Le Sap. And the challenges, which have, there was violence against them at the time and subsequently the initial draft of the Cambodian constitution did not recognize them as citizens either, which was the challenge. But if you're a fisherman on a lake, you probably are, and you've got a good partnership with street vendors in the marketplace downstream. So there may be opportunities. I ran into this big time in the Balkans, which was my punishment for good behavior after leaving Cambodia in 93. So look for communal interdependencies. Lesson six, avoid winners and losers. As part of the information campaign to keep your vote, your vote will be kept secret, 300,000 radios were distributed throughout Cambodia's community so you could listen and hear this message being delivered. The problem was some people in some communities didn't get those radios when they were very upset. There was actually some violence that was triggered by this distribution. So avoid unintended consequences, do no harm. Lesson seven, justice and accountability certainly cannot be ignored. I will defer to our colleague Priscilla here for more discussions, more insights on that. The Paris Accords did, for not surprising reasons given the parties, it did prohibit the retrospective application of criminal law. Now, the tribunal was set up later to deal with Kimiru's violations as a consequence of the autogenocide. But the peace process and the Paris Accords, they did trump at the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and said the policies and practices of the past shall not be allowed to return. So going forward is not a return to the past. But justice and accountability issues did low and large. Last lesson, don't forget the U.S. Congress, you've already said that. In fact, at the time, Cambodia was of great concern to a number of Congress, a number of whom had served in Vietnam during that era. Senators John McCain, both Senators Kerry, Senators Chuck Robb, then of Virginia, Congressman Tom Ridge at the time, and a number of others. So it was an important piece to bear in mind. I have overstretched, so I am going to stop and desist now, and happy to turn it over to colleagues. Thank you so much. Jim, that was really wonderful and very specific in terms of the lessons learned and the recommendations. So really very, very grateful. If I may say too, one of the drivers, the engines of this event as well, is someone in the U.S. Congress that many of you know, Paul Grove, who has taken a personal interest in this and also official interest in this up in Congress. So I want to note his contributions over the years to Cambodia and to issues in Southeast Asia. Let me turn now to our final speaker, Priscilla Hayner, who is an independent writer and consultant on peace and justice and has written widely on the subject of transitional justice and specifically official truth-seeking in political transitions. She co-founded the International Center for Transitional Justice and has worked as a consultant or a senior advisor to a number of UN agencies and NGOs. She is now completing a book on how peace negotiations have grappled with justice for war crimes and she will speak on the issue of Cambodia in a comparative context and adjust or think about the justice provisions in the peace accord in Paris. Thank you. Thank you very much, Derek. It's a pleasure to be here and to join my fine panelists and it's, I have to say, a very impressive audience we have of many people who clearly were directly involved in the Paris talk. So I hope that the time will allow for a robust discussion and further, not just questions but further input from many of you who actually were very close to the talks. I was certainly not at the Paris talks, nor am I an expert in any sense on Cambodia, although I've certainly watched Cambodia over the years with obviously with much interest. And I was asked today to speak, as Derek said, from more of a comparative perspective based on work I've done over the last years, looking very closely at a number of other peace negotiations over the years and specifically the question of how issues of accountability for crimes of the war have been handled as well as the impact of international justice on peace negotiations, especially with the beginning of the international criminal court, how that has changed the ground in front of us a bit. So when you look at the Paris peace accord, of course it's striking and it's known for the fact that somehow it doesn't deal with past crimes. In fact, another way to look at that is that it does look, of course, at the issue of refugees in return and it's very explicit on that issue. It also addresses specifically an agreement to release all detainees, prisoners of war or civilians who were detained for whatever reason in terms of their involvement in the armed struggle or the political struggle. So in a sense, without saying it, essentially providing an amnesty for those persons without review, but that didn't provide an amnesty explicitly. No, it certainly wasn't an amnesty into the future for others who were not then detained. But what's important, I think, comparatively is that the accord doesn't address, of course, criminal accountability for crimes of the past. It also did not include anything around looking at the truth, such as a truth commission, which has become more common in more recent years, or other kinds of victim-focused programs. So when I talk about criminal accountability, truth measures, and victim-focused programs, that's sort of ten years later is what started to be called sort of a collection of measures called transitional justice. But at the time, transitional justice is a term that didn't exist actually yet. And as reflected in the language of the accord, that isn't present. Now, I would be curious, and I do not know what the conversations might have been behind the scenes on these issues. It would be impossible that there were not discussions, of course, of recognition of the history of Cambodia. It's impossible, of course, to not be cognizant of that. And you can see that suggested in the references to not repeating or non-return of the policies and practices of the past. For example, I would certainly be interested, because looking at many other cases, it is often true that you find very interesting sets of discussions that took place that you won't see necessarily in the language. You often won't see in the language. It would be perhaps in the course of today interesting to hear whether some of those discussions were taking place and whether certain decisions were made that resulted in the language that we see. So when you look back comparatively, I think it's safe to say that things have changed, but in some ways things are very, very similar still today in terms of this peace justice tension. So at the time in 1991 and then the couple of years thereafter when there were several other important peace agreements around the world, it was actually common to not include reference to justice for past crimes or certainly not in any manner of providing robust accountability. So if you look at the peace agreement for El Salvador that was signed just a few months later in early 1992, Mozambique, which was also later in 1992, and even South Africa a couple of years after. None of these, with the exception of El Salvador, none of these included criminal accountability in any sense. The El Salvador Accord stood apart because it did include reference to a truth commission and to a fairly robust vetting mechanism where quite a number of senior officials were removed from the armed services for human rights crimes. But even South Africa, which we now think of as the example of such a widely known truth and reconciliation commission and various other victim-focused measures and reparations, those measures were not included actually in the agreement which was in the form of an interim constitution but developed over the following years, which starts to hint at something that we see in many other places as well. If you compare some of these agreements of 25 or so years ago to today, we now of course are starting to see relatively recently some agreements with fairly robust justice components. And certainly if you look at the agenda of the talks, the issue of justice which is sometimes called victims and sometimes called reconciliation or sometimes called human rights more generally. Often this is a main issue of the talks. The Colombian agreement which was recently agreed, finally signed and finalized and passed in Congress in Colombia, that was a four-year process and over a year and a half of those four years were specifically dedicated to the issue, the agenda item that they called victims, which was specifically this basket of how to deal with crimes of the past, which the FARC as the rebel group was very interested in having clarity on as was the government. In some earlier agreements and still common today, there's often a specific focus on having any amnesty that might be included in a peace agreement, very explicit and excluding international crimes. So if there's a number of agreements that took place in the late 1990s and the early 2000s where there was an amnesty agreed, because of course one needs an amnesty for political acts such as taking up arms against the state in order to reintegrate fighters and others, but it's important to exclude war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide and other international crimes or commitments under international treaties that the state has undertaken. If you look at the debate around peace and justice, that's also interestingly very similar. So in 1990, a year before the Paris Accord was signed, amnesty international put out a statement calling for a robust inclusion of human rights issues in the talks and in the agreement for Cambodia and specifically focused in part on the need for accountability for past crimes, and the argument that they use was that of deterrence, that if you don't include accountability you'll have more crimes in the future. That's very similar in fact to the argument still used today from a human rights perspective, that if we don't have accountability we'll have further human rights crimes in the future. What's difficult is that in fact from the perspective of those that are working very hard for peace or working just to stop ongoing violence and conflict, from their perspective if you don't find the peace then you will have more abuses that become part of, that are very much part of the war and you certainly have more victims. So you see the immediate tension of people saying listen, we're working for peace, we don't see the parties willing to put themselves on trial and ultimately possibly serve time in jail and therefore the first priority is to stop. The war, whereas from a human rights perspective the argument continues to be if you don't have accountability you will have further abuses. And I think the one thing that we can be clear about is that to pretend that somehow this is an easy issue to be resolved or that there isn't a tension between those two positions would be dishonest and false. There is a tension there and it is a tension that peacemakers and parties to peace agreements even if they have quite good intentions in some cases they struggle with this and it's a very difficult issue to resolve. Now if you look at why there has been a change over time so that we are seeing more robust inclusion of human rights issues and particularly dealing with past crimes, of course as I hinted earlier the main effect is that of the creation of the International Criminal Court. So when that came online it was agreed in 1998, it came into force in 2002. In those countries where the ICC has had jurisdiction it has forced the parties to talks and the mediators to essentially find some resolution if they feel that they are at risk of the ICC intervening and if their priority is to avoid criminal justice or avoid the leadership being sent to the Hague. So places like Uganda, talks that took place 10 years ago and Columbia which has just concluded you see actually the creation of new domestic or domestically based tribunals that would satisfy the requirements of the ICC through what is called the complementarity test. So if you have sufficient justice at the national level the ICC will not intervene with investigations and prosecutions. So you have seen a strong influence by the knowledge that the ICC is watching and may in fact take up cases in the country but it isn't just the ICC effect. It's also a general strengthened international attention and prioritization of these issues an increased expectation and sort of a sense of stricter standards and you see this in part reflected in the Security Council's resolutions that often now make reference to human rights and past crimes in some cases. And also another important point in time was in 1999 the United Nations Secretary General put out to his own representatives a policy on how his representatives should engage in peace negotiations which explicitly said the United Nations was not to recognize or sign on to any amnesty for international crimes. So where there are UN representatives in processes that has become de facto a strong limitation or push against any flirtation with certainly a broad amnesties or other explicit impunities. Let me just perhaps conclude by saying that one strong trend that we see coming through and Cambodia is very much reflective of this is that even in those places where countries believe they have settled issues around justice in a peace agreement it turns out that there's many other issues around particularly around human rights and justice for past crimes that continue to effectively be negotiated in the following years. So certainly there's peace agreements where the language was not explicit and it sort of leaves open the door for further discussions but even in those countries where it's relatively explicit what the intention of the parties were the issues around human rights for serious crimes of the war tend to not go away they tend to continue to be very much debated there are new initiatives there may be new courts created as we've seen in Cambodia and other truth commissions years later so we see that this is an issue that in fact is very hard to put to bed in fact with a signature on a peace agreement and tends to stay alive for quite a number of years into the future. Thank you. Thank you very much Priscilla again three excellent presentations I'd like to we have about 20 minutes and I do want to get to questions from the audience but let me ask a broad question here somewhat from my own recent experience there are two things that Jim said that really stuck out I think he made some great recommendations six or seven of them or observations but two comments he made I think are quite particularly salient here transitions don't end with elections which is a truism that is not often remembered elections are sexy moments that everybody grabs onto and sees and then people move on but transitions don't end at elections and secondly the notion of building inter-communal dependencies which is a notion that I think about often peace processes depending on the country but typically it's not just peace that's being built but a nation that's being built or put back together or sometimes really just being built in some ways for the first time so given that given that there's a conversation about the future of the country and the future of this new nation that is being built in essence or reformed the issue of inclusivity of who's in the room having these conversations becomes very important it gets to the conversations about transitional justice and whether people feel they need to have certain needs met or they may make the decision as you say that certain things are more important than accountability urgently in the near term we need to have peace first, get our lives back and then deal with those questions later and so you have in some ways a more stable peace because you have a more inclusive peace underwritten by a majority of the people so let me just ask the question to each of you I guess because I think it crosses each of them and I guess that issue of whether transitional justice was discussed as you during your time did you see that at all part of the conversation do you feel that the process was inclusive enough is it a lesson learned that they could have been more inclusive or was it just that great powers were so such in a rush at this opportunity to pull a piece together get the elections over and move on Jim do you have observations on this as well given that this is a recommendation of yours of how it was implemented was there something that wasn't there in the accords or in the negotiation of the accords that made it harder for UNTAC and then Priscilla your thoughts about all this as well well let me start by saying that transitional justice as such was barely discussed in the accords and in fact we had a lot of trouble dealing with even how to describe what had happened in the negotiations if you look at the accords under the human rights provisions you'll see a phrase that says that everyone is committed to ensuring that the policies and practices of the past shall not be allowed to return the word genocide couldn't be used that word was debated I can't remember if some more of you were there but it was debated for weeks whether or not we could describe what happened in a way that would put a word on it that we all agreed to Chinese simply would not agree to it and I remember a crazy evening where Claude Martin and Prince Cyrano spent the entire night discussing this and trying to come up with some kind of an arrangement they could not come up with an arrangement and the word genocide was not even included in the negotiations so given where the parties were and given the way we looked at transitional justice issues as Priscilla said we're really not on the table very much then that was a bridge too far in terms of the inclusiveness of the accords frankly it's extraordinary that the Khmer Rouge were at the table not only was Q-Song Pan at the table Song Sen who was personally responsible for murders of lots and lots of people was at the table with James Baker it was amazing that this was permitted but I remember that the Khmer Rouge arrived I was there on a plane at Puchintong airport and were brought to the house that they had set up for themselves and the PRK staged a huge demonstration that demonstration led to that house and the house was attacked with the Khmer Rouge leadership including Q-Song Pan in the house Q-Song Pan had a cord wrapped around his neck people were trying to hang him this was a put up riot incidentally this was not spontaneous at all I talked with the people who were part of it they were told they were all bused in they weren't really sure what they were doing they were told to go to places but I think that hurt the inclusiveness from the first day of the Khmer Rouge's participation in Q-Song Pan they were physically under attack so I can understand why this would happen but frankly I think we didn't do a good enough job on inclusiveness even though it was incredibly hard for the United States to sit at the same table with the Khmer Rouge thank you very much for those provocative questions on justice and accountability I'll defer to more knowledgeable colleagues on that but I do understand totally the history and fascinating personal accounts of that on the inclusion issue this was this featured very prominently in untact leadership's calculation about how to manage what I sometimes called my analogy is a controlled crash landing if you will for the implementation because it was unraveling and with the Khmer Rouge backing off it was a big problem but our colleagues and in part because of their enormous capacity to give credit to Ambassador Tim Carney I'm not sure if he's here today but Tim was very key to this he was on tax lead on the information side and knowledge and Sergio Vieira de Mello played a role in this too in terms of understanding the dynamics within Cambodia's districts and provinces where Khmer Rouge had some presence or control and it became very clear first of all that the withering on the vine phenomena was real the outer core of Khadri were defecting they wanted to have livelihoods they wanted work they wanted to marry the girl in the next village they did not want to head back to the past to the ideological purity if you will of that ideology and all it led to so practical engagement to include became critical infrastructure repair basic roads so farmers could get stuff to market the passage of 300 plus thousand refugees coming across the border from Thailand back into Cambodia was a key driver here too and I think that untact as it was adjusting and shifting to try and fence in the Khmer Rouge influence especially with the elections looming they decided in favor of an approach toward inclusion did it work in all provinces in all areas? No I'm sure there were specific cases where there was there was disappointment but I would say overall inclusion was the strong preference predisposition of untact leadership as the process went forward I've also seen inclusion work well in other contexts upstream and downstream communities need each other I saw this in central Bosnia you need road access you have to go through a village that's the other thing too the ethnic cleavages within Cambodia while definitely there in some cases were small in relation to the ideological cleavage that drove between the communist and non-communist factions and actually among the communist factions and that's a different era in many respects but inclusion is an important piece in getting beyond that Priscilla? I mean just very briefly to lead time for other questions but it would be interesting to sort of do the mental exercises to if you held the Paris Peace Talks today what would they look like both in terms of agenda and in terms of participation and certainly in the field of peace negotiations one of the magic words right now is inclusivity and we've seen some very interesting examples of that recently such as direct victims many dozens of them coming in officially to speak with the parties in Havana when the parties to Columbia the process were speaking and they had formal days where they presented and engaged and I'm told brought the parties to tears and hearing the stories from the victims and it affected then the conclusion of the talk so I mean that's perhaps the furthest we have seen of an example of inclusion especially directly of victims but there's various other ways of including be it through side meetings through position papers through NGOs through of course the importance of having women at the table all of those things are given much more attention today than they were even just a few years ago so it would be interesting to think about that question thank you thanks very much okay let me leave it open to folks gentlemen in the back please my name is Sonora Brom I'm the chairman of the Cambodia America Alliance I hear the panelists mention about the reason of the Paris Peace Agreement is to restore peace and to guarantee human rights and the lack of enforcement is a weakness of the PBI also the House Resolution 728 mentioned about free and fair elections which is part of human rights and also release of political prisoners here Cambodia America Alliance have two proposals that would help correct this lack of enforcement one of them is the initiative of the Heritage Foundation that is the Lord Norman and Olivia Enos that suggesting that United to shorten the 18 countries signatory to six countries including United States, England, France, Indonesia Japan and Australia and also the second initiative is Ambassador Shawn Mohn himself in 2012 the Cambodia community come here this building he recommended to use smartphone we didn't pay much attention to that here what the Cambodia America Alliance recommend we should use the Cambodia contact group to make sure that the election would be free and fair Japan already taking care of the pre-election now during the election to prevent intimidation, cheating computerizing all this kind of thing we should have international observer to have one international observer per every polling station so we should have the Cambodian observer the Cambodian observer armed with the smartphone, why? because during 2013 they formed so-called 1104 when they we don't have a whole lot of time I do want to get to other questions do you have a question here quickly? we would like to ask the panel to recommend we send the recommendation to the Congress and the Senate to implement these two proposals would you care to comment on that, thank you okay, thank you let's take two questions and then we can have comments on them gentlemen in the front please well, thanks a lot Mr. Chairman, Prime Minister I'm a people doing, I'm the president of Cambodian American Alliance I have two questions, one is get the shot, Mark finish the conclusion, very important United States, don't leave Cambodian alone so my question is how we start from here with new administration coming, what kind of policy foreign policy in South East Asia and number two, I would like to touch on with Priscilla, I'll talk about ICC Cambodian American Alliance work with international lawyer Mr. Richard Royker I would probably complain to the ICC about human right violation and can you deep down a little bit on ICC role how they advance from here, thank you thank you so let's leave those two questions open Mark, you could let me start by saying that in the United States we don't have the concept of first Prime Minister and second Prime Minister we have one president at a time and so I would rather not speculate or permit on what the new administration what their approach will be I'm afraid that I'm not in a good position to answer that question but I do want to say that the recommendations regarding engagement are the right recommendations no matter which administration is there, the United States is present in Cambodia, we have an enormous amount of trade with Cambodia we're engaged in a lot of foreign assistance to support Cambodians and under the Paris Accords we have a responsibility to remain engaged so I think we should remind ourselves of that and we should stick with it the recommendations that the other gentlemen made regarding elections, some of that is absolutely fundamental ensuring transparency for elections and using what technologies exist now to help in that process so I would just say I think those are good ideas I can't say on all of them that you listed but the general concepts I think are right thank you I would probably concur with the point about electoral support and transparency the only question I would ask is what will be the what I would call the perturbation effects how will the local communities react to an international presence deliberately there if they see it as a partnership as something to enhance and encourage their participation that's positive but there needs to be a good understanding of that impact thank you I mean obviously I can't speak for the ICC or for the prosecutor's office they receive I mean I do know they receive many many complaints which they welcome and encourage both from states parties and from non-states parties and they look at those and usually they are eventually in communication or certainly they are if they intend to inquire further but I unfortunately can't speak for them in any sense well thank you, thank you for the questions others please sir I'm Sam Rensy the leader of the opposition in Cambodia one of the lessons to be drawn from the respect or non-respect of the Paris peace agreement is the respect of the election result the respect of the will of the people in 1993 the ruling party and people's party did lose the election and they refuse to accept the implementation of the will of the people and they threaten with cessation unfortunately the Cambodian the other sides and untak gave in and accept this threat and this blackmail so we are going to have other crucial election next year and as the united democratic opposition we we are very confident following the formation of a new electoral commission following the desire of the people for a change we expect that the people will express their will properly and will be reflected properly in an acceptably free and fair election what would happen then if again the ruling party reject the result of the election so we call on the signatories of the Paris peace agreement not to make the same mistake and at least to warn them that any government formed after such a threat and after such a refusal to respect the will of the people will not be recognized and the international community should speak with one voice because it is the credibility of the international community to come up with an agreement and agreement is blatantly violated in that way thank you very much and again it's great to have you here this morning and hear your voice here in Washington let me extend on that and ask a broad question then according to the accords I mean what is the responsibility based at one point about their signatories their support this whole process that you said the peace agreement is still in force and therefore we should not forget that we have signed this as have others what was the thought at the time about our role and responsibility and how would you think about the question if democracy continues and human rights continues to recede what responsibility we have to and what role according to the accords to get involved let me start by saying that His Excellency Samaritan points out one of the great problems of that election that when it was over one party won a plurality of the votes and did not end up ruling it appears that that happens in other countries too depending on the constitution and the constitution such as it was at the time was the Paris Accords and one of the compromises that was most important in the Paris Accords that was intended to protect the rights of smaller parties was that the constituent assembly had to approve the new constitution by a two-thirds majority that meant effectively that if you had a third of the votes which two parties did Funcinpec and the CPP you could block adoption of the constitution and that meant the whole thing would have come to a stop so I would say that that existed then that's not the constitution of Cambodia today and I think that Cambodia should try as hard as it can to stick with the constitution as it is today which does not require two-thirds majority to form a government in terms of the role of 17 signatories 17 signatory countries plus Cambodia I read what is there that the commitment is to promote and encourage respect for and observance of human rights and fundamental freedoms I think we should renew the commitment and we should talk amongst ourselves about the need to renew the commitment and we have the UN Human Rights Council which has a specific responsibility in the Paris Accords to maintain monitoring of human rights so we have some some vehicles for that but we shouldn't I think assume that how shall I put this at some level a nation like Cambodia really has to be the master of its own fate and other countries cannot in the end solve all the problems of any country and that's a difficult thing but if you read through the Paris Accords there are extensive references to the commitment of all the parties to respect the sovereignty of Cambodia and that was very very important as you know to all of the parties there in part because Cambodia had been under occupation and so this commitment to sovereignty were really important so I think we have a balance here but I want to return to where I was before the signatories have a commitment to remain engaged on human rights and democracy thank you we're past time I mean I think I very much agree that with the idea of renewing the commitment it's hard because many peace agreements do sort of continue into the future as you say they don't typically have an end date the point is that they're implemented but in fact usually one does need to then reach back to that sort of firm commitment of whoever the signatories are and in this case of course you have very important states involved so if there were a way to formally sort of renew that commitment if that isn't clear somehow that would be helpful and perhaps more a more robust way than relying on something from 25 years ago when so many things have taken place since thank you as I said at the start it's a unique agreement because it did have the p5 and I'm not sure you can get the p5 back today to renew but everyone does have that responsibility to look at why they signed it and what's in that agreement 25 years later I think what we've done is set the table very well it was a very good conversation with this amount from the three folks to my left we will continue the conversation in 15 minutes with talking about sort of the results and the realities post Paris peace agreement one of the great things about these types of events is so many people in this room many of you may not have seen each other in a while so hopefully you take the opportunity between the sessions to talk and engage and get caught up but please join me in thanking our three panelists for the discussions ladies and gentlemen obviously it was a good idea to have time for catching up many good connections I observed and still going on but in the interest of time let me unfortunately ask you to take your seats and let's begin our second panel my name is Scott Worden I'm the director of the Afghanistan and Central Asia program here at the US Institute of Peace so on the surface an unlikely candidate to be moderating this panel however my first really international development job was working in Cambodia for the Cambodian defenders project and also for the open society justice initiative and I lived there from 2003 to 2005 and so Cambodia has a special spot and importance for me and obviously the theme of this conference being the reminiscing but also looking at the legacy and the implementation of peace accords is very dear to US Institute of Peace's mission I think that our design is working well for this panel we had a set of excellent presentations on the first panel to recall and describe the circumstances of the peace accords some about their early implementation and framing that in the context of peace agreements generally and on this panel we're going to look at how that all worked out so we have a set of distinguished panelists who have covered Afghanistan, sorry this is Friday in sleep, who have covered Cambodia over years and can really comment on how the fundamentals of the accords that we just heard about have played out over time as was mentioned by Nancy Lindborg in her introduction in some ways the peace accords are seen as a success in that there has not been a return to civil war there has been economic growth albeit from a very low level and there are some elements of Cambodia that are working well on human rights on justice issues as was noted there still needs to be more progress and it's interesting to think about this general contrast which I don't think has to be a choice and should not be a choice but this contrast between stability versus human rights is an issue that I think plays out in Cambodia as well as many other countries and so in this panel we're going to ask and hear from very knowledgeable Cambodia experts and scholars about how have 25 years on how has the implementation over time achieved the ideals of the agreement and how hasn't it so without further ado let me introduce the whole panel and then we'll go in this order so first I have on my left is the founder and president of ad hoc which is the Cambodian Human Rights and Development Association is the first human rights advocacy NGO in Cambodia he's also the chair of the board of directors of TRAC the Cambodian Human Rights Action Committee and he sits on the board of the committee for free and fair elections in Cambodia come for all next to him is Brad Adams he's the long time executive director of human rights watches Asia division he oversees the organizations work on human rights issues in 20 countries from Afghanistan to the Pacific but he has specific involvement long-term involvement in Cambodia itself he worked for five years as the senior lawyer for the Cambodia field office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and he was a legal advisor to Cambodia's the Cambodian Parliaments Human Rights Committee among other engagements in Cambodia and finally at the end of the panel is James Turpin he is currently human rights officer at the office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and the acting chief of peace and security practices section at the UN in New York that deals with security council engagement on the intersection between human rights and the UN's peace and security agenda he previously ran the rule of law department for the High Commissioner of Human Rights in Cambodia from if I've got it right 2006 to 2010 so all people that have a long involvement in this and look forward to your comments to you Tseng Tsui Thank you Scott first of all I would like to respect Wendell Borger Holt Excellency and Chulong Samara and all the ladies and gentlemen I would like also to say to the UCIP who invited me to come to this panel you did already listen to the first panel on the macro level of activity from the different country who involved in the Cambodian conflict to bring peace to Cambodia through the PPA peace agreement for me I would like to talk to you about the micro level that we are working until today from the beginning just like Scott Wendell said that my organization we are the first human rights organization from the early day of the peace agreement I was released only 16 days before the peace agreement signed I was put in jail about 17 months in the bad condition the reason why I had the initiative to set up this human rights from that place nobody told me that it turns out you have to set up this organization but only my own experience in my life that I have this initiative yes I would like to not to take a lot of time I would like to say that from the first day that we had contributed a lot through the peace process in the aspect of democracy and human rights firstly we organized in the public place in the first history in our country the human rights education in the public in the temple and a lot of pressure to us in the beginning but anyway a lot of people they inspired peace and human rights respect they came to attend our human rights training a lot 100,000 and 100,000 of people that came with the collaboration with the UN at that time we succeeded to transform the human rights world to become popular now everyone even the remote area the people can use these words another thing we try also to open space for the civic organization I remember well in 1992 at the end of 1992 when we opened one office in one province the local authority there they used more than 100 police military and one tank to close down our office there but we can reopen later on and after that we can have the flourishment of the human rights and also different organization working in different field established and developed and now a thousand of them they established but still survive around 100,000 100 people an organization we need also provide a lot of protection to the people I remember well in 1997 we try to protect the the life of the marine soldiers of the Buddhism pack in our office in Kampong Sound they escaped through our night in our office and next day we I need ask UN High Commissioner office to send their car to bring the two soldiers to and we can send them back to their home not on this but a lot we provide to protection to the victim of all kinds of human rights violation apart from this we also try to encourage advocate for the establishment of the Khmeru Tribunal because I remember well when the two last Khmeru leaders defected to the government our prime minister at that time he said that if you would like to have peace we have to forget the past and at that time we as human rights action committee a coalition of human rights organization we made immediately whether we should forget the past or not and that all we try to send our message to the people to test them whether they would like to forget the past like our prime minister said or not but at the end on just only two weeks less than two weeks we collected more than 80,000 signature and time frame requesting to the international organization to the UN to establish an international tribunal and let it on we can have this kind of hybrid tribunal what is the present situation now after 25 years I can say that there are two, I would like to say the positive development first after the 25 years of human right education many compulsion they are more aware about their rights and they are to take action to protect their right by the peaceful way non-violent ways and I think at this level of understanding of the compulsion people I don't see any political leader even that they are very powerful they cannot return back to the one party rule according to my opinion I still hope like this and also another thing is it's the first time from I've been certain that I see the opposition group they are not divided like before they form a coalition among themselves and could have some kind of check and balance in the political system that is also the positive I don't like to support any political party as a human right activist we have this kind of check and balance because if we allow one ruling party strong and weak opposition the ruling party they can do what they want civil society organization according to my observation now they are vibrant strong and linked to the grassroot community the remote area the highland people community that we try to link up the network between the organization and the grassroot community organization that is the positive but they are also negative I would like to say that as you know the political space is shrinking all the time this year for me I consider this year is the worst year for our organization in the last 25 years because before we did receive a lot of stress I received that stress in 2013 they are through my email but my colleagues also receive also a lot of judicial harassment but never no one was put in jail but this time this year four of my present colleagues and one from a colleague was put in jail until today that means almost seven months already and also I would like to say also the other opponent people also around more than 20 also still in jail armed force and judicial system still under the control of the ruling party stronger and stronger that is also the negative aspect for me I also don't like to blame the UN because the UN mission in Cambodia in 1993 in 1992 in 1993 they failed to disarm the old faction and at the end now the armed force controlled by one faction, by one party and also the UN don't have this kind of post-conflict period follow up how to create the mechanism I don't like to talk only the past crime accountability of the past crime but the present and the future crime too that we need to think I did remember well in 1999 with Human Rights Watch jointly we did one report on impunity and we use this report in order to advocate with the donor community at that time to have the judicial reform and we have the concrete proposition how to make the judiciary be independent from the government from the party but at that time I still remember well that donors they don't have the common the common priority they focus more on infrastructure, on economic growth something like this and they are divided among themselves that is the problem also working in this environment because we we don't have the power like because the community donor they have the political weight because they have the money they have also the assistant they have also the trade with our government they have some kind of political weight not to pressure but I don't like to use the term pressure and get our government to do the reform properly but anyway until now we still have this kind of problem of non-independent of the armed forces and the judiciary and from now on I think that the first thing is to support I would like to appeal the international community donors community to support the dialogue I appreciate the I sometimes see initiate to talk about dialogue with Prime Minister Honsan but later on this process collapse but now let's start again between Honsan and Kamzuka I think that international community we also with society organizations we would like to support that kind of dialogue because this way only that we can solve the problem or bring back the situation into the normal one because now we are approaching the election 2017 and 2018 general election and in the electoral process I observe that some donors they focus more on the technical aspect technical aspect is important but not enough the political environment also is more crucial because to recognize one election process we have to have free participation of the competitor and fair competition among the different party into the process the reason why I would like to say that firstly dialogue supported by NGO international community I would like them to continue not to collapse again this is my my proposition second one I think that we need to think about the future we should not let the judiciary and armed forces be dependent to the one group of people we have to think about this from now on and also I would like to call international community international organization and common people across the country and also the common people outside the country to think about this because now our country still have this kind of repeated problem all the time like the circle because of this kind of problem the judiciary and armed forces under the control of one group of party of one group of people we should make this two institutions the key one be independent that is my suggestion and for for the lesson and suggestion recommendation to the next UN mission I think the first thing is the UN have to the next UN mission have to to make as much possible how to disarm all the because this is a big failure and you can aid the problem later on after this this mission you can aid the problem killing the fighting in 1997 and also later on a lot of problem of the human rights violation the serious one killing put in jail judicial harassment like we see today disarm disarm second thing is not only the accountability of the past crime prison and the future crime judicial reform in the same time and also the post conflict period follow up that is very important thing I would like to stop and to let go of the other panel thank you thank you Brett thank you Scott and thank you to USIP for hosting this conference and before I get to my remarks I just want to say I am impressed I am with people like Tony Sarai who have not had a day of a stress free day in 25 years I mean working in human rights in Cambodia thank you it's a it's almost a masochism but it's because he's so principled and there's so many other people not just the leaders of the organizations in Cambodia but so many people who work in the my former colleagues I mean they every day don't know if they personally are going to be attacked if their colleagues are going to be attacked this is cut off all sorts of life chances for them to be involved in human rights it's stigmatizing it's dangerous and the same applies for people in the political opposition I mean people like Sam Ranzi and Smore this isn't a partisan statement it's just a fact they've sacrificed a huge amount to get involved and try to make the country better and of course we will hold you accountable if you ever get into power and ensure that you do the right thing but it is there's sometimes an air of unreality in talking about Cambodia from afar and not really talking about what life is like on a daily basis for people who are deeply engaged in the process it is really difficult and tiring and Tony Sarai for a while because the authorities were going to arrest him if he stayed and he's wisely stepped back try to let the storm pass maybe it's passing now with the pardon of Khem Sakha and maybe he'll be able to return soon but it's better to have him out take a break and go back and be free than to stay there and fight and I just I'm really digressing here but people who say that Sam Ranzi's a coward for not being in a country and I think I hear too much of that from foreigners and diplomats and other people who may not really be able to identify with reality in Cambodia I just want to pick up a couple of points on untack and then move to the present when I hear that General Sanderson was willing to use force to cross Khmer Rouge gate and really what happens is that Khmer Rouge put a barrier down on a road and said if you cross here there would be a conflict and there was a big discussion and I think it was probably sensible not to use force at that point but not to be willing to use the weight of untack and national community to enforce the election results it makes me very sad because in a way this is the original sin this discussion today would be very very different if General Sanderson and untack and headquarters in New York had decided that General Sanderson's bluff in 1993 when he lost the election and say no we will enforce the election results how in Cambodia if they had done that we can't say but one thing I think we can be sure is Hoon Sen would have left the scene the CPP was relying entirely on Hoon Sen he said I will carry you to the victory line and he failed and through interviews I've done we know that the CPP was talking about getting rid of Hoon Sen at that point the most malignant figure in the country has now been in power for 31 years the man who is behind not solely but behind much of the untack violence which claimed at least 200 lives of opposition political party figures the brains of the CPP the person who singularly has the capacity to keep the CPP in power was kept in power and propped up by that decision by the UN not to confront the CPP and Hoon Sen when they refused to accept the election results so the fruit of the poisonous tree can easily be followed from that decision my personal judgment is that the Cambodia Armed Forces would have run to the hills if they had been confronted by untack they were not going to prepare to fight to preserve the CPP's position many of them voted for the opposition we know that of course as well in fact we know that now every election we know that significant portions of the security apparatus actually privately support the opposition and so we just can't glide over that I was at the five years ago I have a deja vu today because five years ago in Berkeley we had a conference on the 20th anniversary of the Paris peace agreements Dick Solomon was there and he made a very strong presentation about this very point that there just wasn't leadership and there wasn't resolve to at least test the CPP instead of rolling over and creating this bizarre ridiculous situation where you have co-prime ministers and then of course and this is not so different from where we are in Burma right now we then have in a coalition in Burma it's the NLD with the army having to sort of defend the state and so funds and peck and we can all talk about the failures of Prince Ronald which were almost infinite very poor leadership corrupt he was a man who said that yeah I'm taking money but I'm the prime minister why shouldn't I take a commission when the government signs a deal I mean he just thought that was why I'm in government I should be able to get rich so he had his failure but he was forced into the shotgun marriage where he was defending what the CPP did because it was a coalition government of not of his choosing he and his party did not want that and I think Randy and Smarty you may have something to say about that if you want so let's just not forget context I think it's absolutely essential when UNTAC left is when I arrived I do want to say that UNTAC many people UNTAC did fantastic work it was an unbelievably challenging situation and there were many successes but you know people have written books about that and if you give me the liberty I want to focus on some of the challenges there was virtually no planning post UNTAC it's really kind of incredible it's sort of like after the United States invaded Iraq the State Department did a lot of planning it was a lot of things there were a lot of people doing planning but it was basically never prioritized and so when I arrived the UN Human Rights Office couldn't pay for fuel to run the generator to keep the air conditioning lights on in their office because provision hadn't been made literally I'm not joking literally the office had to shut down at one point because provision hadn't been made to fund the operation there was almost nobody from UNTAC stayed to try to guide the post UNTAC process from peacekeeping to peacebuilding as people would say and the same was true for many key countries the United States being an exception Charles Twining Mark's not here anymore Mark stayed for a while there was some transition but here's another key point and we shouldn't avoid Dick Solomon I've interviewed him for a book that I should have written a long time ago that will someday appear but he said the honest answer is that we got into Cambodia we the international community to get out of Cambodia there was not a commitment from the rest of the world to get into Cambodia to stay to see it through the problem of the long term this was one of the world's great geopolitical hot spots relationships were tangled between China, the United States Soviet Union, Vietnam normalization of Vietnam was impossible without sorting out Cambodia et cetera all these relationships had to be untangled Cambodia was one of the knots Afghanistan was another knot there are other places that but this was a key place and so he was pejoratively called by James Baker the assistant secretary for Cambodia Baker was not happy with how much time according to Solomon he was putting into Cambodia but it was necessary and I believe his commitment was sincere as was the commitment of some other people but that's not really what this enterprise was about the Paris peace agreements were not really about getting into Cambodia and solving what was going to be a generational problem it was to get in declare victory and leave and that brings me to my next point which is we've seen since UNTAC a replacement of political engagement with development aid and that has provided an excuse for a lot of countries to say yes we're still committed look we're giving money to some human rights groups here and some development organizations there and we're building roads and bridges but that is not a substitute for actually grappling with the country's problems and trying to provide solutions and yes there have been some excellent individual diplomats there have been times when there have been pushes from outside to try to focus on human rights and democracy but in total since 1993 to the last 23 years basically most countries don't want to talk about Cambodia and they wanted to check it off the list of problem countries and move on to the next burning hotspot understandably it's understandable that countries have to deal with the burning problems of the day but you cannot congratulate yourself if you make a short-term commitment use very flowery language and then basically move all of your political capital elsewhere and leave it to what I would really not pejoratively say but in terms of the hierarchy of these governments to your second and third string your top diplomats no longer interested, no longer involved very hard to get them engaged except when a crisis happens which brings me to the next problem and this is something Intunster I talked about the hopes of Cambodians were raised dramatically by the Paris peace agreements and by UNTAC rightly so because let's face it Cambodia went through genocide and every other problem because of external involvement Cambodia had been an island and had not had any connection with the outside world it was very unlikely there would have been a revolution unlikely there would have been the committee was coming to power unlikely there would have been all these deaths there would have been a revolution in the country the world had a responsibility for what happened in Cambodia it's not really a very contestable fact but they raised all these expectations about democracy I've talked about the fact they didn't enforce the election security sector reform sir I talked about this not only did they not disarm and demobilize the factions the problem that lingers till today that France came in because they wanted to compete with other donors and they recreated the gendarmerie a third force that's absolutely unnecessary for Cambodia they armed it and it's become a praetorian guard for Hun Sen so they didn't they didn't just fail to do what they said they would do in the Paris agreements they came in and made the problem worse the gendarmerie it's essentially Hun Sen's primary thug even today there was a story in the newspaper that he said that he made a speech to the gendarms and the military saying you must vote for the cpp in the next election because they're actually afraid that they're going to lose the next election but as sir I was saying a very highly politicized institution very well armed the gendarms have the best kit in the country the uniforms they got the best boots they got the best salaries started by France a country that would say that they were all about human rights in Cambodia why did they do this and this is one of the other original sins there's a misunderstanding about the nature of Hun Sen and the cpp almost from the beginning many diplomats were dealing with Hun Sen he was seen as the liberal in the regime he was the guy you could negotiate with he was actually the smartest guy in the regime he's the most capable person he's also the most dangerous and the most violent and the least trustworthy but for years diplomats and foreign ministries around the world and some of my former UN colleagues thought this was the guy who was pushing the cpp towards reform in fact what we know is that's not true at all he's actually the most hard-line guy in the cpp and so this was made in empowering Hun Sen in various ways not least by repeated visits those who were living there were constantly shocked by visits by visiting diplomats from various countries including the United States who would stand up with Hun Sen in public on stage, be photographed end up on national TV stowing the progress Cambodia was making and Cambodians would say what in the world is going on how can you stand with Hun Sen as a stick-tutorial type person and say that the country is making progress thereby pulling the rug out from under the opposition and other people and making their jobs much harder okay a couple of last points when people sometimes glibly say that Cambodians got to solve their own problems I've already said the problems were partially caused externally and there's a continuing obligation for the rest of the world to stay engaged with Cambodia at a high level and deeply, not superficially and the next opportunity for this is going to be the 2018 elections if the rest of the world basically says oh it's just Cambodia what do you expect we're going to continue to be prisoners of the poverty of low expectations we have this problem in Cambodia there are still very low expectations well it doesn't have a democratic history it doesn't have a democratic culture well I beg to differ Cambodians as students have said have been exposed to these concepts for a very long time it's deeply embedded in Cambodian culture now and political culture that there should be elections every five years that the winner should take power they should be free and fair and so what we need is not a compact I don't think we can have a reaffirmation by the 18 signatories of the Paris Peace Agreement but it would be great to have a compact among the donor community and Cambodia's friends about what is expected in 2018 and be very explicit about it yes there has to be an independent national election commission yes there has to be free and equal access to the media yes there has to be an independent complaints resolution mechanism etc all those things and when things start to go wrong or there's problems there will be a high level contact group that will intervene and address these things publicly is it certain to lead to a democratic outcome no it's going to be very complicated but it's the only way that we can provide a foundation where that's possible so I will end there and I'm happy to talk about these other things later thank you very much James thank you coming last after all these high level experts that really know what they're talking about I feel a bit of a fraud being here particularly as I'm actually the person who should be sitting here is the Special Rapporteur and a Smith who was invited and unfortunately just couldn't arrange to be here I wanted to also apart from thanking USIP and everyone for organizing this join Rad's tribute to the Human Rights Defenders in Cambodia this year's Human Rights Day the theme was stand up for rights but also stand up for those that stand up for rights and it's very much at the heart of what we try to do in the Office of High Commissioner to support those in-country who are pushing for respect for human rights so I very much joined that recognition being asked to come here today is a strange mix of emotions for me because it allows me to reflect a little bit on my past and my present in the sense that I was in Cambodia for four years now left six years ago but now I'm very much working with the Office of High Commissioner in New York on human rights in the peace and security agenda and so it's allowed me to think a little bit how something like the Paris Peace Accords has an impact on the way that we work in the field but also how we might do it differently now given that there's 25 years of experience Untak in a sense is still alive in Cambodia in the sense that the Office of High Commissioner is a continuation of that effort that was in the peace accords it's the oldest field presence of OSHR and it's actually older than the Office of High Commissioner for Human Rights because the post of High Commissioner for Human Rights was actually only created in December of 1993 when Untak wound up and the Office was established what I'm going to talk about is a little bit about how the UN now deals with these issues and then a little bit about how I think it helped me in the work we were doing and how we should continue that work and it speaks to three the three stages I guess of the process the peace making the peace keeping and the peace building and these are the buzzwords in the UN that we now use that probably didn't exist at that time in terms of the peace keeping the UN presence that was established in Untak as was said earlier it had a fairly comprehensive mandate under the accords it was for human rights education which we would now broaden to capacity building generally and that's certainly something the Office still does in Cambodia general oversight of human rights and investigation and corrective action as with the three areas since then peace keeping operations have been transformed I mean Untak was an experiment it was a new type of thing alongside the missions in El Salvador to Marla 1999 there was the Brahemia report which was looking at the way peace keeping was done since then human rights components have been a standard part of peace keeping missions and it's not just about doing human rights work in an isolation under the umbrella of the mission it's very much about helping the mission as a whole achieve its mandate which is peace and security so the development of that framework has really been completely transformed and in a sense it's quite surprising I was talking to a colleague in the Office who deals with our support for peace missions and she was quite surprised to know that there was this component in a peace mission that early on because really since 1999 this effort really developed so in that sense Untak was quite pioneering and the core elements of monitoring and reporting and then capacity building in Africa to try and identify human rights challenges and then address them in some way is still very much at the heart of what we tried to do in all of our peace keeping missions with success and lack of success that's not to say that Untak was a great success and I think there are certain areas where it was very clear to me working in Cambodia that there had been missed opportunities I think reform of the judiciary was one, the one area I was particularly working on and the institution building in general the other problem that I used to curse my U.N. colleagues for was the Untak law and particularly the provision on criminal definition which we had to deal with all the time so it wasn't that the U.N. wasn't also in some ways part of the problem even when it was trying to bring about reform so in that sense Untak was part of the beginning of what's actually become quite a sophisticated system and a lot's been learned about how to be more effective in those kind of missions that perhaps would have made a better framework at that time if it had been available the second element is the piece making the actual cause themselves and what it set out for Cambodia over there in the future in terms of establishing the country in that sense it was for us quite surprising but we were very grateful for the fact that human rights is very much at the core of that agreement by chance or by design and specifically the undertakings to protect human rights and part of the government and to ratify treaties was a real benefit for us in terms of what we tried to do on the ground it's sometimes forgotten that the universe of the question of human rights and the treaties that then flowed from that was designed as a conflict prevention tool it was a response to what happened in the Second World War and it was about trying to identify what had gone wrong and how you might correct it and setting some standards I think what for me is very clear and Scott you mentioned this at the beginning this forced dichotomy between stability and human rights is something that we constantly have to push against it's often said that human rights are a symptom of conflict but if they're a symptom of conflict they get driven by conflict addressing them can actually be a mechanism for resolving the conflict itself but taking that a step further you're looking at in effect the root causes of conflict so if you fail to address them you're kind of sowing the seeds for the conflicts in the future in that sense if you try to say that it's inappropriate for the international community for the UN to be looking at these internal issues it doesn't really work because in fact the provisions on the continuing UN work on human rights are in the agreement on integrity territorial integrity inviolability, neutrality and so on of Cambodia the fact that they're in that agreement I think says something about that that it's actually about making a more stable country that you start to address these issues so in that sense what was in the Accords then gave us the anchor to carry on doing our work in Cambodia and to this day now it was mentioned earlier that there's a specific provision about the role of the commission on human rights which is now the Human Rights Council and the creation of the special rapporteur in some sense the office of the commission is also part of that continuing effort and I wanted to say a few words about how that dynamic of the relationship between violations of human rights and peace should still be part of that equation in terms of the work we do if you look at some of the challenges which have been talked about a weak judiciary that's not independent the shrinking of a society space and the lack of freedom of expression assembly association of these issues but also the the challenges to economic social and cultural rights which I saw very much as a new element a result of how Cambodia was developing but that there were large numbers of people who were being were not the beneficiaries of the development aid that you talked about but were becoming victims of it that it was being done in a way that had real harm to the poorest in society that somehow if you turn those around a strong judiciary one that can give redress to victims that brings accountability very much as Tansaray said for present and future crimes not just about the past creates the kind of institution that promotes stability and that's why we need to be working on that and that's why it was a missed opportunity in the past a vibrant civil society where you can express yourself where you can protest this is the kind of society that governments to account that demands a responsive and accountable government that kind of a government will address the real concerns on the ground and so it's a more stable society in that sense and a development agenda that captures everyone is the kind of society that is more stable than one where half the people are actually being left behind victimized by so in that sense the work we are doing now and I picked those three areas because they're the three main focuses of the office that I can mention now in terms of thematic areas are about how we move this forward they draw from the past from the Paris peace accords but they're translating it into the future and they tie into modern approaches and they illustrate the two sustainable development goals which is about that long term thinking about this kind of development that you need to make stable societies and a new agenda which has just come up this year which is called sustaining peace which is really about broadening peace building beyond this short term transition and carrying it on into the future to make sure that we're not sowing seeds for the next conflict since that's what needs to be the focus now it's good to look back 25 years but we've got to look forward as well the presence of the office of high commissioner there the presence of a vibrancy of civil society in Cambodia is an important element to make sure that the Cambodia of the future isn't heading towards the next conflict and in that sense it's never finished business there's never an end to a peace process because it's a constant protest of making sure that we're moving in the right direction in the same sense that in any country in the world there's never a point where you have protected and guaranteed human rights it's that ongoing continual vigilance that's required and the Paris peaceful courts were unusual because somehow by accident or design they put in that far reaching vigilance element that allows us to continue to do what we're doing today on the ground thank you thank you very much highlighting the current issues and linking that with the legacy of the PPA we have a little over 20 minutes for questions I want to turn it to the audience if I can see a show of hands and then a microphone will come find you we start with the front here thank you I'm the president of Women Women for CNLP in North America first of all I'd like to thank Mr. Brad Adam for spending 25 years without a day of stress free my question is to Mr. James Turbin I understand you spoke of the future plan but what are you doing in an immediate situation regarding the four people that's in prison right now the human right defender because I know it threatened the human right itself in Cambodia because if the human right defender themselves are in prison how are people to believe that we have right in Cambodia thank you are there other questions we'll take another one right now go ahead thank you I have to say I'm not here to represent the office in Phnom Penh and I would very much defer to my colleagues there on what they're actually doing on these cases what I can say is that when we face that kind of a situation in any country in the world there's a lot of work that's done publicly and a lot of work that's done behind the scenes trying to resolve the situation but I would then refer back to I guess what I was trying to say in my intervention which is that you do have a framework in Cambodia to work with and the treaties themselves the human rights treaties are law they are part of the constitution and when things happen that don't conform with those basic standards it is a collective effort of those within the country and those outside the country to try and point that out so it's in a sense what part of that broader effort that I described of monitoring and reporting and then trying to resolve so don't assume that because you don't hear our office loudly pointing out those kind of things that it's not working as hard as it can to resolve it. Sometimes what's happening behind the scenes can be more powerful. Can I just ask a follow-up question to engage Brad and Tsitsuri on this which is on the one hand I wonder if it's a silver lining and I observe this in Afghanistan and some other countries where the reaction so imprisoning human rights offenders almost shows you where there is vulnerability in a sense of vulnerability in a regime that is seeking to hold on to power and where they find threat then you see a strong reaction. I wonder about that and then also Brad your discussion of the original sim back in the untact days. I mean to what extent both of your experience is there a real communication through incidents like this with human rights violations testing reactions both from Cambodian society to the international community to see how far can I press this and how vulnerable am I to change. First just everyone should know that the office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights which has been there since 1994 is facing a threat of closure on December 31st by the government government has publicly said that they will close the office if a new memorandum of understanding is not completed. I've been in touch with the office in the last 12 hours actually and that there's some hope that they may be in agreement but there's no agreement and this is in direct retaliation for the work of the office in speaking out particularly about attacks on the political opposition and civil society. So OHCHR itself is under threat right now in a way it hasn't been since 1994 or 1995 when Hun Sen and Prince Ronnerid announced that it would be closed and then that was reversed by diplomatic interventions. So the situation is very unstable right now my understanding of how Hun Sen operates is he's always pushing towards the limits and seeing where the reaction is and when there isn't a reaction domestically or internationally he keeps pushing. Now there's always a reaction domestically always very courageous people have always stood up to Hun Sen and said what they needed to say but they are only sometimes backed up internationally and when he perceives weakness or disunity internationally he pushes forward further. I think he pushed because there's not a very strong set of diplomats and on pen right now there's not much focus on Cambodia internationally for a variety of good and bad reasons he pushed too far in this case the reason we saw a pardon of Kem Sakha the deputy of the opposition and we understand there's a process in which it looks like the ad hoc staff members will be released and other charges will be dropped and other people will be released for prison is because there was a belated backlash from the diplomatic community and not insignificantly from Japan signing a joint statement very recently expressing concern which I think may have signaled to him that he couldn't play the international community off against each other as successfully as he wanted to but I will say that he will exit this having lost almost nothing and that's been the pathology for years and years. He can push the line, he can push across the line including extracial killings, imprisonment very blatant use of the judiciary he's telling the judiciary in public to arrest people to convict them. He's not even hiding the fact that he's controlling the judiciary but then it's business as usual there's been no cost for him or the CPP for doing these things so he's simply it's a tactical withdrawal and next month or next year you can do the same thing. Just for me I think the role of the UN for Human Rights in Cambodia is a delicate one I did set too many special rapporteurs in Cambodia that if you are too critical you will receive the closed door from the government side or they will reject to sign the MOU something that is with you. If you are too soft and no progress you will lose your credibility you see? You don't have to balance all the time between critical and self-approach like James sometimes he said that sometimes self-approach talking with the government behind the scenes is more effective than openly I don't mind but the problem is how to make the situation progress that is very important we don't like the UN all the time to be critical but please make the situation progress advance step by step but sometimes some approach the situation still get worse and worse reason why the recent mission of the UN special rapporteur a lot of NGOs they are also not happy UN special rapporteur report but the last report of the UN special rapporteur is improving and we are happy with that the reason why I cannot say what they should do but it depends on the person who are in charge of this mission who have to find a way the best way sometimes it's hard also not a science how to deal with this tough government thank you the gentleman on the right you please thank you thank you gentlemen my name is Kim Ho-Doo I'm a co-founder I'm also a senior member and advisor of the organization called my people for Network for Cambodia in abbreviation is KPNC and I have some kind of question but also clarification I want to see whether that clarification might help Cambodian people to understand clearly that in the context of applying or implementing the Paris peace agreement the UN can prove in Cambodia without violating any sovereignty of Cambodia because Mr what's his name keep claiming that Cambodia has sovereignty and nobody can come in and dictate this and that I try to check the Paris peace agreement I see the point that when to implement that UN can really put the even truth in Cambodia to do the job to get the job done is there any such a thing like I understand and want people to understand in Cambodia people understand put build a pressure rather than to allow Honsang to keep lying to them okay and to sound so good that hey we have to protect our own country that's a nice thing so he do a good job and so a kind of ignoring the commitment of the United Nations thank you let me take a few questions I saw a bunch of hands with Samora thank you Samora thank you for the very good presentations each one of you made I would like just to come back on a point that has been raised by Brad Adams I think that the Paris peace accords have been signed because international community wanted to come to Cambodia to get out of it I can understand that being the international community or a member of the international community I want to get rid of a problem that embarrasses the rest of the world the problem is if any member of the international community especially the US wanted to come to Cambodia to get out of it they did it in the wrong way I can understand if I were a leader of a major country in the world I wouldn't like to be embarrassed with problems of genocide and maybe presently breeding grounds for terrorism or organized crime or the way Cambodia is now but the thing is that they did it the wrong way how could they have done it in the right way James Turpin mentioned sustainable development the development and the economy growth that is happening now in Cambodia is not sustainable it is not fair, fairly distributed so that one third of one out of three Cambodians earns less than a dollar a day two out of three Cambodians earn less than two dollars a day this is not the recipe for sustainable growth or even development we have in Cambodia blatant violations of rights for instance for a population that is 85% represented by farmers we have massive land grabs how do farmers live without land and I don't even mention the negligence of the authorities of the present ruling party because they don't even provide us with any irrigation or any infrastructure to deal with monsoon rains that become a disaster each year for the crops of the farmers so we are with the way the government is ruling the country now we are creating a big huge problem and so the international committee came to Cambodia but they didn't get out of it the other way around very soon the international committee will have to face a big crisis in Cambodia and then they will have to get in again so why not do it the right way by addressing the problems one after the other for instance Cambodia is ruled by a dictator don't let him get away with crimes even crimes against humanity don't let him get away with crimes against the environment because the environment is a universal problem take him to account for all the wrong things that he is doing to his own people to his own country to his own environment and why grant to these Cambodian rulers trade privileges that do not benefit our workers because our workers earn a mere $150 per month how can they live a decent life out of it and why give those privileges to such a country such a grand Cambodia the legitimacy of a properly ruled country that will use its financial institutions for money laundering this is not good for the rest of the world either to have such a big sinkhole and a big loophole in whatever system the world order has established in order to have a good equitable way to rule the world so my point is that as long as we say oh well Cambodia is good enough and big enough now and should run by herself no this is the recipe towards another genocide another Khmer Rouge type of rule because we don't have now a genocide the way we had under the Khmer Rouge that was blatant and visible but actually when you force farmers to live without land it is just condemning them to finally death so I launch a vibrant appeal to the international community you cannot get out of Cambodia that way do it properly and then within the next 5 10 years maybe you will be able to get out of Cambodia and Cambodia instead of being the beggar of the world will be able to contribute to the world order thank you thank you and I saw one other hand Paul yeah Paul Randolph I served in Cambodia from 2004 to 2009 for USAID I'm no longer with USAID speaking for myself and at that time there's some repeating as you've already mentioned on the panel there's repeating cycles that go on in the manipulations of the political system and so on in Cambodia New Year's Eve 2005 for Khmer Rouge and now we're back to that cycle again and I think one of the things that we talked a lot about at that time of that situation was what are the different levers of how you put pressure to adhere to the human rights conventions and the rule of law that's embedded in the constitution in Cambodia and you've talked a lot about government civil society, international owners and diplomats but one of the things that seem to have the most influence in 2005 in that situation in 2006 and I think today was how you leverage the private sector and the speaker just mentioned the garment factories and garment buyers and so on and how do you leverage them today to bring influence on to this regime because it seemed as if that was one lever that actually could have potential of getting them to make more rapid decisions and has actually a greater influence across the ruling party than some of the diplomatic efforts that have been attempt because it's so difficult to get them unified so just kind of today moving forward I said something you're looking at and how do you utilize private sector, international business and so on because there's more and more presence the Japanese influence you mentioned that is today there's more Japanese companies in Cambodia than there were 10 years ago let me just ask each of the panelists maybe in order to address those issues that you see fit starting with Tsinsura I think the different 2005 and now I think at that time the science is still not strong enough like today not powerful enough like today he's still not controlled his party 100% like today at that time US still have some influence because he would like to have the legitimacy of his power with the election and at that time he still hope to win the election because the opposition they are still divided divided among themselves but this time it's different because the opposition now they have more like I said some kind of check and balance with the ruling and also some people said that he is now frightened to lose the power because of this from 2008 until now especially after 2008 when he got 96 he found that he's very proud that what he did in the past is right because people still support him more and more this and why according to my opinion I could be wrong from 2008 he did a lot of mistake policy especially on land on forest he provide a lot of land economic construction to the private company according to my statistic that my organization found in 2011 more than 1 million hectares provided to the private company and it's a mess because the private company try to grab the land of the people according to the policy at the national level they said that they use the tiger skin policy that mean they allow the people live there on their land but in the practice it's not when they got the contract from the government they try to how the land of the people they try to evict the people by force by pressure to dump with the small compensation that make a lot of people angry with the policy that policy reason why to get back the popularity it's a little bit I don't know late on still working I don't know for the reason why now he he seems that he is very sensitive with the pressure from the international community you see before okay still US or Japan still work with but according to our channel with some Japanese NGO or something like this now it's hard because now the society to have the close relationship with China is not true and now as you know that Chinese assistant to the government now a lot billion and billion US the reason why but for me I think sometimes our government also bluffing also because from the Chinese assistant it's not enough according to my opinion I could be wrong too because the Chinese government provided only the credit not and not for the solving the deficit of national budget but for just only infrastructure you see and also now Chinese government has the policy to combat again corruption in their own country reason why they cannot spend the money to waste their money for for what government for their own deficit of budget that is the problem I think that for me the problem is we have I suggest in my speak that culture or dialogue still still still working we have to to support to support this kind of culture of dialogue in order to find compromise solution and I think the quiet diplomacy also because now he is very sensitive with the open critique you see but if quiet diplomacy talking with him I did suggest too many country representative already during my travel to Geneva or to Bangkok I try to suggest to find the best the good in the world in order to find the solution but also rejected many time already that no I don't like to have anybody from outside to reconcile our problem we can solve the problem among people that is the way that he say but for me I think that international still have political way because from the west from Europe and from United States we have a lot of trade with our government our Cambodia economy cannot export our country cannot export government product to China only China can export product to Cambodia and also the how to solve the deficit of budget I think they cannot rely on the Chinese financial assistant only fit from the west I think that the west still have the political way but how to make this political way working that is the way I think that you have to think by yourself because I cannot say to you but you have to think how to make that jointly, separately, quietly openly up to you you can measure on that I think that's worth because rely on the Chinese assistant I don't say that it's correct my own opinion but I still continue to support the idea to have the dialogue but in the same time by the different way the international committee especially from the west they still have the way to I don't like to say pressure because if he heard that I used the word pressure he will also sensitive with this kind of word of pressure I don't like to say pressure but what if one you say but try to encourage or to support something like this the way how to bring back the situation into normal and accept to have the free and fair process of election nobody lose nobody lost the report this way because the opposition don't like to take revenge they win the election and also the government don't lose anything because I think that the government have already the money they have already the structure they have also the the network also yeah we can say frankly not just only bluffing also the situation because the CPP they stay there many years and they have their network why they are too frightened about this situation this way this way I see that we have to convince the CPP side that they have to accept this kind of process because like James said the important spirit the key spirit of the peace agreement the PPA is to prevent the return back of Cambodia to the bad practice in the past in the recent history of Cambodia because how to prevent that is the democracy and respect of human rights and if you block the process to have the free and fair election you block the competition of powers through the peaceful way what is the different political group what they do they have to use the way human way they don't see the peaceful way how to compete the power that is the real important thing to prevent that kind of returning back to the bad practice that means fighting for power we have to respect the democracy the democratic principle free and fair election that is my and I think that we have to convince to convince the other side the CPP the ruling party that you have to realize that without this how you can have the sustainable development reconstruction because the peace agreement you should not focus only on the development process alone because the peace process mention clearly that the link between development process and reconstruction process with the respect of democracy and human rights without this Cambodia will go to the will lead to the the situation that could return back to the past bad practice of the past fighting for power why you learn for power that we have to to highlight this again and again in order to fight a compromise solution that everyone have the benefit to go with this process of democratization and respect of human rights not only the development alone but with respect of human rights and democracy without this how you can have the sustainable development if there are the violent again in the future thank you very much we are over time but I do want to give the other panelists a chance to respond very briefly Cambodia is not going to go back in my view to kind of arm conflict with formed armies and that's not really on the table but what is on the table is that the country is going to face a crisis in 2018 and a strategy and a plan to try to support the democratic process because what we saw in 2013 and which has only become stronger is that there is a ground swell of support in the country for change we see it all over the world we're seeing it in Cambodia it's getting stronger it's led by younger people they have no they have no allegiance to the CPP because they don't really credit it with having done anything for them they didn't live through the period when the CPP was protecting the country against the Khmer Rouge and so we are going to see the possibility of a social explosion very soon if the elections are not handled properly on the other hand I do not believe in the culture of dialogue if it means concessions only by one side which is what we've largely seen so far nor do I believe that the CPP led by Hun Sen can be reasoned with because they're not interested in sustainable development that's not their goal their goal is to maintain and expand their power and their wealth and to create a patronage network that will protect them in power indefinitely in perpetuity and so really you can't say pressure and I understand that I can and I think all of us should because that's what is necessary a strategy to put pressure that needs to be joined up by every major player and here I do have some hope about China not because I think they want democratization but because they've had a very bad experience in Burma very recently they've overstretched there's going to be a parlor game for a generation to figure out why did the reform process in Burma start but almost anybody who speaks will say that one element was an overreliance on China China had too big a footprint in the case in Cambodia today as well there's a resentment building towards China because there seem to be propping up the regime in Phnom Penh so in short we need a strategy, it needs to be joined up it needs to be led, the United States is in a position to do that although who knows what the next administration is going to be interested in doing but we haven't seen that in the past and I'll just give one cautionary tale in my mind the first five years after UNTAC were the most important UNTAC was cast for what we have right now and the international community failed miserably they didn't stand up to Hun Sen after his coup they didn't stand up to him in 1998 when he staged a very bloody election and killed many many opposition members we saw monks floating corpses of monks floating down the Mekong and the Tonle Pesach rivers in full view and they stood back they stood back and they let it happen because they decided the devil they knew was better than the risk it would take to try to sort the problem out and I'm sorry I'm not trying to be alarmist but I believe we can see the same scenario happening in the coming years if Hun Sen it tries to put a lid on this pressure cooker which is building in Cambodia quick final thought thank you just quickly on the three questions I think there is no threat to sovereignty to engage with the international human rights system there is a threat to sovereignty if you don't because violations of human rights fuel conflict and conflicts bad for sovereignty so that's our basic argument on that a couple of that you have specific provisions of the peace accords, the treaties being a member state of the UN that requires you to engage with that on Samora's points about in out leaving too fast I think that's exactly the point there's a lesson that's been learned not just in Cambodia but in many countries if you look at Burundi now and Central African Republic and so on and it's really what's behind these initiatives like sustainable developments sustaining peace it's about thinking longer term and trying to connect the dots better and make sure that everyone is brought under these the benefits from these processes in a really effective way on enforcing the treaties human rights generally I would refer to the working group on business and human rights which has been looking exactly at those issues of private sector engagement and so on it's a mechanism of the human rights council and it's done some interesting work in Cambodia this is my final thought it's the thing I'm most proud of that we used the treaties the treaties are part of Cambodian law we brought a case with NGOs to the constitutional council on a specific issue of children being locked up for misdemeanors in effect and it was a a confluence of issues of the judiciary feeling under pressure and not applying the conventional rights of the child that case everyone said would fail because the constitutional council had no authority and power and because it wasn't clear that the treaties applied but the constitutional council ruled that the treaties do apply and the court started to enforce it and it was in an area where these issues, these big issues of the political context weren't coming through so much and it showed that you can do useful human rights work on the ground to make a difference and my assertion is why I'm so proud of it is because I know that there are thousands of children that never ended up in a Cambodian jail because of that ruling and that's an important gain for us in an area where there's an awful lot of lack of success well thank you let's end on a positive note I apologize to those that did not get a chance to ask their questions the two takeaways that I have from this one is from the first panel and the great observation that there is no end date on the Paris peace accords and this idea that and I think it's useful to think about what does the signature mean of all the countries that supported that and other peace agreements in terms of an obligation to see those commitments through over time and I think we've heard some recommendations on ways that that implicit commitment maybe can be fulfilled even today and the second thing is Brad highlighted in others cost of early decisions obviously nobody can predict the future and the consequences if you choose different paths I think it's always a good reminder that those key decisions shouldn't be taken lightly and you should at least envision future paths and not see it as a short term versus long term choice but rather two long term choices that need to be weighed carefully and realistically against each other let me close with thank yous thank you both to Laura McGrew for helping to organize as we mentioned earlier this would not be possible if it wasn't for Rachel Vandenbrink who's standing in the back she's contacted many of you instrumental and super hard work in bringing this all together so thank you Rachel and finally let me thank the audience clearly many of you have a long investment in Cambodia and we'll have a continuing one thank you for being here I'm glad that we could raise this issue commemorate the 25th anniversary of the Peace Accords and look ahead to future engagement so thank you all