Report on the Second National Conference on

Gender and Development

“Securing Our Rights”

18-20 September 2002

1.     Background

The First National Conference was held successfully in September 1999. Two hundred participants, mostly women and almost all Cambodian women came together to assess the achievements of the Cambodian women’s movement since the Beijing Conference on Women in 1995 and to set the agenda for the next three years. The theme of the conference was “Looking Back: Moving Forward”.

Plenary and panel discussions focused on gender issues related to health, education, the environment, violence against women, women’s political and economic participation. A platform for action, which was prepared during the conference, was presented on the final day to the Deputy Prime Minister, H.E. Sar Kheng.

September 2002 represented the end of that three-year period of planned action. There have been many changes in Cambodian society since the first conference took place and there have been many consequent changes in the status of women. It was time to take stock of those changes and to measure whether and to what degree the changes have been good and bad, what active role women have played in bringing about positive changes for the status of women and girl children in society, and to decide together what further action needed to be taken and how women will follow through on those decisions to tackle challenges ahead.

The overall aim of the Second National Conference on Gender and Development in Cambodia was to asses the gains made by the Cambodian women in relation to their economic, social, legal and cultural rights over the past three years and to critically assess the challenges that remained.

A further objective was to provide a forum for both rural and urban women to share information and experiences about the effects that the development process is having on their lives and the lives of their daughters. The last and third objective was to bring men into the gender equation to discuss and devise ways for men to work for gender equity through advocacy.

This report will examine the undertaken activities, discuss the lessons learned and evaluate to what extent the objectives of the conference were reached.

2.     Undertaken activities

The Second National Conference was held on 18-20 September 2002, at Council for Development for Cambodia (CDC). Plenary and panel discussions focused around the issues of rural and urban women, the situation of women's health and education, violence against women and children, advocacy and empowerment. Thirty-eight speakers with relevant knowledge and experience attended the conference, 263 participants took part in plenary, panel, and working group discussions, 107 were from donor agencies, and local and international NGOs. Twenty -five were students who are members of the Cambodian Men's Network. 50 participants were from the rural areas and 25 from urban areas. Fifty-six of the participants were from embassies and government agencies including staff from the Gender Focal Point program within Ministry of Women's and Veteran's Affairs.

A three year platform of action was presented to H.E. Mu Suchua, Minister of Women’s and Veteran’s Affairs, on the last day of the conference. This platform was the result of the discussions from plenary, panels and working groups. The recommendations given in the platform were completed by the participants, they all contributed distinguished the most suitable and relevant recommendations.

Preparation and Implementation

Steering Committee

The Second National Conference was organized by a steering committee consisting of ten volunteers from Gender and Development Network and Cambodia Men’s Network. In addition, some extra representatives from key NGOs the relevant field took part in the meetings. The committee finalized topics for the panel and plenary discussions, identified speakers, panelists and participants. A conference coordinator was, together with GAD/C, the main agent responsible for the overall coordination and facilitation of the conference. Together with representatives from the steering committee, staff from GAD/C worked as facilitators before and during the conference. The preparations started five months before the actual conference. At this early stage, donors were contacted and a draft agenda was set. Closer to the conference, the committee met regularly to be able to follow and supervise the work of the coordinator and GAD/C. Feedback were given at meetings and by e-mail.  

Lesson Learned

            Since all of the committee members had their own obligations, some of them had no time to attend the meetings. Due to this, a few of the committee members did most of the work. This situation could be avoided by having a smaller committee where all have understood and agreed upon the workload in advance. However, during the evaluation, all committee members argued for a committee with the same number of members as before since it guarantees that important NGOs are represented. This is in turn crucial to get in contact with speakers, participants and get input on the planned conference activities.  

Speakers and Proceedings

Most of the 38 speakers were contacted two months before the conference. The coordinator, together with staff from GAD/C, met with the speakers in order to explain the guidelines for the speeches and the objectives of the conference. There were a great variety of speakers with different background and experience. Some of the speakers were from the provinces where they are working at grass root level. Some of these speakers were: Ms Lay Rottana, a former child worker and Ms Chuon Vat, police from Banteay Meanchey. Meanwhile, other speakers were well known and had an extensive experience working in well established NGOs, for example: Dr. Kek Galabru, executive director of Licadho and Ms Kien Serey Phal executive director of CWDA. However, whether the speakers were ministers, directors of NGOs or students they all had a vast knowledge of the given topic.  

Lesson Learned

            Most of the speakers had difficulties to send in their speeches in time even if they were reminded several times and were also given help in writing if needed. This caused problems in identifying poor and irrelevant speeches. It is clear that the concept of gender is a new concept for most Cambodians and most speakers needed to be more supervised. It also seemed like some speakers used old speeches. Whether it was due to lack of time or interest, speeches that were not up to date or relevant reduced the quality of the conference. In the future, it can be worth considering asking more speakers from grass root levels since they probably will give more of their time and have equally or more appropriate experience.

Plenary and panel discussions

            During the three-day conference, there were three plenary discussions with two speakers in each and ten panel discussions with three or four speakers for each panel. In the plenary, the speakers were given 20 minutes to speak and in the panels they were given 10 minutes. Each plenary and panel had a moderator and a note taker. The moderators were either from the steering committee or from other NGOs with similar experience.

Lesson Learned

            The moderators' tasks were difficult since they had to make sure that the speakers kept the time limit so that enough time was given to the participants to ask questions. Some of the moderators did not managed to fulfill their duties since some speakers did not respect the given time limit. Therefore, moderators should be chosen carefully and based on experience.  It could also be useful to choose moderators who have worked with speakers in high positions before and know how to respond to them.

            The participants had a lot of questions for the speakers and took active part in the discussions. Therefore, more time could be given in the next conference for question and answer sessions or other methods to let participants make their voice heard.

Working groups and the draft platform of action

On the first and second day of the conference the participants were divided into 10 groups. Each group discussed topics from two panel discussions from that actual day. Together with a facilitator, the participants distinguished recommendations for action to be given to the government and local and international agencies to help women to help themselves. On the last day of the conference, the recommendations were agreed upon after being discussed and changes were made accordingly. The recommendations were put in the platform for action, which was given to H.E. Mu Suchua, minister of Women’s and Veteran’s Affairs, on the last day of the conference. The idea of the platform of action is that it is going to be a working document for the next three years for those in ministries, NGOs and other interested parts of the society which work with women’s rights. The platform is a clear set of recommendations for action which should be used as guidelines in decision making processes in order to secure women’s rights and needs.

Lesson Learned

            The overall impression from the participants was that the working groups were useful and gave the conference a valuable input of ideas and suggestions. The facilitators were all used to working with group decision making and in most cases it worked well. The working groups met for one hour. This could be considered a bit short for distinguishing recommendations, but since they were in the end of a long conference day, more extensive sessions would probably not have been effective. However, the session, on the last day, where all the recommendations were discussed in plenary, could have been extended. The session was very appreciated by the participants and crucial to get a joint ownership of the platform for action.

3.     Evaluation of the conference

The overall aim of the conference was to examine what the Cambodian women have gained in relation to their economic, social, legal and cultural rights during the past three years and to find the challenges that remain. Each day of the conference had different themes, which aimed to cover all of the topics mentioned above. The topic for the first day was women's socio-economic rights with panels on rural and urban women, and the situation for women's health and education. The second day focused on the legal aspects of women's rights, legal rights and violence against women, legal rights of workers, micro –vendors and prostitutes, children's rights and the law, and ethnic minority rights were discussed on this day. On the last day of the conference, advocacy and empowerment of women at both central and local level were discussed. All speakers were also asked to include an overview of what had been achieved in their relevant field.

In order to discuss the challenges that remain, it was crucial to find speakers that were able to both criticize and give recommendations for further action in a constructive manner. Therefore, the speakers had been chosen carefully and their speeches had in some cases been revised in order to meet the aim of the conference. However, since gender not was well known for some speakers it became for some topics a challenge to find speakers who managed this. It is clear that this is due to the fact that gender is a new concept in Cambodia and this will most certainly improve for the next years 

It can be argued that the conference tried to cover too many topics. Some panels did have a very wide range of topics. While it is true that this made it a little difficult to put the speakers together, it also gave an important overview of the situation of women's rights in some of the most necessary areas for development.

A further objective was to provide a forum for both rural and urban women to share information and experiences. Fellowships were provided for participants for poor rural and urban women. In total 50 women were given fellowships. Without the fellow ships it would have been difficult and in most cases impossible for these women to attend the conference. Since they actively took part in plenary, panels and working groups discussions, valuable aspects of women's life were added into the conference. All participants were mixed during the working group's sessions so it was a great opportunity for women from all parts of the society to meet and exchange ideas.

Poor women with little or no education are one of the most vulnerable groups regarding access to information about legal rights and health services. It is clear that those women who attended the conference considered it very useful. Nevertheless, fellowships for 50 women are not much in relation to all those in need. As a consequence, a follow up project is scheduled for next year. Women who participated in the conference will inform rural women about their legal rights in five provinces.

The last objective was to bring men into the gender equation to discuss and devise ways for men to work for gender equity through advocacy. Men attended the conference both as participants and speakers. Equal numbers of men and women were invited to the conference. However, more women then men attended the conference: 33% of the 263 participants were men and of the in total 39 speakers, 30% were men. For example, Keng Bun Chhoeuth from CMN, was one of the speakers. He gave a speech on how men can work to secure women's right in the plenary on the last day of the conference, which discussed advocacy and empowerment. The participation of youth activists, both young women and young men, provided the conference with a further valuable perspective. Since gender is not only about women, it is important to include men in activities like this one. If men not are signing up, we need to find ways to encourage them to do so. This is also worth noticing since men are often the ones in power in decision making processes, and if we want to change behavior and attitudes we have to involve men more when discussing gender and development. 

While working with the Second National Conference on Gender and Development, both GADNet and GAD/C become strengthened. This will have a positive impact on result of future activities. More importantly however, are the benefits from the participation of all the women, especially from the rural areas, in the conference: they have now a greater knowledge about their rights which will hopefully help them to improve their lives and their lives of their children.

4.     Future recommendations

Although it is difficult to predict which topics which would be most important to discuss in the next conference, unemployment, HIV/AIDS, drugs, the situation for youth and elderly, will, unfortunately, most likely still be urgent to discuss. Related to these subjects and the importance of bringing up youth activists, it can be worth considering organizing a conference only for youth. After all, they will be the ones that will be able to create changes in attitudes, and in the Cambodian society as a whole.

      One main conference, followed by smaller conferences around the country would involve more people and also make it possible to reach those with little or no knowledge of these questions. Therefore, a clear strategy should be created in order to meet the needs of the participants and to achieve the aims of a future conference.

Conferences are a good way to raise important issues, and to get people together to share experiences and ideas. In order to use the achieved knowledge and raised interest, conferences need to have follow up activities.  This conference will be followed by mini conferences in a few provinces, GADNet and GAD/C will use the experiences, and lessons learned in their ongoing work and in future projects. Nevertheless, all the participants of the conference need to use their achieved knowledge in their work and use the platform for action as a working document. This is crucial if we want the conference to make a change in the long term. Key issues and concerns raised at the conference should become a basis for development of strategies and projects to make the changes where the changes are needed. Conferences are concrete means for funders to know about the real situation of Cambodian women, and a basis on which to make judgements or choices about what programs they should support. 

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