Inter Press Service - February 28, 2003
Marwaan Macan-Markar

It is no secret what issues animate the team of broadcast journalists and producers at the Women's Media Centre of Cambodia (WMCC) for this election, the third since the 1991 peace accords that ended two decades of a brutal civil war and oppression in this South-east Asian country.

"The candidates will be questioned on matters that concern Cambodian women," says Tive Sarayeth, a director at the Phnom Penh-based WMCC. "This year's elections are important to test the commitment of political parties towards women's rights. We need to use it to achieve more equality."

The struggle that women's rights activists are undertaking comes at a time when females outnumber males in Cambodia. The country has seven million women, or over 50 percent of its population.

As a result of the war, many women had to become breadwinners, some having to take on more than one job, but they have not been as visible in the corridors of power -- and issues of concern to women have not figured prominently in elections.

Among the topics WMCC's 22-member radio team will focus on are trafficking in women and children, the spread of HIV/AIDS, health concerns and domestic violence.

Last year, in its second annual 'Trafficking in Persons Report', the U.S. government named Cambodia as being among 19 countries with the worst record on human trafficking.

Among those trafficked have been women between the ages of 14 to 18 years, it added. Some were trafficked to Thailand been for sexual exploitation, street begging and bonded labour.

Currently, Cambodia has over 170,000 people between the ages of 15 to 49 living with HIV out of a population of 13.4 million people, according to the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS).

This figure is down from the 210,000 people infected with the killer disease in 1997, indicating that the country's committed HIV prevention efforts -- including the drive for 100-percent condom use -- are working.

According to Chea Sundaneth, head of WMCC's radio division, the format of the programmes will range from interviews, call-in shows, talk shows and radio features.

"We will invite representatives from each party to answer questions about women's issues from our journalists and, at times, from outside callers," says Chea, whose organisation's radio station, WMC FM 102, can be heard by close to 70 percent of the population in 11 of Cambodia's 23 provinces.

"We hope that the pressure from these programmes will convince political parties to include women's rights issues on their election platform if they have not done so," she adds.

The lead taken by the WMCC has other objectives too: using the pre-election coverage to exert pressure on Cambodia's over 30 registered political parties to ensure that women make up 30 percent of each party's candidates list.

Such objectives, moreover, are in step with what other women's rights activists are doing to convert this year's poll into another step forward in the march towards gender equality.

Among them is the Women for Prosperity (WFP), a non-governmental organisation with a network spread across the country. "We are educating women ahead of the election so they will be aware of important issues that empower women," says Nanda Pok, executive director of WFP.

This initiative has a two-fold goal: to have a politically savvy female vote-base and have politically confident female candidates. "There are qualified women in the country to step into politics; we want to mobilise them into action," says Pok.

It is a determination that stems from the success last year, when Cambodia held its local council elections. At that poll, 1,000 of the 5,000 female candidates the WFP team trained were elected to the councils.

That was a significant indicator about the Cambodian voters' willingness to cast a ballot for female candidates, says Pok. "It has given us confidence that people are increasingly having a positive view of women in politics."

The local polls also exposed the country's female politicians to the darker side of election realities in Cambodia - violence. Three female candidates were shot and killed in the eastern regions of the country during the election campaign.

Likewise, Mu Soc Hua, minister of women's and veterans' affairs, says Cambodian women face their own struggles at home, including as heads of their own households especially after the decades of conflict in the country.

"They have been doing this without identity and recognition as a woman in Cambodia," My told IPS in an interview. "This makes everything a women does a struggle."

This pain has been compounded by domestic violence, she says. "Up to 25 percent of women in one survey admitted to have been victims. Trying to pass a law against domestic violence has become a political issue."

What also stacks up against women is how woefully underrepresented they are in the halls of power. In the parliament, for instance, there are 15 women parliamentarians out of 122, while the cabinet of Prime Minister Hun Sen has two female ministers out of 24.

This picture is marginally better than the previous parliament, where there were only seven female parliamentarians, while there were no women in the cabinet.

"Women candidates have still to convince the majority of voters that they can be taken seriously," says Mu. "And unless the whole society in Cambodia treats women as human beings, there cannot be equality." (END/IPS/AP/IP/PR/MMM/JS/03)

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