CCH - Disability and Social Policy in Cambodia

Cambodia in Modern History: Beauty and Darkness

State Gov't Messages

Event Highlights

Center on Disability Studies: Disability and Social Policy in Cambodia

At the Center on Disability Studies (CDS), my work is primarily in fiscal administration, but as a staff at CDS, I have really taken an interest in the types of research going on there. There are very few universities that have entire centers dedicated to disability studies. In my own life, prior to working at CDS, I have not had much experience working with persons with disabilities, but in my home country of Cambodia, there are so many, many people who have been injured by landmines, car or motorcycle accidents, or other circumstances. I thought it would be both interesting and important to really think for the first time about societal attitudes (including my own) toward persons with disabilities in Cambodia, and how disability issues are addressed there.

In particular, I wanted to look at similarities and differences in how Cambodians look at disability versus how Americans look at disability.

In Cambodia, the number of persons with disabilities is high, for several reasons:
• 1) the number of landmines still there (between 10 and 12 million),
• 2) the number of traffic accidents, especially in the crowded capital of Phnom Penh,
• 3) the lack of adequate medical facilities and care, in both cities and in the countryside, and
• 4) poverty and the lack of adequate nutrition. Statistics on disability in Cambodia vary: a United Nations survey in 1999 indicated 15 percent of the total population had a disability; an Asian Development Bank study in 2002 estimated that at least 1 million, or at that time, 9.8 percent of the population had significant physical or mental disability which affects their ability to function independently on a daily basis.

As in other countries, persons with disabilities in Cambodia have limited access to basic social services, education, skills training, etc. And importantly, in Cambodia there is a lack of staff trained to work with persons with disabilities, especially with those with mental illness.

Most of the providers of services for persons with disabilities are non-governmental organizations (NGOs) or international organizations. There is a strong movement in Cambodia to help people with disabilities become employed by learning traditional arts. This is excellent because not only are they becoming employed and earning a living, they are also helping to revive the culture and arts that were destroyed during the Khmer Rouge time. Most of the organizations and schools for people with disabilities were developed in the 1990s, such as Krousar Thmey, a school for blind and deaf children in Battambang, where my family is from.

CDS is starting to have more of an international focus, and I for one would like to be involved in this kind of work. I would like to see CDS to consider starting international exchanges, such as research programs and conferences, exchange and dissemination of data collection, and the formation of a “best practices” database that persons of all nations could both contribute to and draw from.

-Richard Chea