Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
ment agencies and NGOs can often earn six-figure salaries—tax-free in the case of the
UN—which include lavish health plans, school allowances, and other perks. A spell in
Cambodia is generally a comfortable step on the way to somewhere else, and everybody
wants to leave with a gold star on their CV.
Those who stay longer soon learn that achieving lasting results in the Cambodian de-
velopment complex is extremely tough, in large part for these very reasons. “I've had
people say to me, 'this is the most difficult country I have ever worked in,'” said McCaus-
land of ActionAid, who has lived in Cambodia since 1995. “There are very few places
where you can go and meet with the government, who will just blatantly say yes, yes, yes
to everything and do absolutely nothing, take [your] $3 million, produce absolutely noth-
ing, and then get another $3 million.” Veteran aid workers, often people of the highest
integrity, find themselves in much the same position as well-intentioned government of-
ficials: constrained by a system that they have little power to change. For the rest, life is
good enough in Phnom Penh that it's easy to let things slide, to accept a broken system,
to drift through a posting—forgetting all the while that the Cambodian mirage is thickest
not at the horizon, but at the center.
After 20 years of meandering development, a growing number of NGOs are beginning
to question the current model of development and to push back against the shift toward
short-term results and statistical bean-counting, especially among those groups—such as
Oxfam, ActionAid, and some of the church-based charities—with independent sources of
funding. Some international NGOs have wound up their operations, or established plans
for handing them over to Cambodian nationals. The recent growth of community act-
ivism around land and natural resources has also offered an alternative role for NGOs,
which is to support local developments rather than simply substituting for them. This is
the role played courageously by Cambodia's largest human rights groups, which still re-
ceive strong backing from abroad. Most NGOs, however, don't enjoy the luxury of inde-
pendence. They remain beholden to the donor cycle, reliant on outside money and there-
fore unable to challenge a flawed paradigm.
Until foreign governments reassess their approach to development—an unlikely event,
give the economic and strategic agendas at play—the destructive pattern of aid in Cam-
bodia shows few signs of abating. Every three or four years a new crop of NGO directors
and UN agency staff arrives in Cambodia full of optimism. New development fads are
introduced. Old, failed ones are resurrected. When things don't work out, many grow
frustrated and leave, having decided they are powerless to affect change. In some ways
they are right. Twenty years after it arose in the UNTAC mission, the Cambodian devel-
opment complex has attained its own uncontrollable inertia. Like a runaway four-wheel
drive with a bottomless tank, it plunges onward, inscribing a wide and endless circle.
