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Womens Leadsership as a Route to Greater Empowerment, Cmbodia Cast Study
This case study of Cambodia is one of five country case studies executed under the Women in Power (WiP) learning project supported by the Center of Excellence on Democracy, Human Rights and Governance (DRG) in the Democracy, Conflict and Humanitarian Assistance (DCHA) bureau of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). The case studies will enhance the findings of the WiP desktop study of 56 DRG programs to promote women’s political leadership and representation by assessing the contributions and lessons learned of selected programs in each country. Research methods include review of program documents, published research and other secondary sources, and interviews with USAID, implementers, local partners, beneficiaries and stakeholders.
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WPS 229 Socio-economic Differentials in Contraceptive Discontinuation in India
Using the 60 months calendar data from the National Family Health Survey-3, this paper examines the reasons of contraceptive discontinuation among spacing method users by socio-economic groups in India. Bi-variate and multivariate analyses and 12 months life table discontinuation rates are used in the analyses. Results suggest that the level of discontinuation was highest among pill users, followed by condom, traditional method and IUD users. Discontinuation of pill is maximum among better educated while that of IUD and condom is maximum among women with 1-5 years of schooling. While discontinuation of condom declines with economic status, it does not show any large variation for pill and IUD. The method failure was maximum among traditional method uses and higher among poor and less educated. The factors associated with the reasons of discontinuation were method choice, age and parity at discontinuation and the intention to use. Based on these findings, it is suggested to improve the quality of modern spacing use, promote counseling for retention of methods and addressing the reduced need and motivate the traditional users to use modern method of contraception to improve health of women.
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WPS 228 Humanistic Planning and Urban Flood Disaster Governance in Southeast Asia: Metro Manila and Jakarta
What are the possible humanistic approaches to urban flood disaster governance? Several largest cities in Southeast Asia, such as Bangkok, Jakarta, and Metro Manila have been affected by relatively severe and paralyzing floods in recent years. In reality, floods are not new to these cities. Cities are often located along riverbanks and lakefronts, due to the importance of water in the history of cities as sources of livelihoods and the role of rivers in trades. Post-1945 economic growth in Southeast Asian cities had resulted in rapid urban development. Inadequate sewage system and lack of control in urban master plans resulted in the deterioration of urban water bodies, especially in terms of water quality and the surrounding environment. Various technical solutions have been offered to prevent floods to disturb socio-economic dynamics of the city, although there have never been 100% protection against floods
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WPS 227 Reconsidering Nationalism in 21st Century China
To what extent is the political integrated into the aesthetic in the nationalist discourses of contemporary China? How do we understand the historical significance of the publicly manifested postsocialist relations of the state and the society? In what ways does the aesthetics, encompassing the temporalities of modern and premodern, socialist and postsocialist, articulate the nation as a collectivization of subjectivity that accentuates and deviates from the political rationalities of both the Party-state and the mass consumers? This paper grounds the nationalist discourse of a recent mainland Chinese film American Dreams in China in existing critical literature on these questions, and project a tangible future for the study of postsocialist Chinese mass nationalism at the conjuncture of literary criticism and cultural studies.
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CCHR Outcome Report - Post-UPR National Consultation Workshop
In June 2014, the Human Rights Council (the “HRC”) of the United Nations (“UN”) convened for its 26th session. During this session, the Report of the Working Group1 of Cambodia’s second Universal Periodic Review (“UPR”) was formally adopted. Of the 205 recommendations made to the Royal Government of Cambodia (the “RGC”) by other UN member States, the RGC accepted 163 and noted the remaining 42.
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WPS 226 Negotiating Post-Divorce Familial Relationships: A Case of Singaporean Divorce Biographies
This paper offers an analysis of how Singaporean divorcees organise their post-divorce family life and examines the interplay of autonomy, commitment and context in the maintenance of their family relationships after the divorce. While family life has become increasingly democratised as discussed in theorisations on individualisation and contemporary organisation of personal life, community scholars argue that commitment and belonging remain salient in family life. My research attempts to map this debate to the context of divorce and examines how Singaporean divorcees manage their post-divorce familial relationships within the social and policy context they are located. By making use of empirical data collected from in-depth interviews with 32 Singaporean divorcees, I explore how they, as part of constructing what I call ‘a divorce biography’, exercise individual choice, demonstrate commitment and navigate around dominant family norms to reconfigure their post-divorce family relationships. This article shows how their reconstituted family life might continue to thrive despite the rupture of their marriage and associated relationships.
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CCHR Outcome Report - Workshop for Youth on Electoral Reform
This Outcome Report summarizes the issues raised and the recommendations of participants during the Workshop for Youth on Electoral Reform (“the Workshop”) held on 20-21 June 2014 in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. The event was organized by CCHR under the Project to Mobilize Youth Around Electoral Reform (the “Project”), which seeks to raise awareness and engage people – in particular youth, who are becoming increasingly vocal in demanding for change –in debate and discussion about electoral reform, in order to help formulate substantive recommendations that are reflective of all stakeholders.
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The risk of movement migration in Cambodia 2013
In June 2014 the International Organization for Migration and the Cambodian government tracked and exodus of more than 200,000 migrant workers who crossed the border at Poipet back into Cambodia from Thailand. The mass migration came on the heels of political disruption and rumored violence against Cambodians in Thailand and was one of the largest humanitarian crises in recent years. More than 50% of those returning were illegal or undocumented migrations, and less than one month later many were already claiming they had plans to return to Thailand as soon as possible. The event has raised many questions amongst international aid groups and migration experts in the region, namely, how can the Cambodian government help to ensure that their migrations are better protected in the future.
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WPS 225 The Gendered Dynamics of Indonesia’s Oil Palm Labour Regime
State oil palm plantations of the New Order were based on a family model, in which women and men were incorporated as workers and farmers through their membership in households. The tendency over the past “neoliberal” decade has been towards casualization and sub-contracting, with the consequence that men and women must compete for work as individuals. Families are relegated to the periphery of the system, making coherent households more difficult to sustain. The contemporary plantation labour regime accentuates the spatial dispersal of family members, as it draws women casual workers from one place, and men contract workers from another in order to maximize “efficiency” and profit. This arrangement emerged at the nexus of ethnic stereotypes and historically constituted labour reserves, combined with the calculative logic adopted by workers themselves as they seek to protect themselves and provide for their families.
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WPS 224 The Revindication of Environmental Subjectivity: Chinese Landscape Aesthetics between Crisis and Creativity
This paper studies cultural representations which critically address the high level of environmental degradation ushered in by successive regimes of China’s modernization. On the one hand, it will review a group of blog cartoons reacting to a recent environmental hazard, the Huangpu River floating pigs incident, which were published beginning from mid-March 2013. On the other hand, it looks at intellectual responses to a political economy of short-term profit extraction whose negative impact far exceeds the destruction of the nation’s landscapes. Selective readings of lower rungs fiction (diceng wenxue), landscape poetry and multi-media art, and theoretical essays on questions of landscape aesthetics will discuss how these authors express their worries about the consequences of a narrowly functional approach towards natural resources. According to them, the foreclosing of traditional aesthetic principles that used to support sustainability in modern modes of governance has yielded an unprecedented moral decline of the community as well as an alarming depletion of the nation’s non-human recreational powers. In conclusion, five kinds of environmental subjects will tentatively be identified together with their different patterns of agency.
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Fair Trial Rights in Cambodia Monitoring at the Court of Appeal
This report on “Fair Trial Rights in Cambodia” (the “Report”) is an output of the Cambodian Trial Monitoring Project implemented by the Cambodian Center for Human Rights (“CCHR”). CCHR’s vision is of a non-violent Kingdom of Cambodia (“Cambodia”), in which people enjoy their fundamental human rights, are treated equally, are empowered to participate in democracy and share the benefits of Cambodia’s development.
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Three Draft Laws Relating to the Judiciary
One of the fundamental principles of a democratic state is the principle of seperation and independence of powers between the legislative, executive and judiciary. Independence of the courts is a key element of the rule of law and guarantees fair hearings. As such, the 1993 Constitution of the Kingdom of Cambodia (the “Constitution”) establishes the independence of the judiciary and guarantees the principle of the separation of powers.
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