The CWCC came about as a group of Cambodian women, distressed at the alarming level of violence against women for whom there were no protective services or community assistance, decided to act.
Oung Chanthol, Executive Director of the CWCC, first became aware of the discrimination and violence facing many women at a refugee camp where she lived as a teenager following the overthrow of the Khmer Rouge. "Even there, there was a lot of rape, a lot of domestic violence," she says. "So I thought something had to be done."
Upon completing studies in law, she worked for a time with a small organisation that assisted women who had been widowed during the rule of the Khmer Rouge. She then worked for the UN Transitional Authority as a translator for a project on women's rights, going on to work for Human Right Task Force and the UN Centre for Human Rights in Cambodia.
While on the Human Rights Taskforce, Oung Chanthol worked as coordinator of the working group comprised of 16 Women's Rights groups which monitored and investigated cases of violence against women. Here she came across many cases which impacted her deeply and was the catalyst of the forming of the CWCC.
No Safe Place to Go
One particular case of domestic violence in Phnom Penh involved a poor family of 4; a husband, his pregnant wife and their 2 children. The husband was often violent to his wife but nobody in the community felt they could intervene as they considered this to be a family problem and therefore outside the domain of the community. Also, her neighbours were from her husband's family and thus she felt she could not turn to them for support. Her husband threatened to kill her if she left the house, and he did indeed carry through that threat after she left the house for one morning. He killed her and her children by tying them together and stabbing them all many times. Then he burned the house, and was gone - he was never arrested. Chanthol believed that had the woman had a safe place to go, she and her children would not have died this brutal death.
In another case a girl escaped from a brothel, terrified and with injuries, but was followed by gangsters who wanted to take her back to the brothel. Although people on the road saw her, nobody helped. She did eventually make it to Chanthol's office where she hid for some time, however, there also there was nowhere for her to stay.
Community attitudes to women at the time viewed the role and place of women in the home where she was subordinate to the husband. The family was considered a private domain and therefore any action on behalf of outsiders was seen as interference and was not welcome. Thus, if a husband was to beat his wife everybody blamed the wife, including the woman herself! If the victim were to speak out she would be vilified by the community. (These attitudes had been reinforced by the years of terror under the Khmer Rouge where family's, unable to trust anyone outside their immediate circle for fear of being informed upon, were forced into a pattern of concealment and seclusion simply to survive.)
First Centre Full Within A Week
These, and other events like them, lead Chanthol to start a women's refuge. With a friend, Sinly Pao, and with support of an expatriate advisor, Michelle Brandt, the first Cambodia Women's Crisis centre was opened in 1997.
The first centre had room for 25 women and within one week they were full! Pamphlets had been left at all police stations and word soon spread quickly. Chantol recounts, "We intended to provide shelter for about 20 women per day. In just one week, it was full. From word of mouth, hundreds of women came. The moto taxi also took victims of sexual abuse to our centre. We just couldn't turn these women away. We then started to approach donors, and discussed reintegration and education for the girls ."
Sinly Pao recounts, "From the beginning it was very difficult. We had only a few staff running the programmes together, sometimes we would sleep at the office. In the beginning when we interviewed the client, we would cry with them! Then we had some counselling training and understood if we are crying with the client it is difficult to help them! As we grew we added to our services based on what we saw was needed by our clients."
Working Together
Sinly Pao and Oung Chantol had first met at the refugee camps and they describe this experience as being fundamental in informing how the CWCC now operates. Sinly Pao continues, "there were 17 sections in site 2 camp; I worked in all of them. I saw in order to help women and children we needed to work with the chiefs of the villages and communes/sections. We cannot do anything alone, we have to cooperate with police, government institutions and NGOs - we have to work together." This ethic of closely partnering with the local authorities and NGO's, engaging them in the work and mission of the CWCC is at the heart of the CWCC's approach to its mission.