RWI: Cambodia Human Rights Education and Research Programme 2020-2024

Below are the main results that have been achieved at outcome level. - Improved and expanded human rights education, including from a gender perspective, provided by targeted institutions and enlarged pool of Cambodian human rights students and graduates Following the end-term evaluation report carried out in 2023, a key to this successful outcome is the long-term scholarship programme that RWI has established in order to especially increase the number of female legal experts. Despite a slow performance of one partner university, Pannasastra University of Cambodia (PUC) in having number of students graduating, finding from the evaluation indicates that 69% of students who have gone through the scholarship programme are professionally involved in human rights promotion in Cambodia in which 96.2% think that graduating from the programme helped them to engage better with human rights. Sida has also noted that over the years, the scholarship programme has also been expanded to students in the provinces including indigenous students who have limitted access to higher education. In addition, based on the report 2022, 3 Lund scholars (2 females) have become part-time lectureres teaching human rights, legal methods and coaching the Jean Pictet competition at the ELBBL programme at Royal University of Law and Economy. The other result is the increased of interest in moot court course and competition on fair trial rights among partner universities among teachers and students. The partner universities have integrated the course into their programme/curriculum and started running the university round moot court course and competition by themselves from 2022. Moreover, the cooperation on the moot court has also been expanded to other non partner universities that was probably not something that RWI had expected at the beginning of the programme. Sida assesses that this result is highly likely sustained even after the support to RWI ends. - Increased availability of high-quality human rights research products, including from a gender perspective, of key relevance to the Cambodian context Following the evaluation report, RWI managed to steadily increase the number of available research papers through the Center for Study Humanitarian Law (CSHL). On a positive note, CSHL increased its cooperation with Macquarie University (Sydney) on research which increased the quality of the output. Papers have been published as CSHL research briefs or in journals. Moreover, it has also become a good tradition by RWI to provide research grants to female researchers and/or on gender topics with relevance to the Cambodian context which contributed to a positive outcome. Based on the annual report, there were 5 research papers published/jointly published by CSHL's reseachers and 6 newsletters on current issues of human rights and humanitarian law during 2022. The other 6 papers were also published through the provision of research grants in which 3 papers focus on gender topic. In addition to the above, RWI in 2023 also produced a case study exploring the nexus between poverty, human rights and statelessness in Cambodia. The study focuses on two population groups in Cambodia (long-term ethnic Vietnamese residents and the Khmer Krom, who are ethnic Khmer originating from Vietnam) who have been known to be affected by statelessness or challenges with accessing certain proofs of legal identity to be able to access public services which has significant impact on the livelihood and living conditions and their basic human rights. The topic is rather sensitive and there has long been little awareness among government, non-states and development actors about the scale of statelessness and the effects on affected populations, the research's product brought together through roundtable dicussion the UN country team, development partners and civil society to share the knowledge and the findings as well as explore opportunities for more coordinated action to address to statelessness and other legal identity challenges in Cambodia which considers rather a senstive topic to discuss about. Through Sida's observation and presence in the discussion meeting, the findings and discussions were well received by the participants. As there has been a lack of data and information concering the link between statelessness and poverty, this case study can address the existing data gap to help the development partners and relevant actors prioritise their work about the impact of statelessness which Sida assesses this as a significant achievement of RWI work. - Increased public outreach on human rights, including from a gender perspective, by academic institutions in Cambodia Over the years, RWI has drafted and printed publications as well as translated key documents regarding human rights and research findings and make it accessible to wider audience as well as donate to relevant actors and universities' library. The effort was also try to make all these materials available online as many as possible. In 2023, for example, RWI has translated for the first time the UN Guiding Principles on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights into Khmer and made it accessible in publication format. In beginning of 2024, RWI launched the first textbook on Responsible Business Conduct (RBC) in Cambodia. This product is a collaborative work of different actors university lecturers, researchers, lawyers, CSO and academia where majority of authors are Cambodians. This kind of collaboration is also new which has never been taken place in Cambodia before. During the launch, RWI also brought together relevant actors to discuss the topic and explore new opportunities for collaboration among relevant stakeholders to foster RBC practice and transformative knowledge in Cambodia.

The overall objective of the intervention is to strengthen academic institutions in Cambodia to progressively contribute to the promotion of human rights and gender equality. The programme is structured around the three areas academic institutions can play to contribute to a broader societal change where human rights are respected, protected and fulfilled, namely education, research and outreach.