MoNASRI begins Consultative Process for Its Component in the Demand for Good Government Project
More than one hundred participants representing government ministries, donors, civil society groups, and the media attended a one-day workshop at Sunway Hotel in Phnom Penh on May 3, 2007 to discuss the Ministry of National Assembly-Senate Relations and Inspection (MoNASRI) component in the proposed Demand for Good Governance (DFGG) Project.
The DFGG project is being prepared by the Ministry of Interior (MoI) with support from the World Bank. It aims to promote good governance by building the capacities of state and non-state institutions, and supporting programs and coalitions that promote, mediate, respond to, or monitor for strengthening DFGG.
DFGG refers to the extent and ability of citizens, civil society organizations, and other non-state actors to hold the state accountable and to make it responsive to their needs. And in return, this DFGG enhances the capacity of the state to become transparent, accountable and participatory in order to respond to these demands.
MoNASRI is one of four state institutions that have been selected for support under the project, the others being the Arbitration Council in the Ministry of Labor and Vocational Training, Radio National Kampuchea in the Ministry of Information, and the MoI itself for their One Window Service Offices and District Ombudsman initiative. In addition the project will have a window for supporting non-state institutions that will promote partnerships of state and non-state actors in promoting transparency and responsiveness in implementation of Royal Government of Cambodia (RGC) reform.
Each of the state institutions is preparing its proposals for support from the DFGG project and is undertaking a participatory process of consultations to solicit feedback from numerous stakeholders to help develop these. The event by MoNASRI was the first of these consultation workshops.
H.E Sr. Men Sam An, the Minister for MoNASRI, inaugurated the meeting and said that Ministry was honored to be chosen for support by the DFGG project. “Today’s workshop is organized with purpose of revising the project concept note of MoNASRI and seeking comments or recommendations in relation to the proposed strategy of law dissemination,” she said. “The comments and recommendations received will be taken into account in the preparation of the project proposal to make it of superior quality and ensure its successful implementation.”
H.E Prak Ham, Secretary of State of MoNASRI, explained that his ministry is officially mandated to perform three key roles: building legal awareness on existing laws and rights, inspection on all fields to combat corruption, and drafting new legislation. Of these, the support under the DFGG project will be in the first area, i.e. in law dissemination. Additionally, the proposed component will consider pilot programs in the area of complaints resolution related to these laws.
“Our Ministry will disseminated six key laws, three already adopted (Land Law, Forestry law, and Fisheries Law), and another three that are still under discussion and preparation (Anti-corruption, Decentralization and Deconcentration, and Freedom of Information),” Prak Ham said. “We also intend to facilitate debates, meetings and advocacy activities connecting citizens and their interest groups and respond directly to queries and complaints from citizens during public forums that will be organized by our ministry in the context of its law dissemination activities.”
Several important points of feedback emerged from the group discussion during the workshop. These included: the need to develop human resources at national, provincial, district and commune level for law dissemination; the need to work with volunteers at community level including students, women group and monks; the importance of cooperation between all relevant institutions and actors; the need for providing sufficient equipment and financial resources; the importance of selecting location for dissemination that fit or need knowledge of particular laws; and the need to target a variety of audiences including civil servants, students, ordinary citizens, community members, local authorities, commune councils, civil society, monks and armed forces. The workshop also recommended that the Ministry establish a website for law dissemination and set formal mechanisms for investigating and solving complaints.
The May 3 workshop was the first in a series of consultations the Ministry will undertake in the course of the coming months to finalize its proposal for the DFGG project. It is expected that through its component on law dissemination, the MoNASRI program will help citizens undertake key laws and be aware of their rights provided by those laws. This awareness should allow ordinary citizens to organize themselves and put pressure on relevant authorities to respond more positively to their demands regarding the implementation of these laws. In this way, their wishes for better governance could become an effective demand for good governance.
(Source: “World Bank’s newsletter, Volume 5, Number 6, 2007)