Decades of civil war have destroyed people's skills of dealing with each other in a non-violent way. This includes the moral attitude of people and the social mechanisms for conflict management and occurs on domestic and neighborhood/community, Natural Resource Management and Election issues to a great extent.
Additionally, Cambodia is coming out of a socialist system enforced to the people, to build a market-oriented society based on democracy and private property. The transfer of former state-owned property into private hands comes without proper legal proceedings in place and low law enforcement. This is creating unjust situations and serious conflict in land, forestry and fishery.
The experience of four elections in Cambodia since the implementation of the Paris Peace Agreement 1991 have shown increasingly better technical procedures and have been acknowledged as overall democratic by independent observers. However, complaints about registration and election procedures, vote buying as well as political violence in conjunction with the elections has been prevalent and continuously involves human rights violations such as intimidation, power abuse and killings.
Unfortunately, human rights violations are not limited to politically motivated incidents. Family or neighborhood disputes very often turn into violence and killing, in most of the cases to the disadvantage of woman and children. Cambodians are being killed for the benefit of some money out of their pocket or a motorbike. The use of small arms, even though it has decreased, is still widespread and alarming.
The new generation of monks once again plays an important role in Cambodian social life and, together with local Pagoda committees, NGOs, development committees and self-help groups build up the newly emerging civil society. This still fragile and developing civil society, as well as local authorities inexperienced in administration and service for their electorate, needs capacity building and support to take responsibility within Cambodian communities.
Since 1997 SILAKA has been working as a capacity building and training NGO in Cambodia. The establishment of a conflict resolution and peace-building program within SILAKA stems from experience in dealing with violent conflict and the political crisis in 1997/98 and cooperation with 70 civil society organizations. Moreover, SILAKA's involvement in the Dhammayietra movement and the Campaign to Reduce Violence for Peace during the 1998 Election Campaign were influential in creating this program. With the support of the German Development Service (DED) under the German ZFD program, which focuses on conflict transformation and peace-building, Metathor-CTP was established in November 2001.
SILAKA leaderships developed Metathor-CTP with the vision that conflict in Cambodia is being addressed and solved in non-violent and constructive ways. We see a country where people have mutual respect for themselves and for others, and where the desire to transform conflict into opportunities for growth and development drives people’s actions. Metathor/CTP is working towards a country, where democratic values are inherited by the people, and Cambodians live in peace and harmony with themselves and their neighbors - in their villages as well as beyond borders.
Training Schedule