Abstract
Chea Veth1 returned to her home country after more than two decades away when the United Nations launched a peacekeeping mission in 1991, known as the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC). Chea was a member of Cambodia’s former elite and had left Cambodia long before the American bombings of the 1970s and the subsequent Khmer Rouge atrocities that would leave her homeland with the infamous moniker ‘the killing fields.’ But when the UN went to Cambodia in the early 1990s to broker a peace agreement, Chea decided it was time to return to Cambodia to lend a hand. In her Phnom Penh neighborhood she carried not only the privilege of her background, but was known to be well-connected with the UN mission, and her facility with a variety of languages meant that she was sometimes called upon by neighbors who needed assistance in dealing with UNTAC personnel. When a local woman whose daughter had been employed as a cook and cleaner by a number of men working as part of UNTAC asked for help in finding out why her daughter had suddenly quit her job and was not acting like herself, Chea probably already had a good idea about what might be causing the unusual behavior. Likely, so too did the mother.
Cambodia demonstrates what the international community can accomplish when the collective will of the major powers acts in concert for the larger good.
—Stephen J. Randall
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Notes
Janet E. Heininger, Peacekeeping in Transition: The United Nations in Cambodia (New York: The Twentieth Century Fund, 1994), 7.
See, for example, Paul F. Diehl, International Peacekeeping (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994), 198–99.
An important exception here is the collection by Peter Utting, ed., Between Hope and Insecurity: The Social Consequences of the Cambodian Peace Process (Geneva: UN Research Institute for Social Development, 1994).
Cynthia Enloe, The Morning After: Sexual Politics at the End of the Cold War (Berkeley: University of Southern California Press, 1993), 35.
David P. Chandler, The Tragedy of Cambodian History: Politics, War and Revolution Since 1945 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991), 215.
Michael W. Doyle, UN Peacekeeping in Cambodia: UNTAC’s Civil Mandate (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1995), 16.
See Eva Mysliwiec, Punishing the Poor: The International Isolation of Kampuchea (Oxford: Oxfam, 1988); and Eva L. Mysliwiec, “Cambodia: NGOs in Transition,” in Utting, Between Hope and Insecurity, 104.
May M. Ebihara, Carol A. Mortland, and Judy Ledgerwood, “Introduction” in Cambodian Culture since 1975: Homeland and Exile (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994), 20;
quoting Al Santoli, “Voices from the Refugee Camps,” in First International Scholars Conference on Cambodia, Selected Papers, ed. RA. Judkins (Geneso, NY: SUNY Department of Anthropology and the Geneso Foundation, 1988), 9–12.
Aungkana Kamonpetch, “The Progress of Preliminary Phase of Khmer Repatriation,” Occasional Paper Series No. 6 (Bangkok: Indochinese Refugee Information Center, Institute of Asian Studies, Chulalongkorn University, May 1993), 28–29.
Michael W Doyle and Nishkala Suntharalignam, “The UN in Cambodia: Lessons for Complex Peacekeeping,” International Peacekeeping 1, no. 2 (Summer 1994): 120.
Boutros-Ghali, Boutros, “Introduction,” in The United Nations and Cambodia 1991–1995, The UN Blue Book Series, vol. 2 (New York: UN Department of Public Information, 1995), 10–11;
Jarat Chopra, “United Nations Authority in Cambodia,” Occasional Paper 15 (Providence: Thomas J. Watson, Jr. Institute for International Studies, 1994), 1.
Ramses Amer, “The United Nations’ Peacekeeping Operation in Cambodia: Overview and Assessment,” Contemporary Southeast Asia 15, no. 2 (September 1993): 211–31.
Nate Thayer, “Sihanouk Slams Political Violence,” Phnom Penh Post 2, no. 2 (January 15–28, 1993): 1;
Tom McCarthy, “Slaughter of Vietnamese in Phum Taches Was Cold and Calculated,” Phnom Penh Post 2, no. 2 (January 15–28, 1993): 3;
Nate Thayer, “UNTAC Fails to Stem Political Violence,” Phnom Penh Post 2, no. 4 (February 12–25, 1993): 3;
Andrea Hamilton, “Murders of Party Officials Continue,” Phnom Penh Post 2, no. 14 (July 2–15, 1993): 1.
Court Robinson, “Rupture and Return: Repatriation, Displacement and Reintegration in Battambang Province Cambodia,” Occasional Paper Series No. 7 (Indochinese Refugee Information Center, Institute of Asian Studies, Chulllongkorn University, November 1994), 10.
William Shawcross, Deliver Us From Evil: Peacekeepers, Warlords and a World of Endless Conflict (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2000), 71–73;
Judy Ledgerwood, “UN Peacekeeping Missions: The Lessons from Cambodia,” in Analysis from the East-West Center No. 11 (Honolulu: East-West Center, March 1994), 6–7.
See Judy Ledgerwood, Analysis of the Situation of Women in Cambodia (Phnom Penh: UNICEF, February–June, 1992), 7.
Secretariat of State for Women’s Affairs, Kingdom of Cambodia, Cambodia’s Country Report: Women in Development (Phnom Penh: July 1994), 10.
Grant Curtis, Cambodia: A Country Profile (Stockholm: The Swedish International Development Agency, 1980), 160.
Cathy Zimmerman, Sar Samen, and Men Savorn, “Plates in a Basket Will Rattle: Domestic Violence in Cambodia,” (Phnom Penh: Asia Foundation, 1994), 141 and 137–42 passim.
Mang Channo, “Sex Trade Flourishing in Capital,” Phnom Penh Post (February 12–25, 1993): 6; “The Problem of Prostitution,” Phnom Penh Post (February 12–25, 1993): 6; Andrew Nettie, “Cambodia: UN Mission Cited as Sex Slavery Spreads,” Sunday Age (Melbourne), June 25, 1995; Eva Arnvig, “Women, Children and Returnees,” 166–69; Kien Serey Phal, “The Lessons of the UNTAC Experience and the Ongoing Responsibilities of the International Community for Peacebuilding and Development in Cambodia,” 129–33; Kirshenbaum, “Who’s Watching the Peacekeepers?,” 13. Interviews conducted in Phnom Penh from March to April 1996 as well as numerous reports by NGOs within Phnom Penh that confirm these observations; see, for example, Mona Mehta, “Gender Dimensions of Poverty in Cambodia: A Survey Report,” (Phnom Penh: Oxfam, 1993), 7.
Sara Colm, “U.N. Agrees to Address Sexual Harassment Issue,” Phnom Penh Post 1, no. 7 (October 11, 1992): 1.
Yeshua Moser-Puangsuwan, “U.N. Peacekeeping in Cambodia: Whose Needs Were Met?” Pacifica Review 7, no. 2 (1995): 106.
Amitav Ghosh, “The Global Reservation: Notes Toward an Ethnography of International Peacekeeping,” Cultural Anthropology 9, no. 3 (1994): 415.
Interviews, March and April 1996; Michael Hayes, “Indibatt Gets High Marks for Civic Work,” Phnom Penh Post 2, no. 20 (September 24–October 7, 1993): 8;
Moeun Chhean Nariddh, “German Doctors Prepare to Pack Up,” Phnom Penh Post 2, no. 20 (September 24–October 7, 1993): 9;
Michael Hayes, “With a Little Help From the Troops,” Phnom Penh Post 2, no. 9 (April 23–May 6, 1993): 16.
Anne Orford, Reading Humanitarian Intervention: Human Rights and the Use of Force in International Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 160 and chapter 5 passim.
Alan James, “Peacekeeping in the Post-Cold War Era,” International Journal, L2 (Spring 1995): 246.
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© 2009 Bina D’Costa and Katrina Lee-Koo
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Whitworth, S. (2009). When the UN ‘Succeeds’. In: D’Costa, B., Lee-Koo, K. (eds) Gender and Global Politics in the Asia-Pacific. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230617742_5
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