As part of the effort to resuscitate the education system and reintegrate returned refugees, the 1991 Paris Peace Accords decreed that Cambodia should recognize education qualifications awarded to its citizens while they were living in exile.
The 1970s Khmer Rouge regime had devastated education in Cambodia, leaving the country without schools and textbooks, and without qualified people to teach. Many survivors say they got better educations in border refugee camps than did their countrymen studying at home.
But today some former refugees say their qualifications are being rejected by Cambodian schools and universities, and their hard-won educations have become useless. They allege they are victims of an education system that is corrupt and discriminatory.
Tor Vichet, 32, was awarded a baccalaureate at Site 2 camp, which was under the control of the anti-communist, anti-Vietnamese-occupation Khmer People’s National Liberation Front.
Unlike at camps run by such factions as the Khmer Rouge, young people at Site 2 were not forced to become soldiers, former refugees say. Instead they were encouraged to study, and the camp provided a comparatively high standard of education.
Students could qualify for high-school diplomas and even bachelor degrees, which were later accepted by the Ministry of Education as equivalent to those qualifications in Cambodia.
Having established himself as a computer technician and begun raising a family, Tor Vichet recently decided to use his Site 2 baccalaureate to go to university.
But when he applied to study at the Phnom Penh’s National Management Institute last November, his baccalaureate was rejected as invalid.
It’s an experience shared by many of his old classmates.
“What we have earned from schools at the border camp seems to have been completely worthless,” Tor Vichet said recently. “It seems as if we were from another planet, and no one knew us.”
The problem, officials say, is that Tor Vichet’s qualifications haven’t been authenticated by the Ministry of Education—and for the moment, his chances of getting that authentication are slim.
Between 1991 and 1997, the ministry issued equivalency certificates to people holding qualifications from border camp schools. The certificates entitled the returnees to attend Cambodian schools and universities and would be recognized by local employers. But in 1997, officials suspended the practice indefinitely when fake certificates from border camps were found to be flooding the market, Deputy Director of the Ministry’s Higher Education Department Mak Nang said.
Since then “many” border camp students have come for certification and been turned away, Mak Nang said, although she declined to specify how many.
In 1999 and again in February this year, the ministry wrote to the Council of Ministers, asking it to come up with a solution and to authorize education officials to lift the suspension, Mak Nang said.
Council of Ministers spokesman Khieu Thavika said the cabinet would meet with education officials to resolve the issue “soon,” explaining that the problem is complex and the council needs time to weigh and discuss it.
Education Minister Tol Lah said in the meantime the ministry is doing its best to verify qualifications and give honest applicants the certification they need.
“We don’t want to create obstacles for those people trying to continue their education,” he said, adding that Tor Vichet and others should approach the ministry again about getting their equivalency certificates.
But Tor Vichet said the government is deliberately dragging its feet on the issue, trying to exclude him and his old schoolmates so they can keep sought-after scholarships and university slots for its supporters.
Lao Mong Hay, a former director of Site 2’s Institute of Public Administration, said in the past he has helped the Education Ministry authenticate certificates by checking applicants against his own attendance records.
At first, the process was straight-forward, but in recent years more and more of his old students have run into problems, said Lao Mong Hay, who is currently director of the Khmer Institute of Democracy.
Part of the problem is the forgeries, but the current government is also unwilling to help their old foes get ahead.
“I think [officials] are motivated more by politics than by technical problems,” he said.
“That kind of discrimination still prevails in public education, [as well as] in the administration, in the army.” he said. “There’s a lot of hanky-panky.”
(Additional reporting by Alex Devine)
