Poor provincial residents in need of legal representation will soon have access to lawyers, thanks to a $50,000 project funded by the government, which seeks to open legal aid offices in all 24 provinces and municipalities.
The Cambodia Bar Association will coordinate the project, legal activists said Friday. Bar President Ky Tech said most of the money will go toward helping Cambodians hire private lawyers.
“In the provinces, people are poor, but they are facing expensive cases,” Ky Tech said. “This is the first priority.”
Bar officials sent a similar proposal to the Council of Ministers in December 2002. At the time, Bar Secretary-General Bun Honn said the funding would go toward salaries for lawyers, with the goal of putting at least one lawyer in each province.
A legal official said last week that he was concerned about the potential for lawyers to commit fraud in remote areas but added that encouraging lawyers to branch out from Phnom Penh is a positive development.
Sok Sam Oeun, director of the Cambodian Defenders Project, applauded the government’s decision. Since 1994, when he began running CDP, about 60 percent of court hearings he had seen in the provinces were conducted without lawyers to defend the accused.
“It is the lawyer’s obligation to help the poor with their charges,’’ said Ros Monin, who recently graduated from law school and took part in an official ceremony on Thursday recognizing 57 new lawyers at the Appeals Court.
“I am happy that I will be going to work in the countryside,” he said.
During the ceremony, Ky Tech said the Bar has 309 members. Some of them work with NGOs and operate private law offices in Phnom Penh and several of the main provinces.
“We [lawyers] should not all stay together in the city,” said Ros Monin. “A few hundred lawyers is not enough for a population of 13 million.”
Ky Tech and some of his colleagues met with Prime Minister Hun Sen on Dec 8 at his home in Takhmau. They explained the significance of the project and urged the government to promote a balanced judicial system in rural areas.
The prime minister confirmed the $50,000 to assist the project and pledged to donate more than $12,000 from his own pocket. He also offered two state-owned apartments in Phnom Penh’s Daun Penh district to relocate the Bar office.
“This does not interfere with the Bar’s independence,” Ky Tech said. “It is the government’s obligation to help the poor.”
The project was initially founded as a special task force in 1996 to provide legal assistance to poor people free of charge, according to a report released by the Bar during a Nov 26 and Nov 27 conference.
It was run with donations from organizations such as the UN Children’s Fund, the Japan International Cooperation Agency, the Asia Foundation and the UN’s human rights office in Phnom Penh. Portions of the program were disrupted in 2002 due to lack of funding.
Bar officials said last year that Pailin municipality and Mondolkiri, Ratanakkiri, Stung Treng, Takeo, Kampot, Pursat, Kompong Chhnang, Kompong Speu and Oddar Meanchey provinces have no lawyers.
