A senior official with the International Monetary Fund said on Tuesday that Cambodia needs the “continuous engagement” of a forestry monitor, a statement that comes just one day after Prime Minister Hun Sen renewed his calls for the expulsion of environmental watchdog Global Witness for what he said were exaggerations of government brutality.
This latest turn in the growing rift between the government and its environmental monitor holds a worrisome footnote for Hun Sen: It was the IMF in 1996 that canceled $60 million in loans to Cambodia citing corruption in the forestry sector.
The IMF then required the appointment of an independent forestry monitor—the government chose Global Witness—before resuming business here.
“Against the backdrop of the recent announcement by the Royal Government of Cambodia to end its partnership with Global Witness, the IMF’s resident representative in Cambodia, Mr Robert Hagemann, reaffirmed that the IMF attaches considerable importance to improving the management of Cambodia’s forests to secure sustainable exploitation of this valuable natural resource,” the statement read.
“In this regard, he stressed that preserving the Government’s credibility in this area required a continuous engagement of an internationally recognized independent monitor with unquestioned political independence, with minimum disruption.”
The statement does not make clear if the IMF would support the replacement of Global Witness with another monitor, as Hun Sen has threatened to do.
Speaking to a judicial seminar at the Royal School of Administration on Monday, Hun Sen said Global Witness staff had exaggerated reports of a Dec 5 incident when it said riot police used violence to break up a peaceful demonstration of villagers.
The villagers, many of them village and commune chiefs, were in Phnom Penh for one week trying to hold a meeting with the government’s Forestry Department to learn about logging plans for their homelands, but the government had refused to meet with them.
The prime minister added on Monday that he has ordered his government to terminate its relationship with Global Witness and find a replacement.
Global Witness Country Director Eva Galabru said on Tuesday that her office has not received an official notification of either a lawsuit or of the termination of her organization’s relationship with the government.
Global Witness was appointed by the government in 1999 to act as an environmental watchdog, with particular duties attached to monitoring the logging of Cambodia’s forests.
Most recently funded by Danida, the Danish government’s aid agency, Global Witness has filed numerous reports on extensive logging in Cambodia that show a broad pattern of abuse by many of the logging companies that operate here.
The government has listened to at least some of the watchdog’s concerns.
Hun Sen banned all logging one year ago after studies showed that extensive logging had worsened flooding in many areas, leading to expensive repairs of roads and bridges that threatened to wipe out all of the profits the government receives from logging.
Additional international donors, meanwhile, said they plan to review their aid programs in Cambodia in coming months.
A regularly scheduled review of the British program comes up in the middle of next year, said British Ambassador Stephen Bridges. The British Department for International Development has funded the Forestry Crimes Monitoring and Reporting Project, which was building a database of forestry crimes.
Though the government has threatened to replace Global Witness, no organization has been named as a likely replacement.
The idea that another organization would step in at this point struck Global Witness staff member Marcus Hardtke as unlikely: “I don’t see anybody who would be willing to do this,” Hardtke said Tuesday. “There has to be another constructive way forward.”
